Category: ACLU

🏴‍☠️👎🏽 IDEOLOGICALLY SPLIT SUPREMES USE “NATIONAL SECURITY FICTION” TO FREE BORDER PATROL AGENTS FROM RESPONSIBILITY FOR VIOLATIONS OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS! — EGBERT v. BOULE 

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-147_g31h.pdf

Syllabus by Court staff:

EGBERT v. BOULE

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR

THE NINTH CIRCUIT

No. 21–147. Argued March 2, 2022—Decided June 8, 2022

Respondent Robert Boule owns a bed-and-breakfast—the Smuggler’s Inn—in Blaine, Washington. The inn abuts the international border between Canada and the United States. Boule at times helped federal agents identify and apprehend persons engaged in unlawful cross-bor- der activity on or near his property. But Boule also would provide transportation and lodging to illegal border crossers. Often, Boule would agree to help illegal border crossers enter or exit the United States, only to later call federal agents to report the unlawful activity.

In 2014, Boule informed petitioner Erik Egbert, a U. S. Border Pa- trol agent, that a Turkish national, arriving in Seattle by way of New York, had scheduled transportation to Smuggler’s Inn. When Agent Egbert observed one of Boule’s vehicles returning to the inn, he sus- pected that the Turkish national was a passenger and followed the ve- hicle to the inn. On Boule’s account, Boule asked Egbert to leave, but Egbert refused, became violent, and threw Boule first against the ve- hicle and then to the ground. Egbert then checked the immigration paperwork for Boule’s guest and left after finding everything in order. The Turkish guest unlawfully entered Canada later that evening.

Boule filed a grievance with Agent Egbert’s supervisors and an ad- ministrative claim with Border Patrol pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). Egbert allegedly retaliated against Boule by re- porting Boule’s “SMUGLER” license plate to the Washington Depart- ment of Licensing for referencing illegal activity, and by contacting the Internal Revenue Service and prompting an audit of Boule’s tax re- turns. Boule’s FTCA claim was ultimately denied, and Border Patrol took no action against Egbert for his use of force or alleged acts of re- taliation. Boule then sued Egbert in Federal District Court, alleging a Fourth Amendment violation for excessive use of force and a First Amendment violation for unlawful retaliation. Invoking Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388, Boule asked the Dis- trict Court to recognize a damages action for each alleged constitu- tional violation. The District Court declined to extend Bivens as re- quested, but the Court of Appeals reversed.

Held: Bivens does not extend to create causes of action for Boule’s Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim and First Amendment retaliation claim. Pp. 5–17.

(a) In Bivens, the Court held that it had authority to create a dam- ages action against federal agents for violating the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights. Over the next decade, the Court also fashioned new causes of action under the Fifth Amendment, see Davis v. Pass- man, 442 U. S. 228, and the Eighth Amendment, see Carlson v. Green, 446 U. S. 14. Since then, however, the Court has come “to appreciate more fully the tension between” judicially created causes of action and “the Constitution’s separation of legislative and judicial power,” Her- nández v. Mesa, 589 U. S. ___, ___, and has declined 11 times to imply a similar cause of action for other alleged constitutional violations, see, e.g., Chappell v. Wallace, 462 U. S. 296; Bush v. Lucas, 462 U. S. 367. Rather than dispense with Bivens, the Court now emphasizes that rec- ognizing a Bivens cause of action is “a disfavored judicial activity.” Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U. S. ___, ___.

The analysis of a proposed Bivens claim proceeds in two steps: A court asks first whether the case presents “a new Bivens context”—i.e., is it “meaningfully different from the three cases in which the Court has implied a damages action,” Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___, and, second, even if so, do “special factors” indicate that the Judiciary is at least arguably less equipped than Congress to “weigh the costs and benefits of allowing a damages action to proceed.” Id., at ___. This two-step inquiry often resolves to a single question: whether there is any reason to think that Congress might be better equipped to create a damages remedy. Further, under the Court’s precedents, a court may not fash- ion a Bivens remedy if Congress already has provided, or has author- ized the Executive to provide, “an alternative remedial structure.” Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___. Pp. 5–8.

(b) The Court of Appeals conceded that Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim presented a new Bivens context, but its conclusion that there was no reason to hesitate before recognizing a cause of action against Agent Egbert was incorrect for two independent reasons. Pp. 9–13.

(1) First, the “risk of undermining border security provides reason to hesitate before extending Bivens into this field.” Hernández, 589 U. S., at ___. In Hernández, the Court declined to create a damages remedy for an excessive-force claim against a Border Patrol agent be- cause “regulating the conduct of agents at the border unquestionably has national security implications.” Id., at ___. That reasoning applies with full force here. The Court of Appeals disagreed because it viewed Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim as akin to a “conventional” exces- sive-force claim, as in Bivens, and less like the cross-border shooting in Hernández. But that does not bear on the relevant point: Permitting suit against a Border Patrol agent presents national security concerns that foreclose Bivens relief. Further, the Court of Appeals’ analysis betrays the pitfalls of applying the special-factors analysis at too gran- ular a level. A court should not inquire whether Bivens relief is appro- priate in light of the balance of circumstances in the “particular case.” United States v. Stanley, 483 U. S. 669, 683. Rather, it should ask “[m]ore broadly” whether there is any reason to think that “judicial intrusion” into a given field might be “harmful” or “inappropriate,” id., at 681. The proper inquiry here is whether a court is competent to authorize a damages action not just against Agent Egbert, but against Border Patrol agents generally. The answer is no. Pp. 9–12.

