Olafimihan Oshin reports for The Hill:
Esther Olavarria, the deputy director for immigration of the Biden administration’s Domestic Policy Council (DPC), is retiring from her position.
A White House spokesperson confirmed Olavarria’s pending departure from her position to Politico and CNN.
“I could not be more grateful for Esther Olavarria’s myriad contributions to the Biden-Harris Administration, particularly her work to reverse the cruel and reckless policies of the previous Administration and to implement President Biden’s vision for a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system,” DPC head Susan Rice said in a statement to Politico.
A source told Politico that Olavarria hasn’t decided when her last day at the White House will be and will continue to work with the administration for the time being.
This comes as Tyler Moran, a senior adviser on migration, is set to leave this month after spending roughly six months with the Biden administration.
The Hill has reached out to White House for comment.
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The suggestion by Susan Rice that Olavarria was able to help implement a “fair, orderly, humane immigration system” is preposterous.
The Biden Administration dishonestly continues to use Stephen Miller’s bogus, racially motivated Title 42 ruse to deny fair treatment of asylum seekers at the Southern Border. Garland’s regressive “Miller Lite” Immigration Courts are in free fall, paralyzed by an astounding, ever-expanding 1.5 million case backlog. There is no functioning due process asylum system at our borders. Nor has Biden established robust, realistic “overseas” refugee programs in Latin America that could help obviate the pressure at the border.
Most of Mayorkas’s and Garland’s ill-conceived proposed asylum regulations have been panned by the Round Table and other experts. Biden’s promise to reform and strengthen gender-based asylum has disappeared into the bureaucratic morass at DHS and DOJ. In plain terms, Biden’s human rights’ program is a mess — lacking leadership, moral courage, practical experience, and legal expertise.
These are the real reasons why the “progressive practical experts” who should be leading human rights and immigration reforms for Biden are instead abandoning ship. The “deterrence crowd” and those who live in mortal fear of the nativist right are “driving the train” for Biden.
These notable departures follow in the wake of the resignation of widely respected human rights/immigration expert Harold Koh who blasted the Biden Administration’s spineless, inept, and immoral performance on racial justice, human rights, and the Constitutional rights of vulnerable legal asylum seekers. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/10/04/%f0%9f%91%8d%f0%9f%8f%bcprogressive-legal-icon-harold-koh-rips-bidens-bogus-stephen-miller-lite-xenophobic-policies-resigns-dos-post-amid-a-cresendo-of-administration-lies/
Additionally, as covered earlier today, widely admired Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks retired at the end of the year. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/01/09/%f0%9f%98%8e%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%91%a9%e2%80%8d%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-flash-judicial-maven-hon-dana-leigh-marks-retires-joins-round-table-%f0%9f%9b%a1%e2%9a%94%ef%b8%8f/
Garland blew the chance to use Marks’s last six to nine months prior to retirement to harness her incomparable knowledge and leadership to institute long overdue progressive personnel, procedural, and policy reforms to his disastrously dysfunctional Immigration Courts. Talk about loss of institutional knowledge of everything that has gone wrong at EOIR over the past two decades!
Also, ICE Principal Legal Advisor John Trasvina departed after an unusually short stint on the job, although he was replaced with another experienced immigration lawyer, Kerry Doyle.
Obviously, some of the “best and brightest” who once were willing to lend their expertise to an incoming Administration that (apparently disingenuously) claimed that it would reverse the “dehumanization of the other” by Trump and his cronies now believe their talents can be better used elsewhere.
As to the claims that the Olavarria and Moran departures were “normal,” don’t believe a word of it. Senior level policy advisors who believe their views are respected, making government better, and saving lives don’t “retire” after a few months on the job. It’s not like they weren’t bright enough to know their jobs would be highly stressful and personally inconvenient when they accepted their positions.
All this comes at a time when America is experiencing a worker shortage that many experts believe is being fueled by a declining birth rate and declining immigration. Seems like many of the workers we could use are legal asylum seekers who are being illegally turned around at our border while Mayorkas and Garland refuse to stand up for the rule of law. Could that have something to do with why those who have spent careers understanding the shortcomings of our immigration and human rights systems are “voting with their feet” on the Biden Administration’s muddled and wildly inconsistent approach to immigration?
🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
01-09-21