April 2020 – Page 3 – immigrationcourtside.com

FOOD: CHOWHOUND: How Migrants Feed America’s First Responders in Crisis! — Report From Memphis

https://apple.news/AOBHMvDQbTL23pPX8vfQs2A

Simone Paget in Chowhound:

From celebrities and chefs to local food banks and grassroots organizations, people everywhere have been pitching in to help mitigate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on our communities. Here’s how Global Cafe in Memphis is helping healthcare workers in a city that’s both food-insecure and extremely charitable.

Memphis has been a long-time hub for the civil rights movement and more recently, food activism. Global Cafe is no exception.

Located in Crosstown Concourse—a former Sears distribution building that has been transformed into a 1,200,000 square foot mixed use space—the international food hall hosts three immigrant/refugee food entrepreneurs cooking and selling an eclectic mix of affordably priced, authentic dishes from their home countries, which currently includes a delicious mix of Syrian, Sudanese and Venezuelan cuisine. Think: delectable arepas, amazingly tender shawarma, and freshly made baba ganoush.

Since the COVID-19 crisis, the Global Cafe team has been putting their culinary ingenuity to work feeding overtaxed medical professionals and people economically impacted by the virus. For a small donation, they’ll buy food, cook it, and deliver it to people in need.

So far, they’ve cooked and delivered hundreds of meals to the night ER shift at LeBohneur Germantown, the physicians at LeBonheur, the respiratory ICU unit at Baptist East, as well as First Congo Food Justice Ministry in Midtown and the staff of Church Health.

Giving back to the community is part of Global Cafe’s life blood, explains owner and CEO, Sabine Langer.

“Post-election, the climate was very negative towards immigrants and refugees. As an immigrant, I wanted to find a way to make a difference in the lives of immigrants and refugees. I wasn’t sure exactly how but after lots of research, it became apparent that I could help some of the women I had met that were cooking on the side trying to make an additional income to support their families,” she says.

By empowering immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs to set up food businesses with zero start-up cost, Langer says that the food hall has been a wonderful catalyst for many of the team members.

“One of our chefs was able to pay off her house, another one was able to purchase a house, and our trusted dishwasher recently bought a car. It’s fantastic to see this and it warms my heart to know that we are true to our mission and really making a difference in everyone’s lives,” she says.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Simone’s article, along with some great food pictures, at the link.

Immigrants have long been a powerful force in our culinary arts and food supply. That has become even more obvious during this crisis.

When the pandemic finally gets under control, will we recognize these essential contributions by improving wages, working conditions, and providing a social safety net for these essential workers? Or, will we go back to undervaluing and disrespecting their contributions? Will we emerge as a more equitable, just, and caring society? Or, as happened after the last recession, will we allow the privileged and powerful to increase their authority and line their pockets at the expense of the vast majority of Americans? The lack of an adequate “safety net” has become obvious; but will we finally do what’s necessary to promote the common good rather than living from “crisis to crisis?”

Already, far-right White Nationalist pols like Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions are cynically using the pandemic as an excuse for pushing “immigration moratoriums” and other nativist schemes. Don’t let them get away with it! Immigrants aren’t “taking our jobs;” they’re “saving our lives,” often at the risk of their own!

PWS

04-20-18

THANK UW LAW: Unemployment Insurance Was The Brainchild of Two Amazing UW Law Students Who Were Also In Love — It All Began In L-1 Torts! — PLUS: The “Wisconsin Idea” Continues Today Through The Work of Professor Erin Barbato!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/04/18/unemployment-checks-great-depression-coronavirus/h

Michael S. Rosenwald writes in the WashPost:

A line to apply for unemployment benefits in San Francisco in 1938. (Library of Congress)

They first laid eyes on each other in torts class.

It was 1923, a period of prosperity before the Great Depression.

He was the son of Walter Rauschenbusch, a prominent theologian and key figure in the Social Gospel movement. She was the daughter of Louis Brandeis, the progressive Supreme Court justice and the most famous Jew in America. Each inherited their parents’ zeal for social justice.

At the University of Wisconsin Law School, these two idealists — Elizabeth Brandeis and Paul Raushenbush — noticed each other immediately. She was brainy and shy, her hair long and dark. He was handsome and outgoing. On hikes and canoe outings, they fell in love romantically and intellectually — a partnership instrumental in passing the nation’s first unemployment compensation law.

The story of how they did it is largely forgotten, but the 22 million people who have applied for unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic — and, of course, the millions before them — have this unlikely couple to thank. The law they conceived of and helped pass in Wisconsin laid the foundation for unemployment insurance throughout the country.

“Their story is absolutely staggering to think about right now,” said their grandson Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and senior adviser for public affairs and innovation at Interfaith Youth Core, a nonprofit organization. “It was their life’s work to make laws like this available to everyone.”

Raushenbush, who lives in New York, has spent the last few years writing a history of his family, including interviewing his father, Walter, who is 92 and lives in McLean, Va. Raushenbush was working on the unemployment insurance section as the coronavirus pandemic arrived in America.

Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush and Paul Raushenbush. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)

As part of his research, Raushenbush has been reading a privately published book his grandparents wrote based on interviews they gave to a Columbia University oral history project. The book is the story of the legislation — where the idea came from, the characters involved, how the law was ultimately passed.

“It really reads like a novel,” Raushenbush said.

The main characters, of course, are his grandparents.

And Wisconsin.

His grandmother moved there to attend law school. She had lost her job as a researcher for the D.C. Minimum Wage Board following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the minimum wage for women was unconstitutional. Justice Brandeis, who as a lawyer and jurist was renowned for his progressive stance on social issues, did not cast a vote because of his daughter’s job.

E.B., as she was known to family and friends, wanted a career at the intersection of economics, labor and the law. She hoped to attend an elite East Coast law school, but those programs, including Harvard, where her father studied, didn’t accept women. With her father’s approval, she chose the University of Wisconsin, where the “Wisconsin Idea” — fusing academic research to solving social problems — was flourishing.

“I have no doubt that the Wisconsin Law School is good enough for your purposes,” E.B.’s father wrote to her, “and should think it probable that you would find economics instruction, and doubtless, other considerations more sympathetic there than at Yale.”

Her future husband chose Wisconsin for the same reason. There, the couple studied under professor John R. Commons, an influential social economist who crafted Wisconsin’s workers’ compensation law. Commons tried and failed several times to pass legislation protecting unemployed workers, whose numbers were soaring, especially after the stock market crash in 1929.

Paul Raushenbush signing the paperwork for the first unemployment compensation check in 1936. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)

Commons took a particular interest in his graduate students, inviting them for regular dinners on Friday nights to discuss societal problems.

“I suppose the characteristic thing about Commons was that he was trying to use his brains and enlist the brains of his students in attempting solutions of economic problems,” Raushenbush said during the Columbia University oral history interviews. “This was no ivory tower guy. Sure, he did research and wrote books, but perhaps the main interest that attracted his students was that they were being invited to participate in an attempt to deal with difficult problems on an intelligent basis.”

By 1930, E.B. and her husband both were teaching economics at the University of Wisconsin. They had become friends with Philip La Follette, the local district attorney, whose parents were friends with Justice Brandeis. One day in June, La Follette invited the couple, along with another Wisconsin economist, Harold Groves, to his house in Madison.

La Follette told them he planned to run for governor, that he planned to win, and that he wanted to pass legislation instituting unemployment compensation. He asked the trio to come up with a plan.

And did they ever.

They spent the weekend hiking along the Wisconsin River batting around ideas. Their key idea — one that survives today — was that the benefits should be funded entirely by employers, thus giving them the incentive to maintain steady levels of employment or bear the cost of not doing so. The economists also decided that Groves, who grew up on a Wisconsin farm, should run for the State Assembly and introduce the legislation.

Everything clicked.

In 1932, Wisconsin Gov. Philip La Follette signs the nation’s first unemployment measure into law. Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush and Paul Raushenbush are second and third from the left. (Courtesy of Paul Brandeis Raushenbush)

The first unemployment check issued in Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Historical Society)

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article in the WashPost at the link.

Scholarship, teamwork, creativity, hard work, and a healthy dose of romance produces results that are still “making a difference” today. Nice story! Beyond that, it’s an inspiring story for today’s world.

What if we had more folks like the Raushenbusches in government today? Folks looking for ways in which government could work to make the lives or ordinary working people better. Compare that with the “Trump Kakistocracy,” a bunch of self-centered incompetents mostly out to disable government, screw working folks, line their own pockets, glorify and suck up to their “Supreme Leader-Clown,” and shift blame for their mess, all while attempting to advance a destructive far-right political agenda that cares not for the public good! Then we had folks like Phil La Follette; now we have Stephen Miller!

Professor Walter Brandeis Raushenbusch, the son of Elizabeth & Paul, was on the faculty of U.W. Law when I was there from 1970-73. However, I never had him for a class. We did study the “LaFollette Era” and its contributions to President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in several of my classes.

I believe that U.W. Law gave me a strong grounding in teamwork with my colleagues (now retired Wisconsin State Judge Thomas S. Lister was one), how to apply scholarship to achieve practical results, and solving complex problems.