(2) Second, Congress has provided alternative remedies for ag- grieved parties in Boule’s position that independently foreclose a Bivens action here. By regulation, Border Patrol must investigate “[a]lleged violations” and accept grievances from “[a]ny persons.” 8 CFR §§287.10(a)–(b). Boule claims that this regulatory grievance pro- cedure was inadequate, but this Court has never held that a Bivens alternative must afford rights such as judicial review of an adverse determination. Bivens “is concerned solely with deterring the uncon- stitutional acts of individual officers.” Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U. S. 61, 71. And, regardless, the question whether a given remedy is adequate is a legislative determination. As in Her- nández, this Court has no warrant to doubt that the consideration of Boule’s grievance secured adequate deterrence and afforded Boule an alternative remedy. See 589 U. S., at ___. Pp. 12–13.

(c) There is no Bivens cause of action for Boule’s First Amendment retaliation claim. That claim presents a new Bivens context, and there are many reasons to think that Congress is better suited to authorize a damages remedy. Extending Bivens to alleged First Amendment vi- olations would pose an acute “risk that fear of personal monetary lia- bility and harassing litigation will unduly inhibit officials in the dis- charge of their duties.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U. S. 635, 638. In light of these costs, “Congress is in a better position to decide whether or not the public interest would be served” by imposing a damages ac- tion. Bush, 462 U. S., at 389. The Court of Appeals’ reasons for ex- tending Bivens in this context—that retaliation claims are “well-estab- lished” and that Boule alleges that Agent Egbert “was not carrying out official duties” when the retaliation occurred—lack merit. Also lacking merit is Boule’s claim that this Court identified a Bivens cause of ac- tion under allegedly similar circumstances in Passman. Even assum- ing factual parallels, Passman carries little weight because it predates the Court’s current approach to implied causes of action. A plaintiff cannot justify a Bivens extension based on “parallel circumstances” with Bivens, Passman, or Carlson—the three cases in which the Court has implied a damages action—unless the plaintiff also satisfies the prevailing “analytic framework” prescribed by the last four decades of intervening case law. Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___–___. Pp. 13–16.

998 F. 3d 370, reversed.

THOMAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and ALITO, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. GORSUCH, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed an opinion con- curring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, in which BREYER and KAGAN, JJ., joined.

KEY QUOTE FROM JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR’S CONCURRENCE DISSENT (joined by Justices Breyer and Kagan):

This Court’s precedents recognize that suits for damages play a critical role in deterring unconstitutional conduct by federal law enforcement officers and in ensuring that those whose constitutional rights have been violated receive meaningful redress. The Court’s decision today ignores our repeated recognition of the importance of Bivens actions, particularly in the Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure context, and closes the door to Bivens suits by many who will suffer serious constitutional violations at the hands of federal agents. I respectfully dissent from the Court’s treat- ment of Boule’s Fourth Amendment claim.

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

Thus, the Border Patrol is free to egregiously violate Constitutional rights of citizens and other “persons” in the U.S. without meaningful accountability. But, I suppose it’s what one might expect from a right-majority Court that generally views rights of corporations and guns as fundamental while treating most individual rights of persons in the U.S. as expendable.

As for Justice Thomas’s ludicrous suggestion that filing a complaint with the CBP hierarchy is a “remedy” for wrongdoing? That’s in the “sick joke” category as anyone who has actually tried to file such a complaint would know.  See, e.g., https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/aclu-asks-dhs-take-action-complaints-abuse-misconduct-u-s-n1259657. Clearly, Thomas and his colleagues live in a privileged “parallel universe” where they have never had to rely on the DHS’s internal bureaucracy for redress of Constitutional violations!

As cogently pointed out by Justice Sotomayor, the majority’s intentional misuse and mischaracterization of the “national security fiction” to immunize government conduct from meaningful review in a case that actually has little or nothing to do with national security or foreign relations should also be of grave concern to all of us. Right-wing judges’ propensity to use “fictions” and “pretexts” to mask their real intent and to arrive at preconceived results is a major exercise in intellectual dishonesty!

It also reinforces my observation that it is wrong to keep appointing Justices who lack personal experience with representing individuals within our broken, dysfunctional, and often lawless immigration bureaucracy, which currently includes the U.S. Immigration “Courts” at EOIR. In many professions and occupations, the “future movers and shakers” are required to “start at the retail level” — like the rest of us — so that they understand their “customers'” needs, wants, expectations, problems, and concerns. Why do we exempt our most powerful judges from this “basic training” in delivering justice to human beings at the “retail level” of our justice system?

While many folks are too blind to see it, the lack of informed judicial oversight of the Constitutional performance of DHS, DOJ, DHS, DOS, DOL and the rest of the often underperforming USG immigration bureaucracy undermines the Constitutional rights of everyone in America, including citizens! 

Life-tenured Federal Judges might act as if they are “immunized” and “above the fray” (also, to a disturbing extent, above the law and our Constitution, particularly where migrants are concerned). Meanwhile, it’s “the people’s rights” that are on the chopping block with an unprincipled “out of touch” far-right judiciary too often wielding the ax!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-09-22

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. REGIME’S NEWEST SCHEME TO SCREW ASYLUM SEEKERS: BOGUS REGS THAT WOULD ILLEGALLY & UNNECESSARILY EXTEND THE GROUNDS OF “MANDATORY DENIAL,” DECREASE ADJUDICATOR DISCRETION, & SHAFT REFUGEE FAMILIES — Regime’s Outlandish “Efficiency Rationale” Fails to Mask Their Cruelty, Racism, Fraud, Waste, & Abuse – Julia Edwards Ainsley (NBC News) & Dean Kevin R. Johnson (ImmigrationProf Blog) Report

🏴‍☠️SCOFFLAW NATION! — TRUMP US JUDGE, GOP NATIVIST AGs CONTINUE TO DUMP ON ASYLUM SEEKERS, ☠️ HANDING HUMAN SMUGGLERS A HUGE VICTORY!🤮

Andrea Castillo
Andrea Castillo
Immigration Reporter
LA Times
Source: LA Times website

Andrea Castillo reports for the LA Times:

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=80d73090-8dd0-48a7-a802-afbc852fc2f8

. . . .

