⚖️🗽CHAMPIONS OF JUSTICE, MAKING A DIFFERENCE: 🛡⚔️ Round Table’s Fight For Better Policies, Best Practices, Earns Acclaim!

From “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

Our statement yesterday on MPP was referenced and quoted by CNN at the end of this article by Priscilla Alvarez and Geneva Sands on the MPP restart:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/06/politics/biden-remain-in-mexico/index.html

This morning, Democracy Now referenced our letter in a segment covering the issue, saying:

 A group of former immigration judges released a statement condemning the return of the program as the “antithesis of fairness.”  

Here is the link:

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/7/biden_trump_era_remain_in_mexico

Furthermore, in oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday in Patel v. Garland, our amicus brief received a brief mention:

• JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — questions, how 

• 10  could an appellate court — and this question 

• 11  cuts both ways, so — but how can an appellate 

• 12  court look at a cold record and determine a 

• 13  factual error when it relates to credibility, 

• 14  for example, or something like that? Just give 

• 15  me some examples where this will matter, I 

• 16  guess. 

• 17  MR. FLEMING: Well, there — as the 

• 18  amici, the American Immigration Lawyers 

• 19  Association and the EOIR judges, point out, it 

• 20  — it’s not uncommon.Best, Jeff

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And, here’s more coverage from Human Rights First:

Courtesy Paul Ratje — AFP via Getty Images   A man sits in a migrant camp near Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

The new version of MPP expands its focus to asylum seekers from across the hemisphere, stranding even more people seeking safety in dangerous conditions at the border.   Kennji Kizuka, Associate Director for Research and Analysis, Refugee Protection, appeared on Democracy Now! and detailed the many human rights violations faced by asylum seekers processed under the “Remain in Mexico” policy.   “It’s extraordinarily concerning that the Biden administration is not only restarting this policy but expanding it,” said Kizuka.

Human Rights First also announced the resumption of our research documenting the human rights abuses suffered by people turned away to wait in danger under MPP.   Human Rights First’s Associate Attorney, Refugee Protection Julia Neusner and Advocacy Strategist for Refugee Protection Ana Ortega Villegas are on the ground in Ciudad Juárez to monitor the first days of MPP’s reinstatement.  Please follow their live updates and other reports through Human Rights First’s twitter account.

Our team’s view of the Mexican government’s staging area in Cuidad Juárez for Remain in Mexico 2.0   Our position is gaining widespread support from those who understand the issue.  The Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges condemned MPP as the “antithesis of fairness,” concluding that there has been “no greater affront to due process, fairness and transparency,” and called for administration to “permanently end the program.”   The union for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officers tasked with MPP screenings call it “irredeemably flawed.”  They said that restarting MPP “makes our members complicit in violations of U.S. federal law and binding international treaty obligations of non-refoulement that they have sworn to uphold.”

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So proud to be a part of this group and so grateful for the leadership of colleagues like Judges Jeffrey Chase, Ilyce Shugall, Lory Rosenberg, Carol King, Joan Churchill, Denise Slavin, Sue Roy, John Gossart, Charles Honeyman, Charlie Pazar, Sarah Burr, Cecelia Espenoza, Bruce Einhorn, Tue Phan-Quang, Bob Weisel, Paul Grussendorf, Jennie Giambastini, and many, many, many others! 

As an “appreciative fellow NDPA member” told me yesterday, “it’s a true team effort!“ This type of teamwork for the public good was once encouraged at EOIR and even incorporated into the “leadership vision,” but now, sadly, it has “fallen by the wayside” in what has basically become a “haste makes waste race to the bottom.”

Fortunately, the Round Table and other members of the NDPA still share a “vision of what American justice should look like” and are willing to speak up for what’s legal and right rather than just “expedient!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-09-21