Speaking with Judge Lister earlier this year during a “pre-lockdown” visit with his wife Sally to D.C., I could see how our time together at U.W. Law had a continuing profound influence on both of our careers, particularly the “judicial phases.” In our different ways, we were always striving to establish “best practices,” promote “good government,” and make the “system work better” for the public it served. Just like some of the “progressive ideas” that were interwoven with our legal education in Madison. “Teaching from the bench” was how I always thought of it. Sometimes we succeeded, other times not so much; but we were always “in there pitching,” even up to today. See, e.g., the “Lister-Schmidt Proposal” for an Auxiliary Judiciary for the U.S. Immigration Courts here: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/08/19/an-open-letter-proposal-from-two-uw-law-73-retired-judges-weve-spent-90-collective-years-working-to-improve-the-quality-delivery-of-justice-in-america/. We haven’t given up on this one!

Hon. Thomas Lister
Retired Jackson County (WI) Circuit Judge

And, the “Wisconsin Idea” is still alive and thriving at U.W. Law, thanks to dedicated professors like my good friend and fellow warrior for the “New Due Process Army,” Professor Erin Barbato, Director of the U.W. Immigrant Justice Clinic. Erin uses creative scholarship, teaches practical, usable, courtroom and counseling skills, promotes teamwork, and saves “real lives” in her work with asylum seekers and other migrants. She is also a role model who is inspiring a new generation of American lawyers committed to advancing social justice and guaranteeing Due Process and fundamental fairness for all. Indeed, Erin was a guest lecturer at my Georgetown Law class and inspired my students with her courage, energy, and real life examples of “applying law to save lives!” It really made the “textbook come alive” for my students! Thanks for all you do, Erin!

Professor Erin Barbato
Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic
UW Law

On Wisconsin!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-19-20

BLOWING THE BASICS: THE CONTINUING UGLINESS OF THE BIA’S FAILURE OF LEGAL EXPERTISE, JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE, AND DECISIONAL INTEGRITY IS A “LICENSE TO KILL” MOST VULNERABLE AMONG US ☠️⚰️😰👎 — 3rd Cir. Says BIA Gets PSG Test Wrong, Fails To Apply Binding CAT Precedent, Distorts Facts to Engineer Wrongful Denial of Protection – “[W]e are troubled by the BIA’s apparent distortion of evidence favorable to Guzman in this case.” – Guzman Orellana v. Attorney General***

Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

Dan Kowakski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-on-asylum-social-group-el-salvador-guzman-orellana-v-barr

CA3 on Asylum, Social Group, El Salvador: Guzman Orellana v. Barr

Guzman Orellana v. Barr

“We must now decide three issues: (1) whether persons who publicly provide assistance to law enforcement against major Salvadoran gangs constitute a cognizable particular social group for purposes of asylum and withholding of removal under the INA, (2) whether Guzman has established that he suffered past persecution on account of anti-gang political opinion imputed to him, and (3) whether the BIA correctly applied the framework we enunciated in Myrie v. Attorney General1 in denying Guzman relief under the CAT. For the reasons that follow, we hold that persons who publicly provide assistance against major Salvadoran gangs do constitute a particular social group, that Guzman has failed to meet his burden to show that imputed anti-gang political opinion was a central reason for the treatment he received, and that the BIA erred in its application of Myrie to Guzman’s application. Accordingly, we will vacate the BIA’s decision and remand this case for further proceedings on Guzman’s petition for relief from removal.”

[Hats off to J. Wesley Earnhardt Troy C. Homesley, III Brian Maida (ARGUED) Cravath, Swaine & Moore!]

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*** I believe that the Third Circuit uses “Attorney General” rather than the name of the particular Attorney General in their immigration citation.

Before: RESTREPO, ROTH and FISHER, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Roth.

Distortion of evidence and law happens all the time in this dysfunctional system now operated to deny basic due process and fundamental fairness to endangered individuals. Frankly, the Judges of the Third Circuit and other Courts of Appeals should be more than just “troubled” by the BIA’s legal incompetence and anti-immigrant decision-making. This isn’t just some “academic exercise.” The lives of innocent individuals are being put at risk by the ongoing fraud at EOIR under Barr!

This one-sided politically and prosecutorially-dominated charade of a “court system” is clearly unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution. Not everyone has the ability to appeal to the Circuit Courts and be fortunate enough to get a panel that actually looks critically at the case, rather than just “rubber stamping” the BIA’s decisions or giving them “undue deference” like all too many Article III Judges do. Most asylum seekers aren’t represented by Cravath, Swaine & Moore, one of America’s top law firms.

Indeed, many asylum applicants are forced by the Government to proceed without any counsel and don’t have the foggiest notion of what’s happening in Immigration Court. How would an unrepresented individual or a child challenge the Immigration Judge’s or the BIA’s misapplication of the “three-part test” for “particular social group?” How would they go about raising failure to apply the applicable Circuit precedent in Myrie v. Attorney General?

Even with the best representation, as was present in this case, under pressure from political bosses like Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr, Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges constantly look for “reasons to deny” relief even where the case clearly has merit, as this one does! If against these odds, the respondent “wins,” or achieves something other than an outright “loss,” Barr can merely reach in and change the result to favor DHS Enforcement.

More outrageously, he can make that improper and unethical decision a so-called “precedent” for other cases. How totally unfair can a system get? Is there any other “court system” in America where the prosecutor or the opposing party gets to select the judges, evaluate their performance under criteria that allow for no public input whatsoever, and then change results at both the trial and appellate level? How is this consistent with Due Process or basic judicial ethics, both of which require a “fair, impartial, and unbiased decision-maker.” In the “real world,” the mere “appearance” of impropriety or bias is enough to disqualify a judge from acting. Here “actual (not apparent) bias” is institutionalized and actively promoted!

The ongoing legal, ethical, and Constitutional problems at EOIR are quite obvious. For the Article III Courts to merely “tisk tisk” without requiring that immigration adjudications comply with basic Constitutional, statutory, and ethical requirements is a disservice to the public that continues to demean and undermine the role of the Article III Courts as an independent judiciary.

Due Process Forever! Captive Courts & Complicit Judges, Never!

PWS

04-18-20

BLOWING THE BASICS: 4th Cir. Says BIA Got Nexus & Political Opinion Wrong in Guatemalan Asylum Case — Lopez-Ordonez v. Barr — The Facts Were Compelling, But The BIA Worked Hard to Wrongfully Deny Protection!

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca4-on-;-nexus-political-opinion-guatemala-lopez-ordonez-v-barr

CA4 on Asylum, Nexus, Political Opinion, Guatemala: Lopez Ordonez v. Barr

Lopez Ordonez v. Barr

“Hector Daniel Lopez Ordonez was conscripted into the Guatemalan military when he was 15 years old. As part of the G-2 intelligence unit, Lopez Ordonez was ordered— and repeatedly refused—to torture and kill people. After a particularly horrific incident in which Lopez Ordonez refused to murder a five-month-old baby and threatened to report the G-2’s abuses to human rights organizations, the G-2 confined him to a hole in the ground for ten months. Upon his release, he fled to the United States. Lopez Ordonez now petitions this Court to review an order from the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying his asylum application and ordering his removal to Guatemala. The BIA determined that Lopez Ordonez did not meet the nexus requirement to establish his eligibility for asylum—that is, he did not show past persecution on account of a statutorily protected ground. The record in this case, however, compels us to conclude that Lopez Ordonez has demonstrated that one central reason for his persecution by the Guatemalan military was his political opinion, a protected ground under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”). Accordingly, we vacate the BIA’s nexus determination and remand for further proceedings.”

[Hats off to Samuel B. Hartzell!]

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“Chief Judge Gregory wrote the opinion, in which Judge Wilkinson and Judge Wynn joined.”

Beneath the smokescreens of the uncontrolled backlog and gross mismanagement at EOIR lies an uglier truth. The BIA is a politically motivated tool of the Trump regime that puts reaching preconceived denials of protection ahead of Due Process and the fair application of asylum law.

This case should have been an easy grant, probably a precedent. By requiring the DHS, the Asylum Office, and Immigration Judges to follow a properly fair and generous interpretation of asylum law that would achieve its overriding purpose of protection, an intellectually honest BIA with actual legal expertise in applying asylum laws would force an end to the racially-driven intentional perversion of asylum laws and Due Process by the Trump regime.

More cases granted at a lower level would discourage the largely frivolous attempts to deny asylum engaged in by the DHS here. It would reduce the backlog by returning asylum and other protection grants to the more appropriate 60%+ levels they were at before first the Obama Administration and now the Trump regime twisted the laws and employed various coercive methods to encourage improper denials to “deter” legitimate refugees from Central America and elsewhere from seeking protection.

With fair access to legal counsel, many more asylum cases could be well-documented and granted either by the USCIS Asylum Office (without going to Immigration Court) or in “short hearings” using party stipulations. The ability to project with consistency favorable outcomes allows and encourages ICE Assistant Chief Counsel to be more selective in the cases that they choose to fully litigate. That encourages the use of stipulations, pre-trial agreements, and prosecutorial discretion that allows almost all other courts in America, save for Immigration Courts, to control dockets without stomping on individual rights.

It would also force all Administrations to establish robust, realistic refugee programs for screening individuals nearer to the Northern Triangle to obviate the need for the journey to the Southern border. Additionally, compliance with the law would pressure our Government to work with the international community to solve the issues causing the refugee flow at their roots, in the refugee-sending countries, rather than misusing the U.S. legal system and abusing civil detention as “deterrents.”

Due Process Forever! Captive “Courts” Never!