A family in Tijuana who wanted to request asylum and advocacy groups including Innovation Law Lab sought to intervene in the lawsuit. They argued that a court order keeping Title 42 in place should only apply to states involved with the suit. Summerhays denied their request.

Alicia Duran Raymundo, her partner and their 6-year-old daughter fled El Salvador after gang members threatened to torture and kill them. She said in a news release from her lawyers last week that they wanted to live with extended family in California while pursuing asylum, but instead joined the thousands of migrants living in Mexican border towns while they wait for the U.S. to reopen its doors.

“We’ve tried many times to ask for asylum but they just tell us the border is closed,” Duran said.

Seeking asylum is a legal right guaranteed under federal and international law, regardless of how someone arrived on U.S. soil. Some of those turned away are fleeing persecution, while others pushed out by turmoil in their home countries seek jobs and security.

Though migrants can’t seek asylum under Title 42, they can still be screened under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. But those screenings are more difficult to pass.

Lee Gelernt
Lee Gelernt
Deputy Director
ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Program
PHOTO: ACLU

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s immigrant rights project, noted that regardless of Friday’s decision, a prior ruling in Washington, D.C., District Court taking effect Monday prevents Title 42 from applying to families who face persecution or torture if they are expelled. Gelernt is lead attorney in that case.

“Hypocritically, the states that brought this lawsuit seemingly care about COVID restrictions only when they involve asylum seekers,” he said. “The lawsuit is a naked attempt to misuse a public health law to end protections for those fleeing danger.”

. . . .

Migrants have been removed from the U.S. nearly 2 million times since Title 42 was first used in March 2020, in some cases to dangerous situations in which they’ve been tortured or raped.

. . . .

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
Policy Counsel
American Immigration Council
Photo: Twitter

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, predicted that Title 42 is likely to stay in place until at least next year.

Summerhays’ decision signals that while the Biden administration can establish a policy under emergency conditions, terminating it requires a rulemaking comment period that could take six months to a year.

Louisiana and the other states are not arguing that the policy can never end, Reichlin-Melnick said, but they’re imposing judicial roadblocks to delay it. The CDC is likely to try to end the policy again while satisfying the judge’s demands, he said.

In the meantime, he said, “we’re going to see an ever higher number of repeat crossings. Look at the border and tell me Title 42 works.”

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

The case is Louisiana v. CDC, WD LA, 05-20–22. Here’s a link to the opinion:

https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/LouisianaetalvCentersforDiseaseControlPreventionetalDocketNo622cv/7?1653080541

Read Andrea’s full report at the above link!

Of course Title 42 doesn’t work! But, it’s never been about a “working” border asylum policy. NO, it’s always been about cruelty fueled by nativist racism!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-21-22

Related posts:

  1. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  2. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, “PERPS” ON THE LOOSE! — DOJ Internal Report Shows How “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Rosenstein, Hamilton Conspired To Separate Migrant Kids In Violation Of 5th Amendment — When Will These Criminals Be Charged & Prosecuted Under 18 USC 242? — NY Times Reports!

⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 04-04-22 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, Managing Attorney, NIJC — HEADLINERS: New “Doyle Memo” On PD 🙂 — GOP White Nationalist AGs Seek Extension Of Illegal, Immoral Title 42 Charade🤮🏴‍☠️!

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Managing Attorney
National Immigrant Justice Center
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

Weekly Briefing

 

This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.

 

CONTENTS (jump to section)

  • PRACTICE ALERTS
  • NEWS
  • LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES
  • RESOURCES
  • EVENTS

 

PRACTICE ALERTS

 

Guidance to OPLA Attorneys Regarding the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Laws and the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion

ICE: On April 4, 2022, Principal Legal Advisor Kerry E. Doyle issued a memorandum to the OPLA workforce titled Guidance to OPLA Attorneys Regarding the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Laws and the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion (Doyle Memorandum), which will take effect on April 25, 2022. The Doyle Memorandum is consistent with DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas’ September 30, 2021 memorandum titled Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law, which took effect on November 29, 2021. Upon its effective date, the Doyle Memorandum rescinds OPLA’s prior PD guidance.

 

USCIS Extends Flexibility for Responding to Agency Requests

 

EOIR Policy Manual Updated with New Records Request Procedures: The EOIR Policy Manual has been updated to address this at Section 12.2, here and BIA Policy Manual at 13.1, here.

 

USCIS Service Center Expands Credit Card Payment Pilot Program to All Forms

 

NEWS

 

Biden rescinds controversial Title 42 order limiting asylum

The Hill: While crafted by the Trump administration just days into the pandemic, Title 42 has been used roughly 1.7 million times by the Biden administration, a figure that includes repeat crossers. See also Republican states sue to stop Biden admin’s lifting of Title 42 border policy; Migrants hopeful, suspicious at US reopening to asylum; Migrants march from south Mexico as US lifts COVID ban; Democrats fractured on response to end of Title 42.

 

Cash will now expedite your work permit, in new Biden immigration rule

Reuters: The Biden administration on Tuesday released a final rule expanding a program that allows applicants for various employment-related immigration benefits to pay up to $2,500 to speed up the process, in a bid to ease massive backlogs at the agency. See also USCIS Announces New Actions to Reduce Backlogs, Expand Premium Processing, and Provide Relief to Work Permit Holders (USCIS continues to make progress toward a temporary final rule currently named “Temporary Increase of the Automatic Extension Period of Employment Authorization and Documentation for Certain Renewal Applicants.”).

 

Immigration Orgs Urge Mayorkas To Support Sanctuary Cities

Law360: Immigrant rights, community and legal advocacy organizations (including NIJC) asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday to abandon attempts to undermine local policies limiting cooperation with DHS agencies and instead terminate enforcement agreements with cities and counties.