PWS

04-18-20

PACKERS: R.I.P. WILLIE DAVIS (1934-2020) — Hall of Fame Defender From Lombardi Era Went On To Successful Business Career!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/willie-davis-hall-of-fame-defensive-end-for-green-bay-packers-of-the-1960s-dies-at-85/2020/04/15/0ab063d0-7f41-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html

From the WashPost:

By Matt Schudel

April 15 at 10:43 PM ET

Willie Davis, a Hall of Fame defensive end and a team captain for Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers in the 1960s, when he helped lead his team to the first two Super Bowl championships, died April 15 at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 85.

The Packers announced his death, noting that his wife said he had been treated for kidney failure.

Mr. Davis played 10 years for the Packers, joining the team in 1960 and becoming a stalwart defensive performer at left end. He was one of the leading disciples of Lombardi, an intense taskmaster and perfectionist who is considered one of football’s greatest coaches.

“Perfection is not attainable,” Lombardi said, in one of many maxims attributed to him. “But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”

Throughout most of the 1960s, the Packers reached a level of excellence that few teams in any sport have equaled, winning five National Football League championships in seven years. In January 1967, the Packers met the Kansas City Chiefs of the rival American Football League in the inaugural Super Bowl, winning 35-10. The next year, in Super Bowl II, the Packers beat the Oakland Raiders, 33-14. The Super Bowl trophy is named for Lombardi.

The 6-foot-3, 245-pound Mr. Davis led Green Bay’s pass rush in both games, and as the team’s defensive captain he was, in effect, Lombardi’s alter ego on the field.

“He told us this was a way of life, a game of survival, a test of manhood,” Mr. Davis told author David Maraniss for his 1999 biography of Lombardi, “When Pride Still Mattered.”

Steady, smart and seemingly indestructible, Mr. Davis did not miss a game during his 12-year NFL career. He never gave up on a play and often chased down runners on the opposite side of the field.

Before his Super Bowl heroics, Mr. Davis forced what Green Bay fans call the “million-dollar fumble” during a game against the Baltimore Colts late in the 1966 season. With the Colts driving for a touchdown in the fourth quarter, Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas dropped back to pass, then tucked the ball under his arm and ran toward the goal line.

Mr. Davis caught him from behind on a muddy field and jarred the ball loose. Linebacker Dave Robinson recovered the fumble, and the Packers held on for a 14-10 victory. They then beat the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL championship game before going on to the first Super Bowl.

“As a pass rusher, he was so quick off the ball,” Robinson said of Mr. Davis in an interview with Packers.com. “He was a good run player, too. He was so strong in the chest, he could hit the tackle and control them. Throw them or drive them.”

Mr. Davis played his first two NFL seasons with the Cleveland Browns, doubling as an offensive tackle and defensive end. Admiring his ability, Lombardi acquired him in a trade before the 1960 season, making him a full-time defensive player.

“In Willie Davis we got a great one,” Lombardi said in 1962.

During the team’s grueling preseason drills, Lombardi was known for loudly criticizing some players and quietly encouraging others, depending on what he thought was the best motivational tool in the moment. One year, after ripping another player, he unexpectedly turned on Mr. Davis, who was never unprepared for practice or a game.

The next morning, Mr. Davis asked Lombardi for an explanation.

“He said, ‘I’ve got to prove nobody’s beyond chewing out,’ ” Mr. Davis recalled to sportswriter W.C. Heinz for the book “Once They Heard the Cheers.” “I said, ‘Yeah, coach, but give me some warning.’”

Mr. Davis was a five-time all-pro and still holds the Packers record for recovered fumbles, with 21. Sacks of opposing quarterbacks were not an official statistic when he played, but historians have credited him with more than 100 during his career. He brought a tenacity to the game that made him, according to NFL Films, one of 100 greatest players in pro football history.

He was the leader of a defensive unit filled with Hall of Fame players, including defensive tackle Henry Jordan, linebackers Robinson and Ray Nitschke and defensive backs Herb Adderley and Willie Wood, who died in February.

Former Packers center Bill Curry called Mr. Davis, in an NFL Films documentary, “the finest combination of leader and player that I ever saw.”

[[Willie Wood, Hall of Fame defensive back for Vince Lombardi’s Packers, dies at 83]]

Beyond the field, Mr. Davis served as a leader for other African American players in the NFL and, as Lombardi instilled, a force for team unity on the Packers. As a white player from Georgia, Curry had not been on an integrated team until he joined the Packers in 1965.

Mr. Davis “didn’t just help me to play in the NFL for 10 years,” Curry said, “he changed my life because I was never able to look at another human being in the same way I had.”

William Delford Davis was born July 24, 1934, in Lisbon, La. He was 8 when his parents separated, and he moved with his mother and two younger siblings to Texarkana, Ark. His mother was a cook at a country club.

Mr. Davis earned a scholarship to the historically black Grambling State University in Louisiana, where his coach was Eddie Robinson, who prepared dozens of players for pro careers and was the first college football coach to win 400 games.

After graduating in 1956, Mr. Davis served two years in the Army before joining the Browns in 1958. While playing in the NFL, he also received a master of business administration degree in 1968 from the University of Chicago. He retired from the Packers at the end of the 1969 season and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981.

Mr. Davis was a football broadcaster for NBC in the 1970s and turned down several coaching offers. He operated a prosperous beer distributorship in Los Angeles before selling the business in 1989.

He was a key figure in planning the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and was reportedly recruited to run for mayor of the city. He later owned several radio stations and was on the boards of the Packers and several companies and founded a charitable foundation in Lombardi’s name.

His marriages to Ann McCullom and Andrea Erickson ended in divorce; survivors include his wife, the former Carol Dyrek; and two children from his first marriage.

In his business office, Mr. Davis kept pictures of his Packers championship teams and a framed portrait of Lombardi.

“There are days when I wake up and I don’t feel like getting up and crawling into the office,” he told Heinz in the 1970s. “I say to myself that I own the Willie Davis Distributing Company, and today I’m going to exercise my prerogative and not go in. Then I think, ‘What would Lombardi do?’ I get up and out of bed.”

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Willie’s spectacular defense was a treat to watch during the years of Packers’ dominance of the NFL. Seemed like he was always there with the clutch tackle or big fumble recovery when it was most needed. And, like many on Lombardi’s Packers, he went on to success in other fields after retiring from football.

PWS

04-17-20

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: “Dreamers” Are In The Front Lines Of Essential Workers — Why Is The Regime Persecuting Them?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-dreamers-are-an-essential-part-of-our-covid-19-response/2020/04/16/9514d2e0-8022-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html

Catherine writes:

NEW YORK — Dr. P. has to be reminded to take breaks during her 12-hour emergency-room shifts — to drink water so she doesn’t get dehydrated; to go to the bathroom; even just to breathe for a few minutes alone, unencumbered by layers of sweaty, suffocating personal protective equipment.

It can be hard to remember to pause because there’s too much to do. Too many patients, everywhere, wheezing and gasping for air. Even before the ER was overwhelmed, she had been reluctant to step away. In mid-March, as patients were surging into emergency departments, she requested to cancel some scheduled time off.

“I asked to keep working, rather than just sit at home and do nothing,” she said. “It’s a helpless feeling sitting at home, knowing that things are getting worse at the hospital.”

But if the Supreme Court lets the Trump administration have its way, she might have to stop her lifesaving work, permanently.

[[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]]

P. is a “dreamer,” one of the 825,000 unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children who have received protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (I’m using only her last initial because she fears attracting attention to her family, which is still undocumented.)

DACA, created by the Obama administration in 2012, shields these young immigrants from deportation and allows them to work. An estimated 29,000 are health-care workers like P. and on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

After the Trump administration announced in 2017 that it planned to terminate the program, one of the more prescient outcries came from the medical community. In a Supreme Court filing, a consortium of medical colleges and aligned groups warned that the industry depends heavily on not just immigrant workers but specifically on DACA recipients, and that ending DACA would weaken the country’s ability to respond to the next pandemic.

[[Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access.]]

For now, those who had DACA protections before the legal battles began are able to continue renewing them while the courts deliberate. For people such as P. — and the patients who rely on her care — this has been a godsend, if an imperfect one given her career choice.

The education and training required to become a doctor are an exceptionally long undertaking, and DACA offers only two years of protections before renewal is required (though it was never guaranteed). There was always a chance she might not be able to actually practice medicine after years of schooling and taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt.

Still, P. committed herself to finding a way to become a doctor. She applied for and received DACA status, completed college (in three years, to save money) and persuaded a highly ranked medical school to give its first-ever slot to a dreamer.

She’s in her first year of residency in emergency medicine. Each day, after she takes off her protective gear and attempts to wash off both “the virus and the fear,” she goes home and worries about whether she will be allowed to complete her residency. Losing DACA would mean losing her ability to repay her loans, treat desperate patients, even stay in the only country she has ever known. She’s been here since age 2.

She’s on edge, waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether the way the Trump administration ended DACA was lawful. Tremendous uncertainty surrounds the range of possible outcomes, from no changes at all to every DACA recipient losing protections immediately. In oral arguments last fall, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suggested terminating DACA would result in dreamers losing their work authorization but that deportation was not at issue; Trump administration officials have since made clear they are, in fact, reopening removal proceedings.

. . . .

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Read the forested of Catherine’s article at the link.