 

Migrants Fleeing Hurricanes And Drought Face New Climate Disasters In ICE Detention

Intercept: The privately run facility where Argueta Anariba was held was one of several new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Louisiana. The implications of caging thousands of people in a state that’s notorious for extreme weather crystallized with the intensifying wind.

 

Facing Demand for Labor, U.S. to Provide 35,000 More Seasonal Worker Visas

NYT: The visa program being expanded, known as the H-2B visa program, allows American businesses to hire foreign workers for seasonal nonagricultural jobs like mowing lawns, cleaning hotel rooms, staffing amusement parks and waiting tables. Industries like landscaping, hospitality and tourism are particularly reliant on foreign nationals to meet high demand during the busy summer months.

 

LITIGATION & AGENCY UPDATES

 

Matter Of Wong, 28 I&N Dec. 518 (BIA 2022) on “Conviction”

BIA: A finding of guilt in a proceeding that affords defendants all of the constitutional rights of criminal procedure that are applicable without limitation and that are incorporated against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment is a “conviction” for immigration purposes under section 101(a)(48)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

 

2nd Circ. Says USCIS Must Revisit Inadmissibility Finding

Law360: The Second Circuit ruled Monday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services failed to weigh the full facts when denying an Afghan national’s application for permanent residence because he fought opposition forces under duress after being abducted by the Taliban.

 

CA3 on Cancellation Remand in Cruz-Garcia V. Garland

Justia: The BIA also did not address Cruz-Garcia’s challenge to the IJ’s alleged failure to permit Lesley to testify, but that may have been because the BIA erroneously concluded that Cruz-Garcia had not challenged the IJ’s discretionary determination and therefore did not “reach . . . the arguments raised on appeal.”… Because the BIA failed to address an exhausted argument that ultimately challenges the IJ’s determination that he was not entitled to cancellation of removal, remand is warranted.

 

CA5 on Credibility & Firm Resettlement

CA5: In his credible-fear  interview,  Muminov  did  not  describe  his  alleged 2016 protest  of  the  confiscation of his passport or the beating that he incurred thereafter… Given these discrepancies, a reasonable factfinder could conclude, as the IJ and BIA did, that Muminov’s testimony about politically motivated attacks “was too inconsistent”… He cites his testimony about extortionate fees that  he  was  forced  to  pay  to  live  in  Moscow  and  the  harassment  and  discrimination that he faced there. This  testimony may  well  support a  restricted-residence  exception, but we cannot say that the IJ and BIA were compelled to conclude that…

 

6th Circ. Tells Mom To Return Kids To Venezuela

Law360: A Venezuelan mom must return her children to South America, the Sixth Circuit ordered in a published but split decision, ruling that an incident of domestic violence she said was committed by the father and witnessed by the children was too minor for the court to refuse a Hague Convention petition for their return.

 

8th Circ. Rejects Christian Somali’s Bid To Fight Deportation

Law360: An Eighth Circuit panel declined Wednesday to review a Somali man’s petition to avoid deportation, saying the immigration judge who looked at the case properly determined that even if the man’s testimony were found credible, he still wouldn’t likely face torture in Somalia due to his Christian beliefs.

 

CA10: Federal appeals court rules trans Honduran woman should have received asylum in U.S.

Washington Blade: “Any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to find a pattern or practice of persecution against transgender women in Honduras,” reads the 10th Circuit ruling.

 

Court OKs Deal Tying Immigration Bonds To Ability To Pay

Law360: A California federal judge has approved a settlement between a class of unauthorized immigrants and the federal government that prohibits judges from setting unreasonable bond amounts for those detained without considering their ability to pay.

 

U.S. Must Face Suit Over Trump’s Separation of Migrant Kids

An Arizona federal judge on Friday dismissed the families putative Bivens class action regarding family separation against 15 high-ranking Trump Administration officials but rejected the federal government’s motion to dismiss as to the families’ FTCA claims against the United States.

 

DHS Enforcement Memo Still Partly Barred Amid Appeal

Law360: An Ohio federal judge refused to shelve his earlier ruling blocking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from following a Biden administration mandate narrowing immigration enforcement priorities when making custody decisions while DHS appeals his order.

 

Honduran Migrant’s Rape Case Against ICE Agent Too Late

Law360: A Connecticut federal judge dismissed a Honduran immigrant’s claims that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer raped and blackmailed her with the threat of deportation for seven years, finding that her claims are all time-barred.

 

CDC Provides Public Health Determination and Order on Termination of Title 42

AILA: CDC released an order to terminate its Title 42 public health order on May 23, 2022. The document assesses the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic, provides legal considerations, and describes plans for DHS to mitigate COVID-19, provide vaccinations to migrants, and resume use of Title 8.

 

USCIS Announces Actions to Reduce Backlogs, Expand Premium Processing, and Provide Relief to Work Permit Holders

AILA: USCIS announced actions to reduce caseloads and processing times. These include setting new internal cycle time goals, creating premium processing availability of Form I-539, Form I-765 and Form I-140 in FY2022, and working toward a temporary final rule for streamlining EAD processes.

 

Concerns about the Immigration Judge and Board Member hiring process

DOJ OIG: In May 2018, eight members of Congress asked the DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to investigate allegations that after January 2017, offers for Immigration Judge and Board Member positions were withdrawn or delayed for political or ideological reasons. While we were engaged in assessing these allegations, we received additional allegations that other candidates may have been favored in the hiring process because of their connections to the Trump administration, or perceived political affiliation or ideology. The DOJ OIG did not find sufficient evidence based on an assessment of the allegations to warrant opening a full investigation. However, during the course of our assessment, we identified concerns about the Immigration Judge and Board Member hiring process.

 

RESOURCES

 

NIJC RESOURCES

 

GENERAL RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

NIJC EVENTS

 

GENERAL EVENTS

 

To sign up for additional NIJC newsletters, visit:  https://immigrantjustice.org/subscribe.

 

You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added.

 

Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)

Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship

National Immigrant Justice Center

A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program

224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org

www.immigrantjustice.org | Facebook | Twitter

 

 

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

On its face, the “Doyle Memo” on PD looks good. But, as is always the case with ICE, it all depends on how it is interpreted, used, and applied on the “Field Office Level” and before the Immigration Courts.

On Title 42, interestingly, GOP states that were fine with the Trump regime’s racist attacks on the rule of law now are apoplectic about the Biden’s Administration’s long overdue effort to restore law, order, and human rights to the border.

It will also be telling to see how Federal Courts (particularly the 5th Circuit) that happily facilitated the Executive’s scofflaw, racist assaults on the Constitution and immigrants’ rights during the Trump era react to the Biden Administration’s efforts to restore at least some semblance of asylum laws and due process.

Experts like Blaine Bookey, Legal Director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies; Eleanor Acer, Director of Refugee Protection, Human Rights First; Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, and many others have pointed out that the “Trump/Miller Title 42 Blockade” was an illegal (not to mention immoral) pretext “from the git go.”

We can only hope that Garland does a better job of defending the termination of Title 42 than he did with the equally illegal and immoral “Remain in Mexico” program. However, having made the bad decision to rely upon and defend Title 42 for the last year, and fecklessly standing by while it was illegally invoked by the Biden Administration over a million times to deny migrants their legal rights, Garland might find some of his best legal arguments foreclosed by his own actions.

It’s also possible that given the unconscionable delay, lack of enthusiasm, and lack of effective planning within the Biden Administration for the termination of Title 42 and for vindicating the rights of immigrants of color in general, some of those in influential positions would not be unhappy if a “Trumpist Federal Court” forced them to keep illegally turning back refugees at our border forever!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-05-22

Related posts:

  1. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  4. FINALLY, LEADING DEMS IN CONGRESS DEMAND END TO BIDEN’S TITLE 42 CHARADE! — NDPA  All-Star 🌟🦸🏻‍♀️ Blaine Bookey Speaks Out For Ukrainians & Other Legal Asylum Seekers Being Abused 🤮  By Biden Administration @ The Southern Border!

NGOs’ EXPOSE, DOCUMENT ICE’S LIES 🤥 TO CONGRESS ABOUT ATTORNEY ACCESS IN SCATHING DEMAND FOR ACCOUNTABILITY!

Pinocchio @ ICE
“Pinocchio @ ICE”
Author of Reports to Congress
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https://immigrantjustice.org/sites/default/files/content-type/commentary-item/documents/2022-03/NGO-Rebuttal-to-ICE-Legal-Access-Report-March-22-2022.pdf

     MEMO

To: Professional staff for the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on

Homeland Security

From: National Immigrant Justice Center, American Immigration Council,

ACLU of Southern California, Southern Poverty Law Center

Re: Concerns re Veracity of ICE’s February 2022 “Access to Due Process” Report Date: March 22, 2022

On February 14, 2022, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presented a report entitled “Access to Due Process” to the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security [hereinafter “ICE Access Memo”]. The report was responsive to direction in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 Joint Explanatory Report and House Report accompanying the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations Act, P.L. 116-260, requiring ICE to provide a report on attorney access to ICE facilities, the rate of denial of legal visits, and attorney/client communications. The ICE Access Memo largely focuses on FY 2020, i.e. October 1, 2019 through September 30, 2020.

Our organizations provide legal services or represent organizations that provide legal services to individuals in ICE detention facilities throughout the United States, and work closely in coalition with many other organizations that do the same. We write to share our concerns regarding the ICE Access Memo, which omits key facts and blatantly mis-states others. As recently as October 2021, more than 80 NGOs delivered a letter to DHS and ICE documenting a litany of access to counsel obstacles imposed by ICE on people in detention. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California remain in active litigation against DHS and ICE over allegations of access to counsel violations so severe that they violate the Constitution. Yet the ICE Access Memo ignores the lawsuits and the written complaints, instead presenting a generally positive picture of the state of access to counsel and legal services for people in ICE custody. That picture bears little resemblance to the reality our legal service teams and clients experience daily in trying to communicate with each other.

This memo addresses the key points made by ICE in its Access Memo, and provides narrative and illustrative details of the misrepresentations made throughout. The topics addressed include: I) Access to legal counsel generally; II) Access to legal resources and representation (through the provision of free phone minutes and video conferencing capacity); and III) ICE’s purported efforts to address issues arising with access to legal counsel.

Our legal and policy teams would also be interested in engaging in an informal briefing with

  

 your teams to discuss these issues in greater depth. Please contact Heidi Altman at the National Immigrant Justice Center at haltman@heartlandalliance.org to arrange the briefing.

I. There are widespread, significant challenges in access to legal counsel at ICE facilities nationwide.

In its Access Memo, ICE claims that: a) “noncitizen access to legal representatives . . . has continued unabated” during the COVID-19 pandemic; b) in FY 2020, “ICE’s inspections did not identify any legal representatives being denied access to their clients, as confirmed by the DHS [Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] and other oversight bodies”; and c) “Facilities continue to provide noncitizens opportunities to meet privately with their current or prospective legal representatives, legal assistants, translators, and consular officials.”

These representations make glaring omissions regarding ongoing challenges to legal access, illustrated in great detail below. Further, we note that while ICE’s inspections (which DHS’s own Inspector General has found to be flawed) may not have specifically identified legal representatives being denied access to their clients, all of our organizations have experienced these denials to be pervasive.

a) Far from continuing “unabated,” access to counsel in ICE detention has been significantly hampered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ICE claims that “noncitizen access to legal representatives remains a paramount requirement throughout the pandemic and has continued unabated.” This claim is either an intentional misrepresentation or reflects a severe turn-a-blind-eye-mentality within the agency. DHS and ICE face ongoing litigation brought by legal service providers forced to seek emergency relief to gain even minimal remote access to their clients during the pandemic. And just months ago, DHS Secretary Mayorkas and Acting ICE Director Johnson received a 20 page letter from dozens of NGOs outlining in great depth the “host of obstacles to attorney access that exist in immigration detention facilities nationwide.”1 Referring to the agency’s commitment to providing legal access as “paramount” thus clearly omits important content from this report to Congress, the body meant to provide oversight of the agency in the public interest.