The lower Federal Courts unanimously did the right thing here by protecting the Dreamers from irrational Executive overreach based on an invidious racially-tainted White Nationalist agenda and a transparently bogus legal rationale. There was no reason for the Supremes to even take the case. Dismissing the Government’s poorly reasoned, bad faith case against the Dreamers should be a “no brainer” for the Supremes. The lower court decisions provide numerous solid reasons for doing so.

Nevertheless, to date, J.R. and his GOP colleagues have yet to find a White Nationalist immigration policy by the Trump regime that they didn’t “greenlight.” If, as expected, they do it again here, the results for both America and the Dreamers will be horrendous.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-17-20

SPLC: U.S. District Court Judge Jesus Bernal Approves Nationwide Class Challenging Conditions in Gulag During Pandemic

DETAINED MIGRANTS WIN IN FEDERAL COURT: JUDGE GREENLIGHTS NATIONWIDE CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT

April 16, 2020

To make Press Center inquiries, email press@splcenter.org or call us at 334-956-8228.

Tens of thousands of immigrants denied medical care and disability accommodations by the federal government will have their day in court

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A federal judge ruled today that a nationwide class action lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can proceed, greenlighting a challenge to ICE’s system-wide failure to provide standard medical and mental health care and disability accommodations for people in its custody.

U.S. District Court Judge Jesus Bernal issued the ruling in the lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Disability Rights Advocates (DRA), Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC), Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. The plaintiffs seek zero monetary damages and instead only an end to the inhumane and traumatic experience of ICE detention affecting tens of thousands across the country.

Judge Bernal denied the government’s motion to divide the nationwide lawsuit into 15 individual cases in eight district courts. He also denied ICE’s motion to strike the 200-page complaint, which was filed in the U.S District Court for the Central District of California in August 2019.

The ruling comes amid the spread of Covid-19 in detention centers, a dangerous scenario that doctors and public health experts across the country have warned will only be made worse by ICE’s lack of pre-existing medical care and substandard detention center conditions. On March 25, the groups filed an emergency preliminary injunction motion in the case requiring ICE to immediately fix numerous deficiencies in its Covid-19 response, such as inadequate staffing, resources and oversight. The motion further seeks the immediate release of medically vulnerable people if ICE cannot or will not take immediate steps to protect those who are in its custody. Judge Bernal has yet to rule on that injunction.

“Today, the court rejected ICE’s false narrative that our plaintiffs’ stories represent just a few individual problems,” said Lisa Graybill, SPLC deputy legal director. “The court saw through ICE’s deliberate mischaracterization of our case. This is the first step in holding ICE to account for its appalling treatment of the tens of thousands of immigrants needlessly incarcerated and languishing in its prisons around the country.”

According to the lawsuit, ICE has failed to provide detained migrants in over 150 facilities nationwide with safe and humane conditions, as required by agency standards, federal law and the U.S. Constitution. Numerous reports, including accounts by internal government investigators, detail the lack of sufficient medical and mental health care treatment, ultimately resulting in untreated medical needs, prolonged suffering and preventable death. ICE’s punitive use of segregation violates the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The agency’s failure to ensure that detained immigrants with disabilities are provided accommodations and do not face discrimination violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

“Mentally, they are killing us,” said plaintiff Ruben Mencias Soto. “What I am living and what I am seeing is not only my situation. This is unjust as a system. [The government] is falling to the lowest level with ICE.”

Mencias Soto, who has been detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California for over a year, has dislocated and herniated discs in his back. He has had his wheelchair and crutches taken away by detention staff, leaving him without a device to help him walk and causing immense pain.

“Across the country, ICE continually fails to provide basic medical care and necessary disability accommodations to people in immigration detention – putting thousands of people in life-threatening danger every day. From holding people with disabilities in solitary confinement solely because of their medical needs to denying patients in detention doctor-ordered emergency medical care, ICE has demonstrated incompetence and cruelty toward people with disabilities. Disability Rights Advocates is committed to fighting for the civil rights of those in custody until ICE complies with U.S. law,” said Stuart Seaborn, Managing Director of Litigation, Disability Rights Advocates.

“ICE’s failure to ensure that private prison companies like the GEO Group adequately take care of people in their custody has been an open secret for a long time,” said Timothy Fox, co-executive director of the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center. “We are pleased that the court will allow us to move forward and hopefully end the impunity with which this agency and its private operators have been acting for too long.”

Plaintiff Jose Baca Hernandez underscored that the goal of the case is to “improve health for me and the rest of the people here [in detention]. This is not only for me. It’s so everyone here can be healthy.” During his time in custody, ICE failed to provide Baca Hernandez–a blind man–with effective communication. He has been forced to rely on his cellmates, attorneys, and guards to read documents, including those related to his medical care and immigration case.

Plaintiff Luis Rodriguez Delgadillo, who has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, had reached a considerable measure of mental health stability before his detention. In detention, however, his shifting medication regime, lack of therapy and the failure of mental health staff to mitigate stressors have caused his mental health to noticeably decline.

This case is about fighting to ensure “we all can get better treatment,” Rodriguez Delgadillo said. “Some people don’t have the means or are scared to speak, so we fight for everyone else.”

The parties will work with the court to set the schedule for the litigation of the case.

See plaintiffs’ opposition to defendants’ motion to sever and dismiss, transfer actions, and strike portions of the complaint here.

See the complaint here and all other filings in the case here.

***********************

What if we had a Government that “did the right thing” without being sued?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-17-20

OUT OF THE GULAG: Rocky Mt. Immigrant Advocacy Network (“RMIAN”) Forces Release of Eight Highly Vulnerable Detainees! — Flooding US District Courts With Litigation Appears To Be Only Way To Get DHS to Do Their Job!

https://mailchi.mp/rmian/rmian-habeas-april-update?e=76683935c9

ICE Releases 8 of 14 Petitioners 24 Hours After RMIAN & Advocates File Lawsuit To Order Release of Medically-Vulnerable People in ICE Custody

In just 24 hours, ICE released 8 of the 14 petitioners in the lawsuit. All 8 are women living with HIV.

April 15, 2020

Denver — After the lawsuit filed by Arnold & Porter, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild (NIPNLG), and the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (RMIAN) for the release of 14 medically-vulnerable people in civil immigration detention at the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado yesterday, ICE officials released 8 of the 14 petitioners within 24 hours.

The 8 people released from immigration detention are all people living with HIV. “RMIAN is elated to see the release of these eight resilient women” says Laura Lunn of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network. “Yesterday, our clients were trapped in a cage that stripped them of any autonomy over their personal safety and wellbeing. Today, these women are finally able to protect themselves. It is astonishing the difference a day – and a federal lawsuit – makes.”

RMIAN Social Service Project, along with many community organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee, Casa de Paz, the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, and Las Americas, are receiving the women upon release and providing food, housing, and travel assistance. Jordan Garcia, Colorado Program Director of the American Friends Service Committee states, “COVID-19 unmasks how caging people threatens public health. As a society, we cannot treat anyone as expendable. Today we are relieved and heartened that these women were released into the hand of caring community, who can make sure that their needs are taken care of. We hope that more members of our community can be released in the coming days and weeks.”

“This is a great result for many of our clients, but our work is not done” said Tim Macdonald, pro bono counsel at Arnold & Porter. Co-counsel in the case will continue to fight for release of the 6 petitioners who remain detained, all of whom have medical vulnerabilities that make them especially susceptible to serious illness or death should they contract COVID-19. Adrienne Boyd, also of Arnold & Porter, urged, “There is no reason for ICE to continue to detain our remaining clients. Their lives are on the line and they should be released as soon as possible.”

The lawsuit fits into a broader movement of litigation around the country asking federal judges to order release of vulnerable people detained in ICE custody in response to ICE inaction in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Sirine Shebaya, of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, explains, “We are thrilled that our 8 clients have been released after the filing of this lawsuit. But it should not have taken emergency litigation to achieve this outcome. Their quick release shows that ICE is fully capable of releasing people, and is aware of the special vulnerabilities affecting many of those it is currently detaining, but is not taking the actions it should unless compelled to do so. That is the same pattern we are seeing across the country—a refusal to acknowledge the extreme emergency and the immediate need to release persons who are detained so they can safely self-isolate during this difficult time.”

Co-counsel’s emergency filing urges the court to take up the case on an expedited basis, in light of the grave harm that could befall the people detained at any moment.

The lawsuit cites the severe risk the COVID-19 pandemic poses to the health and safety of the petitioners, who all have serious medical vulnerabilities. The ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colorado has failed to put in place CDC-recommended preventive measures, and is unable to provide adequate medical care in the event of an outbreak at the facility.

Detained people do not have personal protective equipment or cleaning supplies other than a generic bath bar and spray solution. Five staff members who work in the facility have tested positive for the virus, and several dorm units in the facility were placed under quarantine. Given the presence of the virus among the facility staff, attorneys say it is reasonable to suspect that detained individuals have already been exposed and that serious illness or death is inevitable for many immigrants and asylum seekers confined in the facility.

The clients included in this group all experience serious health issues, including respiratory illness, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart conditions, cancer, asthma, and otherwise severely compromised immune systems. One petitioner has a history of cancer, is living with only one lung, and has chronic asthma, yet she is unable to control her contact with the outside world given that she is currently detained. Attorneys say coronavirus quarantines have exacerbated the already dire conditions in the ICE facility.

Co-counsel in the case are Timothy Macdonald, Adrienne Boyd, Katie Custer, and Sarah Grey of Arnold & Porter, Sirine Shebaya, Khaled Alrabe, and Amber Qureshi of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and Laura Lunn of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.