As the pandemic began to spread in April 2020, SPLC was forced to seek a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to ensure adequate remote access to counsel in four ICE facilities in Louisiana and Georgia, and then had to file a motion to enforce that TRO. The case is still active today and the court is seeking additional information on the state of the government’s compliance with the TRO. In granting the TRO in June 2020, the D.C. District Court found in its

1 Letter to The Honorable Alejandro Mayorkas and Tae Johnson from the American Immigration Council, the American Civil Liberties Union, et al., Oct. 29, 2021, available here.

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 Memorandum Opinion that DHS’s response to the pandemic “with respect to increasing the capacity and possibilities for remote legal visitation and communication has been inadequate and insufficient.” The Court also found ICE to be imposing restrictions and conditions on remote legal visitation and communication that were “more restrictive than standards promulgated for criminal detainees.” The TRO, among other things, required ICE to ensure access to confidential and free phone and video calls to legal representatives, to develop a system to schedule such calls, to create troubleshooting procedures for technology problems, and to institute a system to allow for electronic document transfer.2

SPLC was not the only legal service provider forced to seek emergency relief in order to get access to its clients as the pandemic spread. Also still in active litigation is Torres v. DHS, a case brought by the ACLU of Southern California, Stanford Law School Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, and Sidley Austin LLP on behalf of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and Immigrant Defenders Law Center in December 2018. The Torres case alleges many of the same obstacles to counsel in three California facilities as those at issue in SPLC v. DHS, including limited access to legal phone calls, prohibitively expensive calling rates, limited access to confidential phone calls with counsel, and inadequate opportunities for in-person attorney-client visitation.3 In April 2020, the District Court for the Central District of California entered a TRO in response to the plaintiff organizations’ arguments that ICE’s COVID-19 policies had effectively barred in-person legal visitation, leaving no confidential means for attorneys and detained clients to communicate.

In granting the TRO in Torres v. DHS, as of April 2020, the Court found the plaintiffs “likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that [DHS’s] COVID-19 attorney-access policies violate their constitutional and statutory rights,” noting that the pre-pandemic conditions alleged by plaintiffs made out such a claim, and the post-pandemic restrictions were “far more severe.”4 The Court also noted: “Defendants’ non-responsiveness to Plaintiffs’ factual assertions is telling.

2 In Southern Poverty Law Center v. Dep’t of Homeland Security (D.D.C.), 1:18-cv-00760, Dkt. 18-760, SPLC argues that the “totality of barriers to accessing and communicating with attorneys endured by detainees in these prisons [the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, and Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Pine Prairie, Louisiana] deprives SPLC’s clients of their constitutional rights to access courts, to access counsel, to obtain full and fair hearings and to substantive due process, in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment” and “violates the Administrative Procedure Act, as well as SPLC’s rights under the First Amendment.” The first complaint filed in April 2018 is available here; further briefing and orders in the litigation are available on the SPLC’s website here.

3 In Torres v. Dep’t of Homeland Security, (C.D. Cal.), 5:18-cv-02604-JGB, Dkt. 127-1, the ACLU of Southern California and the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School filed a class action lawsuit alleging that barriers to attorney-client communications at three ICE facilities in California (the Theo Lacy and James A. Musick county jails and the Adelanto Processing Center) were so severe as to make it nearly impossible for people in detention to reach their lawyers, in violation of statutory law, constitutional protections, and the Administrative Procedures Act. The first complaint filed in December 2018 is here; further briefing and orders in the litigation are available on the ACLU of Southern California’s website here.

4 Torres v. Dep’t of Homeland Security, (C.D. Cal.), 5:18-cv-02604-JGB, Dkt. 127-1, Order Granting Temporary Restraining Order, available here.

    3

 First, it took Defendants multiple rounds of briefing and two hearings to state whether there is any definite procedure to access free confidential legal calls and what that procedure is. Even if a procedure exists, Defendants do not rebut Plaintiffs’ showing that few detainees have ever accessed a free confidential legal call.” The Court further addressed the common problem of individuals in detention being forced to pay exorbitant phone rates for what should be free legal calls, stating, “Nor do Defendants explain why it is reasonable to expect detainees earning about one dollar a day…, or their families in the midst of an economic crisis, to fund paid ‘legal’ calls on recorded lines in the middle of their housing unit.”5

While litigation is ongoing in SPLC v. DHS and Torres v. DHS, our own legal teams throughout the country face daily, grueling obstacles in communicating with and effectively representing their detained clients, obstacles that have been compounded during the pandemic. ICE’s representations regarding phone and video-conference access are frequently belied by on-the-ground challenges including subcontractors’ belligerence, technology difficulties, or complex and opaque processes that even trained attorneys struggle to understand. As described by advocates in their October 2021 letter to DHS, the following examples are illustrative:

➔ Video-conference (VTC) technology is often not available or extremely limited in availability, even when facility policy states otherwise: An attorney with the University of Texas Immigration Law clinic attempted to schedule a VTC visit with a client who had recently been detained at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas. A GEO staff member informed the attorney that there were no VTC visits available for two weeks—and even then availability was “tentative.” ICE’s webpage for Pearsall asserts that VTC appointments are available daily, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and can be scheduled 24 hours in advance.