——

The case is Codner v. Choate and was filed in federal district court in Denver on April 14, 2020.

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******************

As the current system flounders, wastes resources, and threatens lives, let’s imagine what a better system would look like.

Article I Independent Immigration Court

- Appellate Division issues nationwide precedent requiring release of most vulnerable detainees who are not dangerous and can be safely placed in communities consistent with best health guidance;
- Immigration Courts use Televideo technology and e-filing to safely hold bond hearings and insure DHS compliance with criteria in individual cases on expedited basis;
- Contempt authority available to insure that DHS officials and attorneys comply with legal requirements for release in good faith;
- Article III review available for the limited number of individual cases that can’t be resolved by Article I Immigration Court.

Yes, it can be done!

Due Process Forever! Captive Courts Never!

PWS

04-17-20

IDIOCY WATCH: “Clown Courts’” 🤡🤡🤡 Refusal To Follow COVID-19 Guidelines Is Top Headline In Today’s National Law Journal — “Congress should not have believed to have adopted … a suicide pact or a death trap.”☠️⚰️😰🆘😉

Jacqueline Thomsen
Courts Reporter
National Law Journal

DOJ Said Judges Can’t Stop Immigration Hearings Over COVID-19. Cleary Gottlieb Called That a ‘Death Trap.’

Immigration lawyers and detained immigrants want U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to temporarily stop all in-person immigration proceedings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Jacqueline Thomsen | April 15, 2020 at 06:35 PM

Justice Department attorneys told a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday that he lacks the authority to temporarily halt in-person court proceedings for detained immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

. . . .

*******************

Those will full access can go over to the NLJ for Jacqueline’s complete article.

With DOJ lawyers arguing that folks have to “exhaust their administrative remedies” (basically by risking death or serious illness) you get the general tenor of the argument before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in D.C.

I’d be tempted to say that during the pandemic ethical rules have been suspended for DOJ attorneys. But, in my view, that was true even before the pandemic.

And, in their defense, some of their misleading narratives and insane arguments actually WIN in Federal Court, as some Federal Judges are used to deferring to the DOJ and giving their lawyers a pass on both ethical rules and acceptable arguments that generally wouldn’t be extended to private attorneys acting in the same irresponsible manner.

What would be an acceptable response in a better functioning, ethics-biased DOJ: for the lawyers to go back to their “agency clients,” tell them that they won’t defend the indefensible, and advise them to start working immediately with the plaintiffs to develop methods for hearing only the most pressing cases under appropriate health safeguards.

Interestingly, the positions argued by DOJ lawyers are actually putting the lives of their colleagues at EOIR and their fellow Government attorneys at ICE at risk! Perhaps if they “win,” they should be given a chance to risk their lives to represent ICE in Immigration Court! Wonder how their nifty little “exhaustion arguments” would help them ward off the virus.

With 1.4 million cases already in the backlog, it’s not like any one removal more or less during the pandemic is going to make much of a difference. Unlike, perhaps, some other courts built with sufficient space and electronic support, the poorly designed “brandbox” Immigration Courts with marginal, at best, technology, are unhealthy in the best of times. Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine that there are very many cases other than perhaps bonds or stipulated “grant and release” cases that need to go forward right now.

How many lawyers (on both sides) and Immigration Judges are going to have to die before the Article IIIs finally take notice and put the brakes on the nonsense going on at EOIR?☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️

Due Process Forever. Clown Courts Never!🤡

PWS

04-16-20

NDPA RESOURCES: Bill Frelick at Human Rights Watch With Tons of Helpful Links For Refugee/Human Rights Advocates!

Friends of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division

April 2020 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

First, I hope all of you are in good health and will stay that way. Around the world, all eyes are on the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The pandemic is challenging families, communities, health care systems, and governments. There is no doubting the severity of the public health crisis we are facing, not only for each of you, but in many ways, especially, for the refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants we serve.

You can find Human Rights Watch’s work on the coronavirus here.

Going forward, I will be doing advocacy work relating to COVID-19 and migrants, and am looking at doing a global project focused on alternatives to immigration detention. Nadia Hardman, see below for intro, is collaborating with our Lebanon researcher on a project on Coronavirus-related discriminatory restrictions on Syrian refugees in Lebanon. She will also be working with our Asia Division on COVID19-related discriminatory restrictions on IDPs in Rakhine state, Myanmar, and on Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. As the #stayhome hashtag circulates on twitter, we will demonstrate how difficult it is for refugee and migrants living in crowded and confined spaces with limited access to basic hygiene and sanitation, to conform to social distancing and other public health recommendations. In this time of crisis, no one should be left behind.

We have two major updates to share with you outside of our COVID-19 response. As you can see up top, we have a new name: The Refugee and Migrant Rights Division. In fact, although we previously were only called Refugee Rights, we have worked on migrant rights all along. I’m happy to report that Human Rights Watch has taken a decision to make the rights of migrants a cross-divisional priority for the organization and so our colleagues throughout the organization will be devoting additional resources to this work, which is critically important, now more than ever.

I also want to introduce you to our new Refugee and Migrant Rights researcher, Nadia Hardman. Nadia comes to us from the International Rescue Committee, where she was a senior protection officer for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Before that, she worked with internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Iraq, based in Mosul, with the Norwegian Refugee Council. Nadia has worked with refugee and IDP populations in Myanmar, Thailand, and Palestine and was a Program Lawyer for the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute working on rule of law issues in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, and Tajikistan. She is a qualified UK lawyer with a Masters in Human Rights from University College London. She speaks fluent French and Italian and will be based in our Beirut office.

Nadia recently returned from Turkey where she and Gerry Simpson were researching pushbacks from the Greek border. She and Gerry wrote Greece: Violence Against Asylum Seekers at Border: Detained, Assaulted, Stripped, Summarily Deported and produced this compelling video while there. In introducing the report, Nadia said, “The European Union is hiding behind a shield of Greek security force abuse instead of helping Greece protect asylum seekers and relocate them safely throughout the EU. The EU should protect people in need rather than support forces who beat, rob, strip, and dump asylum seekers and migrants back across the river.”

Simultaneously with Gerry and Nadia’s work in Turkey, I was on the island of Lesbos in Greece documenting vigilante violence against refugees and migrants and the humanitarian NGOs who serve them. While there, I wrote Gunshots, summary trials, deportations: the reality for refugees in the EU-Turkey stand-off for Euro News and this accompanying video(with apologies for my thumb in the lens). Just before the full threat of Coronavirus seized everyone’s attention, I spent time in the severely overcrowded and unsanitary Moria camp where I recorded this video on the mob violence that was causing humanitarian organizations to suspend their operations and deepening anxiety and lack of adequate services in the camp. As bad as things were for the 20,000 or so people living in the Moria camp, built to accommodate fewer than 3,000, things appeared even worse for new arrivals who were not allowed to lodge asylum claims and who the Greek government was threatening to send directly back to Turkey or their home countries. I did this video about the first arrivals who were being kept on a naval vessel docked at the Mytilene harbor. The PBS Newshour did a piece on Moria camp/Lesbos, which includes my take on the situation there.I went on TRT and discussed the EU announcement that they were prepared to pay migrants in Greece US$2,225 if they volunteered to go back to their home countries.

Of course, our work on the rest of the world continues. I particularly wanted to draw your attention to the landmark report from our US Program colleagues, Alison Parker and Elizabeth Kennedy, Deported to Danger: United States Deportation Policies Expose Salvadorans to Death and Abuse, a report that identified 138 cases of Salvadorans who had been killed since 2013 after being deported from the United States.

We have been actively engaged in fighting the various Trump administration initiatives to eviscerate the right to seek asylum in the United States and to bring refugee resettlement to a virtual standstill. We are currently working on the asylum cooperative agreements that the United States has concluded with El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala after much arm twisting, as well as the Remain in Mexico program that has stranded thousands of asylum seekers just across the US southern border. See the links below for publications relating to this work.

For those with a taste for longer range thinking about what is needed to fix the US asylum system, please check out my What’s Wrong with Temporary Protected Status and How to Fix It: Exploring a Complementary Protection Regime in the Journal of Migration and Human Security and, Central American Women Fleeing Domestic Violence Deserve Refugee Status in The Hill, in which I argue that gender should be recognized comparably as a protected ground for asylum as race, nationality or religion. And for those looking for ideas on how to reform the international refugee regime, please check It is Time to Change the Definition of Refugee: Climate Change is an Existential Threat to Humanity Should Be Included in Legislation on Asylum Seeking, which I did for Al-Jazeera.

Below my signature is a selection of some more of our work during the past several months to defend the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants around the world.

We realize that many of the people on this mailing list are themselves engaged in non-profit humanitarian and human rights work relating to refugees and displaced people, and are not in a position to help us financially. However, if you think this work is worthwhile and you are able to contribute to enable us to continue to conduct research and effective advocacy on these and other important issues, we ask our friends to consider contributing to support Human Rights Watch’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Division. You can do so simply by clicking the Donate button at the end of my signature.

Follow @Nadia_Hardman and @BillFrelick on Twitter for updates on human rights issues concerning migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees.

With best regards,

Bill Frelick

Director

Refugee and Migrant Rights Division

Human Rights Watch

1275 K Street, NW

Suite 1100

Washington, DC 20005

Tel: 202-612-4344

Mobile: 240-593-1747

Skype: bill.frelick

Fax: 202-612-4333

Follow on Twitter: BillFrelick

Web: www.hrw.org

Global

December 24, 2019 Refugees All Over the World Pressured to Go Back Home in 2019

Europe/Central Asia

March 17, 2020 Greece: Violence Against Asylum Seekers at Border

March 16, 2020 Greek Vessel Takes Syrians, Afghans to Closed Camp

March 12, 2020 US: COVID-19 Threatens People Behind Bars

March 10, 2020 Greece/EU: Allow New Arrivals to Claim Asylum

March 6, 2020 Interview: What’s Happening to Refugees in Greece

March 6, 2020 Gunshots, Summary Trials, Deportations

March 4, 2020 Greece/EU: Urgently Relocate Lone Children

March 4, 2020 Greece/EU: Respect Rights, Ease Suffering at Borders

February 18, 2020 EU Turns Its Back on Migrants in Distress

February 12, 2020 Italy: Halt Abusive Migration Cooperation with Libya

January 31, 2020 Italy: Revoke Abusive Anti-Asylum Decrees

January 20, 2020 Britain Cannot Turn Its Back on Lone Children Now

January 9, 2020 Kazakhstan: Improper Prosecution of Asylum Seekers from China

December 18, 2019 Greece: Unaccompanied Children at Risk

December 17, 2019 Rohingya Children Need an Advocate in Brussels

December 4, 2019 France Drops Plan to Give Boats to Libya

December 4, 2019 Greece: Camp Conditions Endanger Women, Girls

November 8, 2019 EU: Address Croatia Border Pushbacks

October 29, 2019 Greece: Asylum Overhaul Threatens Rights

October 24, 2019 Turkey: Syrians Being Deported to Danger

October 19, 2019 Bosnia Should Immediately Close Inhumane Migrant Camp

October 3, 2019 EU Governments Face Crucial Decision on Shared Sea Rescue Responsibility

September 5, 2019 Italy’s New Government Should Undo Its Worst Migration Policies

September 5, 2019 Subject to Whim: The Treatment of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the French Hautes-Alpes

Asia/Pacific

February 13, 2020 Christians Abducted, Attacked in Bangladesh Refugee Camp

January 29, 2020 A Step Forward for 10,000 Rohingya Refugee Children

January 28, 2020 It Is Time to Change the Definition of Refugee

January 14, 2020 Australia: National Security Laws Chill Free Speech

January 14, 2020 Myanmar: Seeking International Justice for Rohingya

December 16, 2019 “I’m Happy, But I Am Also Broken for Those Left Behind”: Life After Manus and Nauru

December 3, 2019 “Are We Not Human?”: Denial of Education for Rohingya Refugee Children in Bangladesh

December 2, 2019 Bangladesh: Rohingya Children Denied Education

November 26, 2019 Bangladesh Turning Refugee Camps into Open-Air Prisons

November 13, 2019 Papua New Guinea: Detainees Denied Lawyers, Family Access

November 12, 2019 South Korea Deports Two From North to Likely Abuse

September 30, 2019 Bangladesh: Halt Plans to Fence-In Rohingya Refugees

September 13, 2019 Bangladesh: Internet Blackout on Rohingya Refugees

September 7, 2019 Bangladesh: Clampdown on Rohingya Refugees

September 2, 2019 “Where His Blood Fell”: A Rohingya Widow’s Call for Justice

August 22, 2019 Myanmar: Crimes Against Rohingya Go Unpunished

August 20, 2019 Myanmar/Bangladesh: Halt Rohingya Returns

Middle East/Africa

March 5, 2020 Interview: Libya’s Chaos Explained

December 20, 2019 Winter Looms For Lebanon’s Syrian Refugees

December 12, 2019 Tanzania: Burundians Pressured into Leaving

November 27, 2019 Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Refugees’ Movements Restricted

November 7, 2019 “Repatriation” of Syrians in Turkey Needs EU Action

October 29, 2019 Tanzania: Asylum Seekers Coerced into Going Home

September 19, 2019 Tanzania: Protect Burundians Facing Abuse

September 11, 2019 Justice, Delayed in Libya

August 15, 2019 Ethiopians Abused on Gulf Migration Route

Americas

March 3, 2020 Children Sent to Mexico Under Trump Face Abuses, Trauma

February 12, 2020 US: ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program Harming Children

February 10, 2020 The US Deported Them, Ignoring Their Pleas. Then They Were Killed.

February 7, 2020 US Congress Investigates Policy Harming Asylum Seekers

February 5, 2020 Deported to Danger: United States Deportation Policies Expose Salvadorans to Death and Abuse

February 5, 2020 US: Deported Salvadorans Abused, Killed

January 29, 2020 Q&A: Trump Administration’s “Remain in Mexico” Program

January 29, 2020 US: Returns to Mexico Threaten Rights, Security

January 14, 2020 US: Punitive Policies Undercut Rights

December 9, 2019 Utah Governor to Trump: ‘Allow Us to Accept More Refugees’

December 6, 2019 Brazil Grants Asylum to 21,000 Venezuelans in a Single Day

November 25, 2019 US Should Cease Returning Asylum Seekers to Mexico

November 18, 2019 America Should Not Lag Behind on Protecting Children

November 16, 2019 US to Refugees: Poor Asylum Seekers Need Not Apply

October 18, 2019 Cuban Man Dies in US Immigration Custody

October 14, 2019 US Columbus Day Holiday Celebrates a Shameful Past

September 27, 2019 US Refugee Action Has Worldwide Impact

September 25, 2019 US Move Puts More Asylum Seekers at Risk

September 3, 2019 US: Suit Over Indefinite Detention of Children

August 31, 2019 The Long Journey to the US Border

August 21, 2019 US: New Rules Allow Indefinite Detention of Children

*********************************

Thanks to my good friend and tireless human rights warrior Debi Sanders for sending this my way.

Check out Bill’s latest op-ed over at The Hill here:

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/491789-essential-travel-in-a-time-of-pandemic#.XpSOvUVLrMI.twitter

PWS

04-16-20

NDPA RESOURCES: “Law You Can Use” From All-Star Practitioners Jason Dzubow and David Cleveland – How To Use The COVID-19 “Lull” To Improve Your Client’s Chances of Winning Asylum! ⚖️⚖︎ 😎

https://www.asylumist.com/2020/04/16/what-you-can-do-while-courts-are-closed-get-a-copy-of-your-file/

From The Asylumist:

Have an asylum case in Immigration Court and wondering what to do while the courts are closed? My friend David L. Cleveland has a suggestion: Get a copy of your file from the Asylum Office. David is a lawyer in Washington, DC. He has secured asylum or withholding for people from 48 countries. He can be reached at 1949.david@gmail.com.

In most cases, when an asylum applicant has their case denied at the Asylum Office, the case is referred to Immigration Court. There, Immigration Judges sometimes deny asylum because the applicant is deemed incredible. The applicant has told the Asylum Officer one thing, but then tells the Judge something different. There are many examples of Judges being annoyed by inconsistent asylum applicants–

In a New York case, the applicant was inconsistent concerning the location of children and where she was raped. Kalala v. Barr,2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 8320 (2nd Cir. 2020).

in a California case, the applicant was inconsistent concerning the name of a police station. In this case, the Asylum Officer’s notes were shown to applicant for the first time during the Individual Hearing. Sun v. Barr, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 5397 (9th Cir. 2020).

In an Ohio case, the applicant testified to being beaten inside a church. When she asked about how many members of the church were present at the time, she first said 15. Later, she testified that six church members were present. Onoori v. Barr,2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 21310 (6th Cir. 2019).

David Cleveland ESQUIRE

Now that he has a copy of his client’s file, David Cleveland is finally able to relax.

More generally, Immigration Judges are very interested in what Asylum Officers do and write. In a case decided in 2019, the phrase “Asylum Officer” is used 32 times. Qiu v. Barr,944 F.3d 837 (9th Cir. 2019). In a 2018 case, the phrase “Asylum Officer” is mentioned 57 times, and “notes” (referring to the Officer’s notes from the asylum interview) was mentioned several times. Dai v. Sessions,884 F.3d 858 (9th Cir. 2018). In another case, from 2014, an Asylum Officer named “Kuriakose” is mentioned 15 times. Li v. Holder,745 F.3d 336 (8th Cir. 2014).

In these cases, asylum applicant’s were deemed not credible because their Court testimony was inconsistent with their testimony at the Asylum Office. Most likely, the applicants did not have a record of what they told the Asylum Officer, and of course, since years pass between an asylum interview and an Individual Hearing, it is difficult to remember what transpired at the Asylum Office.

How can I prevent surprise in Immigration Court?

When an Asylum Officer interviews an applicant, the Officer takes detailed notes. Often, these run to 10 pages or more. Later, in consultation with his supervisor, the Officer writes an “Assessment to Refer” or an “Assessment to Grant.” This document is usually three or four pages long. If the case is referred to Court, these notes do not go to the Immigration Judge. However, they are sent to the DHS attorney (the prosecutor), who can review them and look for inconsistencies. At the Individual Hearing, the DHS attorney can use the notes to impeach an applicant’s credibility (“At the asylum interview, you testified that there were 15 people present in the church when you were beaten, but now you say there were only six. Were you lying then, or are you lying now?”).