➔ Emails and phone messages from attorneys go undelivered: The American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign placed the case of a man detained at the El Paso Service Processing Center in Texas with a volunteer attorney at a law firm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in June 2021. That attorney sent three emails to the El Paso facility requesting that a message be delivered to the client to call his new attorney. The attorney then learned that the client had been transferred to the Otero County Processing Center and sent two more emails to that facility requesting a call with the client. On June 28, an ICE officer claimed a message had been delivered to the client. On July 6, the client appeared before an immigration judge and stipulated to an order of deportation, seeing no way to fight his case and no way to find an attorney. That evening, the client received two of the attorney’s messages and was finally able to contact her, but the damage had been done.

5 Id.

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 ➔ Poor sound quality, dropped calls, and limited phone access: The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) in San Antonio, Texas faces consistent problems trying to speak to clients detained at the facility in Pearsall, Texas. For example, over the course of one month in April and May 2021, RAICES staff struggled to prepare a declaration for a Request for Reconsideration of a negative credible fear interview for a client due to a host of communication failures at the facility. After RAICES was unable to contact the client for three days (despite prior regular calls) RAICES staff was finally about to reach their client, but the call dropped before the declaration was complete and GEO staff prohibited the client from calling back. GEO staff then did not schedule a VTC call as requested, canceled a VTC call, and a telephone call to attempt to finalize the client’s declaration had sound quality so poor that it was difficult to hear the client. These obstacles to access delayed the submission of the client’s Request for Reconsideration by several weeks. Similarly, The Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project (FIRRP) has difficulty conducting legal intakes at La Palma Correctional Center in Arizona because guards frequently cut calls short. FIRRP works to complete intakes in just twenty to thirty minutes. Yet in the first two weeks of July 2021, it was unable to complete intakes for five potential clients because their calls were cut short by La Palma staff.

➔ Phone access restricted during quarantine and beyond: The El Paso Immigration Collaborative (EPIC) represents detained people in the El Paso area detention facilities, including the Torrance County Detention Facility. Staff at the Torrance facility have repeatedly told EPIC attorneys that they simply do not have capacity to arrange legal calls—with delays that can last for one week or more. For example, a call scheduling officer stated in August 2021: “Courts are my main priority and when I get chances to make attorney calls I will get to that.” Throughout the El Paso district, ICE denies any access to over-the-phone legal intakes and/or legal calls to people who are in quarantine for being exposed to COVID-19.

➔ Prohibitive cost of phone calls: The Immigration Detention Accountability Project of the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center (CREEC) answers calls to a free hotline available in immigration detention centers nationwide to monitor ICE compliance with the injunction in Fraihat v. ICE. Hotline staff routinely receive reports from callers—typically people with medical vulnerabilities or in need of accommodations—that they do not receive free calls for the purpose of finding an attorney, and the cost of telephone calls in detention is prohibitive for finding a removal defense attorney.

➔ Obstacles to sending and receiving legal documents: The Carolina Migrant Network represents a significant number of people detained at the Winn Correctional Center in

5

 Louisiana. The Winn facility has the lowest availability of immigration attorneys in the entire country—a recent study showed that there was one immigration attorney for every 234 detained people at Winn within a 100-mile radius of the facility.6 Winn is so far from most immigration attorneys and legal services providers that most attorneys who serve that facility must do so remotely, but Winn will not facilitate getting legal documents to and from clients. Winn will not allow attorneys to email or fax a Form G-28, Notice of Entry of Appearance as Attorney, for signing. Instead, attorneys must mail a Form G-28 with a return self-addressed stamped envelope. It takes approximately two business weeks for Carolina Migrant Network attorneys to receive a signed Form G-28, because the facility is so geographically isolated that the postal service will not guarantee overnight mail.

➔ Intransigence of subcontractors and inadequate access policies in local jails: An attorney with Mariposa Legal in Indianapolis, Indiana routinely confronts obstacles to reaching clients at the Boone County Jail in Kentucky. Those challenges include a faulty fax machine as the only mechanism for requesting client calls or visits, the facility’s refusal to allow any calls on Thursdays, staff who bring the wrong person to the attorney client room, and the use of attorney-client rooms as dorms when the population level increases. Boone’s mail system is particularly problematic. An attorney sent paperwork via FedEx to a client in July 2021 and the client simply never received the package. Jail staff made an “exception” and allowed the attorney to email the documents but delayed the attorney being able to file a time-sensitive Freedom of Information Act request by more than a week.

b) Legal representatives are routinely denied access to their clients in ICE custody.

The ICE Access Memo states that, “ICE ERO does not track the number of legal visits that were denied or not facilitated and/or the number of facilities that do not meet ICE standards for attorney/client communications. However, in FY 2020, ICE’s inspections did not identify any legal representatives being denied access to their clients, as confirmed by the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and other oversight bodies.” Given ICE’s own admission that it does not track or keep records of visit denials, this statement is meaningless.

As organizations providing legal services to individuals in detention, we can confirm that in-person and virtual legal visits are in fact routinely denied either outright or because of facility

6 This study is found in a report called Justice-Free Zones, which also provides in-depth evidence and data regarding the lack of availability of lawyers for many of ICE’s newest detention facilities. See American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigrant Justice Center, Human Rights Watch, Justice-Free Zones: U.S. Immigration Detention Under the Trump Administration (2020), 20-23. The report discusses at length the ways in which ICE’s use of remote detention centers and prisons for its detention sites undermines the ability of those in custody to find counsel. This topic is not addressed in this memo, but underlies the entirety of the due process crisis for detained immigrants facing removal proceedings.

   6

 policies so restrictive as to constitute denials in practice. SPLC has documented over two dozen incidents of legal visits, including four in-person visits and 22 calls and VTCs, that were denied or not facilitated at the Stewart, Irwin, LaSalle and Pine Prairie facilities in FY 2020 alone. Attorneys attempting in-person meetings in 2020 were often left waiting for their visits for so long that they had to leave the detention center and come back another day, a constructive denial even if not outright. SPLC attorneys also report phone calls and VTCs being regularly canceled or unilaterally rescheduled by facility staff with no notice to attorneys, often preventing attorneys from speaking to clients on time-sensitive matters.