Asylum Officers sometimes make mistakes or include unexpected information in their notes. They find some sources of information important and ignore other sources. In short, there is a subjective element to these notes that can sometimes work against the applicant and cause surprises in Immigration Court. And, as any attorney will tell you, surprises in Court are usually bad news.

To avoid a surprise in Court, and to find out what the officer wrote, the advocate should make a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request for the notes and the Assessment. Asylum Officer notes are easily available via FOIA. To obtain this information, type your request on a single piece of paper: “Give me the notes and assessment of the asylum officer.” State your name, date of birth, place of birth, address, Alien number, and sign under penalty of perjury. You do not need a lawyer; you do not need Form G-639, although you are allowed to use that form. Send your request via email to: uscis.foia@uscis.dhs.gov

In January 2020, I received the entire Asylum Officer assessment for an asylum applicant from Congo. The client and I are now more relaxed and confident about the case. We will not be surprised in Immigration Court. You can read this assessment at the FOIA page of the Louise Trauma Center. A model FOIA request can also be found at the same page.

******************************

Take it from me, as someone who has presided over hundreds of asylum hearings, this is great advice from two of the best to set foot in my courtroom!

As I always said in my my “mini lectures” on “Presenting an Asylum Case in Immigraton Court:” “Beware and Be Prepared!” Preparation, preparation, preparation! It’s what wins cases (and appreciation from “the bench”).

Thanks, guys!😎👍

PWS

04-16-20

CALLING ALL FORMER IMMIGRATION JUDGES: Here’s A Great Opportunity To Use Your Expertise To Help Our Justice System By Participating In This Important Study On The Use of Medical & Psychiatric Evaluations in Court! 😎👍🏼😇👨🏻‍⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️

From the Mount Sinai Human Rights Program:

Dear Prospective Participant,

We hope this email finds you well. We are writing on behalf of the Mount Sinai Human Rights Program, an organization in New York that provides medical and psychiatric evaluations to asylum seekers to invite you to participate in an interview-based research study we are conducting. You may qualify to participate in this study because you are a former immigration judge with experience reviewing forensic medical evaluations for asylum seekers.

The purpose of this study is to understand how legal professionals appraise forensic mental health evaluations of asylum seekers. If you participate in this study, we will send you two medical-legal mental health affidavits that are fully redacted of any identifying information and guiding questions. We will ask you to read the affidavits and then participate in a recorded interview by telephone or video-call about the affidavits and your attitudes towards mental health evaluations. We will keep your responses de-identified and your identity anonymous in any publications resulting from this research. This interview is anticipated to last at least 60 minutes.

Further information about this study is included in our Research Information Sheet. If you are interested in participating, we will send you a copy of the sheet. This study has been approved by the Mount Sinai Institutional Review Board as an exempt study #18-00919.

Please let us know if you are interested in participating and we will set up a time to interview you. We are hoping to conduct interviews throughout the month of April. Feel free to be in touch with any questions.

Sincerely,

Aliza Green, aliza.green@icahn.mssm.edu

Gus Ruchman, gus.ruchman@icahn.mssm.edu

Mount Sinai Human Rights Program

******************

Please respond directly to Aliza or Gus @ Mount Sinai Human Rights Program. As noted, the results are “without attribution” so you will not be publicly identified.

I participated and found it enjoyable, worthwhile, and educational. As outlined above, the time commitment is moderate — less than a “full merits asylum hearing!”

PWS 😎👍🏼

04-17-20

CLOWN-IN-CHIEF’S ATTEMPTS TO SHIFT BLAME & ATTENTION FROM HIS OWN ABSURDIST SPECTACLE MAKE A BAD SITUATION MUCH WORSE! — The WHO’s Flawed Response to COVID-19 Was Still Better Than His! — “Captain Clown” “propounds powerful gibberish, [as] the mutiny builds.” 🤡☠️⚰️🤡☠️⚰️🆘

Trump Clown — Donald J. Trump
Clown in Chief

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/15/trumps-ugly-new-blame-shifting-scam-spotlights-his-own-failures/

Greg Sargent writes in the WashPost:

President Trump is spinning his new decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization as an act of decisive leadership — one that showcases his devotion to effective crisis management, to gathering good empirical information, and to holding people accountable for leadership failures that had catastrophic human consequences.

In just about every conceivable way, this is the opposite of the truth.

In making this new move, Trump is inviting us to review the basic timeline of events. And it demonstrates that the WHO, for all its initial failures, was still far ahead of Trump in embracing the need for a comprehensive response to coronavirus.

The timeline also once again illustrates Trump’s epic failures in that regard, and reveals the degree to which Trump is now relying on transparently ridiculous scapegoating to erase his own central role in this catastrophe.

[Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic]

In announcing an end to funding for the WHO, Trump claimed the organization was complicit in China’s early coverup of the outbreak’s severity there. He insisted the WHO “pushed China’s misinformation,” and ripped WHO for “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread.”

Trump also claimed that if not for WHO, “the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death.” He lamented that the U.S. can’t rely on WHO for “accurate, timely and independent information to make important public health recommendations and decisions.”

For Trump to position himself in this manner as a spokesperson for crisis management, empiricism and accountability would be positively comical, if the stakes weren’t so monumentally dangerous.

The WHO’s initial mistakes were real, and many critics beyond Trump have pointed to them. The organization was too trusting of China’s early obfuscations about coronavirus, and failed to aggressively push China to be more transparent. The WHO also arguably was too slow to declare a global public health emergency.

But cutting off funding as a punishment is counterproductive and deeply absurd. Indeed, even if you accept that the WHO committed serious errors, the timeline is still far more damning to Trump, by the terms that he himself has set through his criticism of the organization.

The timeline is far more damning to Trump

By Jan. 23, the WHO was already warning that coronavirus could “appear in any country,” and urged all countries to be “prepared for containment” and get ready to exercise “isolation” and “prevention” measures against its spread.

At around the same time, on Jan. 22, Trump was asked point-blank whether he worried about coronavirus’s spread, and he answered: “No, not at all,” insisting it was just “one person coming from China” and that “we have it totally under control.”

And on Jan. 24, Trump hailed China’s “effort” against coronavirus and its “transparency” about it, predicting that “it will all work out well.”

So Trump showed less concern about its spread in countries outside China — including in our own — than the WHO did.

On Jan. 30, the WHO declared coronavirus a global public health emergency. While WHO was still too credulous toward China’s response, WHO also warned that all countries must review “preparedness plans” and take seriously what was coming.

By contrast, on Jan. 30, Trump was directly warned by his Health and Human Services secretary of the threat coronavirus posed. Trump dismissed this as “alarmist.”

And on Feb. 2, Trump boasted to Sean Hannity: “We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China.” He hailed our “tremendous relationship” with that country. Trump continued praising China’s handling of coronavirus all through the entire month of February.

So at the very least, Trump showed precisely the same credulity about China that Trump is now faulting the WHO for showing, but without appreciating the urgency of the international threat coronavirus posed to the degree that the WHO did.

As MSNBC’s Ari Melber aptly put it, these attacks on the WHO are “only calling attention to the fact that the WHO was ahead of President Trump.”

. . . .

Trump is attacking the WHO right now so we’ll talk about the WHO’s shortcomings, and not his own role in this catastrophe. But this blame-shifting utter nonsense, and no one should grant it the slightest shred of credibility.

*******************

Greg Sargent
Opinion Writer
Washington Post

At the link, read Greg’s complete article which also dismembers Trump’s bogus claim that his “Chinese travel ban” had a major impact on deterring the spread of the pandemic.

So, here’s what really appears to be happening as America’s national government disintegrates under Trump’s malicious incompetence. America is breaking up into a number of “Regional Federated States” which have banded together for mutual assistance under decisive governors, largely, but not exclusively Democrats. We already have one on the West Coast and one in the Northeast. I’d look for the governors of Virginia and Maryland and the Mayor of DC to perhaps form a “DMV Region” to manage the pandemic and the recovery.

That covers about 1/3 of the U.S. population and much of the economic and tax base. The rest of the states will have to limp along as best they can with governors largely in charge and trying to get as much help as they can from the sinking Federal ship by going around Trump and dealing with Pence, Fauci, and Birx. Everyone also counts on some help from the Fed, which isn’t immune from Trump’s blustering nonsensical attacks, but is largely beyond his control and therefore free of his blundering ineptness.

There’s likely to be very bad news for the health and safety of those in states whose GOP governors have proved to be as inept and willfully blind as Trump and the rest of his kakistocracy. South Dakota is a prime example of what happens under a clueless GOP Governor.

Notably, most of the initial victims in South Dakota were Latinos working in the supposedly “essential” meat packing industry under conditions that clearly violated best health practices. The Governor claims that the plant would have remained open even under a “Stay at Home” order. Now, however, workers are sick and all those plants are closed anyway. The worst possible result. So, we’ll see how “essential” they really were. Perhaps if everybody had stayed home, the disease wouldn’t have spread and the plants could have reopened on a more limited basis with proper social distancing and protective equipment. And, if workers are really “essential,” why aren’t we looking out for their health, safety, and income protection?

Internationally, world leaders have long ago learned that Trump is incapable of leadership and that under him the U.S. is no longer a trustworthy or reliable partner. Nothing in Trump’s inept handling of the Pandemic in the U.S., his pathetic attempts to shift the blame elsewhere, and his incredibly stupid decision to stop funding the WHO would convince them otherwise.

Sure, like the drunken bully/oaf in the bar, the “Trumped-up U.S.” throws its weight around in unpredictable ways and is too big to be ignored or easily removed from the premises. So, world leaders have figured out how to move on without the U.S. and hope to largely avoid the irrational acts of petty vengeance and retribution for which he is famous.

Not a pretty picture. But, it will be even worse if we don’t remove Trump and the GOP from power in November.

Dana Milbank had a “spot on” assessment of “Captain Clown” 🤡 in today’s Post:

. . . .

Like Bligh, he is abusive. Unlike Bligh, he is a poor navigator. The Trump-as-errant-captain theme has been explored, delightfully, by novelist Dave Eggers in his recent allegory, “The Captain and the Glory”:

“He nudged the wheel a bit left, and the entire ship listed leftward, which was both frightening and thrilling. He turned the wheel to the right, and the totality of the ship, and its uncountable passengers and their possessions, all were sent rightward. In the cafeteria, where the passengers were eating lunch, a thousand plates and glasses shattered. An elderly man was thrown from his chair, struck his head on the dessert cart and died later that night. High above, the Captain was elated by the riveting drama caused by the surprises of his steering.”

So it is with our captain, who claims absolute authority but takes no responsibility. He announces he’s cutting off funding to the World Health Organization in the middle of the pandemic. He condemns the WHO for praising China’s transparency, even though he said in January he “greatly appreciates [China’s] efforts and transparency.” His conflicting messages about reopening the economy throw the country into confusion. He assembles so many coronavirus task forces that he will need another to keep track of them all. And after his long delayed and botched virus response, even now the number of tests in U.S. commercial labs is falling.

At Wednesday evening’s session, Trump turned the tiller randomly. After proclaiming the United States has “passed the peak” of the virus, he swerved into complaints about “partisan obstruction” holding up his nominees and threatened the never-before-tested “constitutional authority to adjourn both houses of Congress,” which would provoke another crisis in the middle of the pandemic.

He veered into complaints about the “disgusting”Voice of Americaand the “impeachment hoax.”He lurched into attacks on the World Trade Organization , various Democrats and governors generally, asserting that “we have the right to do whatever we want.”He accused the WHO of a conspiracy to hide the virusand boasted about his name going on government-issued relief checks: “People will be very happy to get a big fat beautiful check, and my name is on it.”

The ship has become accustomed to such unpredictable steering: He touts a virus treatment that so far shows more alarming side effects than efficacy. He announces virus-testing schemes that don’t exist. He talks about pardoning Joe Exotic. He blames everybody except his own administration, which is doing things very, very strongly and powerfully. “The Defense Production Act was used very powerfully, more powerfully than anybody would know, in fact, so powerfully that, for the most part, we didn’t have to officially take it out,” he proclaims.

[[The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us.]]

As the captain propounds powerful gibberish, the mutiny builds. Regional blocs make their own pandemic-recovery plans. Allies condemn his assault on the WHO. Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) tells Politico that Trump has been “very uneven.” Even Trump-friendly outlets such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page offer some criticism.

“WSJ is Fake News!” shouts the captain.

“What the hell is happening to @FoxNews?”

What’s happening, captain, is you’ve hit the rocks.

******************************

Dana Milbank
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

Read Dana’s full op-ed here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/captain-trump-hits-the-rocks/2020/04/15/e7643c32-7f57-11ea-9040-68981f488eed_story.html

End the Clown Show! 🤡🤡 This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

04-17-20

BIA DENIES DUE PROCESS TO VISA PETITIONER, SAYS 9TH CIR. — Zerezghi v. USCIS

Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Immigration Community forwards this report:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca9-on-due-process-standard-of-proof-zerezghi-v-uscis

CA9 on Due Process, Standard of Proof: Zerezghi v. USCIS

Zerezghi v. USCIS

“We hold that the BIA violated due process by relying on undisclosed evidence that Zerezghi and Meskel did not have an opportunity to rebut. In making its initial determination of marriage fraud, the BIA also violated due process by applying too low a standard of proof. On remand, it must establish marriage fraud by at least a preponderance of the evidence before it can deny any subsequent immigration petition based on such a finding.”

[Hats way off to Robert Pauw!]

Robert Pauw
Founding Partner
Gibbs, Houston & Pauw
Seattle, WA

********************

How totally perverse has the EOIR system become?

Well, the BIA’s sole function is to insure Due Process for individuals and to apply top-flight expertise and scholarship to keep the Immigration Courts, ICE, CBP, and USCIS in line and following the law and best practices.

Instead, the BIA has become a corner-cutting, sloppy, “rubber stamp” on DHS Enforcement and USCIS “enforcement wannabes.” Remember, early on, the Trump regime made it clear that service to the public, i.e., immigrants, their families, and their communities, was no longer “part of the mission” at USCIS. Instead, the mission is to help ICE & CBP institute politically-driven White Nationalist xenophobic enforcement initiatives.

USCIS was created as a separate agency under DHS specifically to allow service to the immigrant community to flourish without the subservience to law enforcement often present and institutionalized at the “Legacy INS.” However, this regime and its toadies in DHS “Management” have seen fit to recreate the very same conflicts of interest and enforcement dominance that USCIS was created to overcome. In most ways, things are far worse than they ever were at the “Legacy INS.” And, let’s remember that USCIS is funded largely by user fees collected from the public on the now largely fictional rationale that they are getting valuable and professionalized services. What a complete mess and abuse of public funding!

Moreover, given the BIA’s lousy performance, rather than assisting the Article III Courts, it now all too often falls to the Article IIIs to keep the BIA in line and do its job for it. But, given the wide disparity in interest levels, expertise, and integrity among the Article IIIs, the results have been spotty.

Some Article III Judges step up and do the job; others sweep the chronic problems under the table and look the other way as rights are trampled and service to the public mocked. And, no Article III to date has been courageous and scholarly enough to take on the real problem: the glaring unconstitutionality under the Due Process Clause of a so-called “court” controlled, staffed, and evaluated by a highly biased prosecutor empowered to reverse individual case outcomes that don’t match his political agenda!

A glimpse of future horrors to come: Emboldened by Article III complicity, and egged on by the White Nationalist nativists, EOIR now outrageously proposes to charge astronomically higher fees for its shabby, biased, and ever deteriorating “work product.” This is a transparent attempt to further restrict access to justice for the most vulnerable among us. Another clear denial of Due Process!

Yes, Congress is responsible. Yes, Congress is largely in failure. But, that doesn’t absolve the Article IIIs of their duty to the Constitution, the rule of law, and human decency. Will they finally wake up, act with some courage, and do their jobs? Or, will they engage in further “judicial task avoidance” until it’s too late for all of us?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-16-20

US EXPORTS CORONAVIRUS TO GUATEMALA — Trump Regime Doubles Down on Failed Deportation Policies With Predictably Deadly Results!

Patrick J. McDonnell
Mexico City Bureau Chief
LA Times

Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=b6dd1a0e-d915-4eca-b571-2200996d1e04&v=sdk

Patrick J. McDonnell, Molly O’Toole and Cindy Carcamo report for the LA Times:

MEXICO CITY — More than half the deportees flown back to Guatemala by U.S. immigration authorities have tested positive for coronavirus, the top Guatemalan health official said Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters in Guatemala City, Hugo Monroy, the minister of health, did not specify a time frame or the total number of deportees who had arrived home with infections.

But hundreds of Guatemalans have been returned in recent weeks, including 182 who arrived Monday on two flights from Texas.

Monroy said that on one flight — which he declined to identify — more than 75% of the deportees tested positive.

But he made clear this was not an isolated incident and said many deportees arrived with fevers and coughs and were immediately tested.

“We’re not just talking about one flight,” he said. “We’re talking about all the flights.”

In video later released by the government, Monroy contradicted his earlier statements and said he was referring to just one flight.

The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry said through a spokesman Tuesday that the “official” number of deportees diagnosed with COVID-19 is four, including one who arrived on one of the flights Monday.

A high number of infections among deportees would cast doubt on the official tally of how many of the more than 33,000 migrants in U.S. detention are infected. U.S. immigration officials have said that 77 have tested positive, noting that some of those may no longer be in custody.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

. . . .

****************

Read the rest of the article at the link.

For four decades, the U.S. has been deporting its problems to the poorest and most unstable countries in Central America. Gangs such as MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang actually originated in Los Angeles and were “exported” to Central America. Once there, they flourished, grew more powerful, became “de facto governments” in some areas, and instituted a reign of terror and persecution that sent hundreds of thousands of new refugees fleeing north to the United States over the years.

Now, Trump and his cronies once again believe that often illegal and irresponsible deportations to the Northern Triangle countries will allow us to escape accountability. But, it won’t.

Irresponsibly spreading disease in poor countries where public health services are dismal at best will eventually have consequences throughout the Americas. And, we will not be immune from the long-term effects of empowering the Trump kakistocracy and its White Nationalist cronies. What goes around come around. Neither wealth nor arrogant ignorance will save us from paying a price for our lack of concern for humanity.

Due Process Forever! Malicious Incompetence Never!

PWS

04-15-20

Friends of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division
April 2020 Newsletter

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As I always said in my my “mini lectures” on “Presenting an Asylum Case in Immigraton Court:” “Beware and Be Prepared!” Preparation, preparation, preparation! It’s what wins cases (and appreciation from “the bench”).

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End the Clown Show! 🤡🤡 This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

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CA9 on Due Process, Standard of Proof: Zerezghi v. USCIS

********************

Due Process Forever!

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