In many facilities, the procedures and rules around setting up attorney-client visits are so cumbersome as to make visitation nearly impossible; in these cases ICE may not be denying visits outright but they are allowing conditions to persist that constitute a blanket denial. In a number of facilities in Louisiana, for example, attorneys are not allowed to meet with clients in person unless visits are scheduled by 3 p.m. the day before. This policy renders visits entirely unavailable for attorneys who need to meet with a client for time-sensitive matters that cannot wait 24 hours.

In Torres v. DHS, the court noted in ordering a TRO in April 2020 that ICE “equivocate[d]” on the question of whether contact visitation was allowed at all at the Adelanto facility in California. ICE eventually admitted that “only two contact visits” had been allowed between March 13 and April 6, 2020.7

c) Legal representatives frequently face obstacles to meeting in a private confidential space with current or prospective clients.

The ICE Legal Access Memo states that, “Facilities continue to provide noncitizens opportunities to meet privately with their current or prospective legal representatives, legal assistants, translators, and consular officials.” However, it is our experience that in many facilities it is not possible for individuals to meet in person with their lawyers in a private setting, and that access to translators is also frequently compromised. Many detained individuals are also unable to access private, confidential remote communication with their attorney. The ability to access a confidential space may be the difference between presenting a successful claim to relief or being order deported, especially for individuals sharing difficult or traumatic experiences or sharing information that they fear will place them at risk if overheard by other people in detention such as sexual orientation or gender identity.

In many facilities, especially since the pandemic, it is nearly or completely impossible to access a confidential space to have a remote communication with one’s attorney. Some facilities may

7 Torres v. Dep’t of Homeland Security, (C.D. Cal.), 5:18-cv-02604-JGB, Dkt. 127-1, Order Granting Temporary Restraining Order, available here.

 7

 claim to provide confidential spaces, but the reality is quite different. In the Pine Prairie facility, for example, the spaces designated for “confidential” attorney-client phone calls and VTC are actually cubicles with walls that do not reach the ceiling and allow for noise to travel outside the cubicle. Cubicle-style spaces with walls that do not reach the ceiling are also the only spaces available for so-called confidential attorney-client meetings at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas, where the University of Texas School of Law Immigration Clinic provides services. Similarly, confidential phone calls are provided at the Stewart facility but are limited to 30 minutes, which is far from sufficient for many types of legal calls necessary to gather facts or prepare for an immigration court case, especially if an interpreter is needed.

There are also severe restrictions to individuals’ ability to meet in person with their lawyers in confidential settings. At Pine Prairie, for example, because the cubicles described above have been reserved for VTC during the pandemic, attorneys must meet with their clients or prospective clients at a table in the middle of an open-plan intake space that is the most highly-trafficked part of the facility. There is absolutely no privacy—guards, ICE officers, other facility staff, other detained individuals and even people refilling the vending machines all travel through or wait in this space frequently, making it impossible to have a confidential conversation.

We also contest ICE’s claim that it provides ready access to translators as necessary for attorney-client communication. As explained in briefing in SPLC v. DHS, for example, the non-contact attorney-client visitation rooms in the LaSalle, Irwin, and Stewart facilities provide only one phone on the “attorney side” of the room, which means that there is no way for an attorney to be accompanied by a legal assistant or interpreter. Also at these facilities, a “no-electronics policy” is maintained meaning that attorneys are effectively denied from accessing remote interpretation services (there are also no outside phone lines available).

The following examples provide further evidence of the ways in which access to confidential in-person or remote communications are restricted throughout ICE detention:

➔ Restricted access to confidential remote communications during periods of COVID quarantine: In the McHenry County Jail in Illinois, prior to its closure, individuals were subjected to a mandatory fourteen-day quarantine period if exposed to COVID-19, during which they had literally zero access to confidential attorney-client phone calls. In January 2022, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) raised this issue to the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, sharing several case examples. One of the examples was that of an NIJC client who was represented by pro bono attorneys at a major law firm. In the weeks leading up to the client’s asylum merits hearing, the pro bono team contacted the facility and were told that no time slots were available because their client was in COVID-related quarantine. The facility informed the pro bono attorneys that their

8

 only option to speak with their client was if he called them during the one hour every other day when he had access to the communal phones. Although the communal phones offered no confidentiality, it was the only option for them to speak with their client. The pro bono team had to deposit money into their client’s commissary account in order for him to call out, and then faxed him a letter asking him to call them during his one hour window. Their client did call, but he could barely hear his attorneys because the noise from the television and other people in detention speaking in the background was so loud.

➔ So-called “confidential spaces” providing no privacy: The University of Texas School of Law Immigration Clinic serves women detained at the Hutto facility, where since the start of the COVID pandemic attorneys have been required to sit in one plastic cubicle while their clients sit in another. This requires attorneys and their clients to raise their voices while speaking to one another, further limiting confidentiality. Two clinic students spoke to several women from Haiti who had experienced sexual assaults. The women had not been able to speak to attorneys prior to their credible fear interviews because of limits placed on attorney access, and so had little understanding of the process and the importance of describing their experiences fully. Because of this obstacle to due process, the women did not share their experiences of sexual assault during their credible fear interview. One woman was deported even after the students took on the case, because it took so long for legal counsel to learn about the details of the assault due to communication barriers.

II. ICE’s claims that it provides enhanced access to legal resources and representation are belied by the experiences of legal service providers and detained people.

In the Access Memo, ICE claims that it “made improvements in legal access accommodations by enhancing detained noncitizens’ remote access to legal service providers,” specifically including: a) the provision of more than 500 free phone minutes to “most noncitizens” and b) by expanding the Virtual Attorney Visitation (VAV) program from five to nine programs in FY 2020. ICE fails to mention, however, that the rollout of both programs has been extremely flawed. The 500 free minutes, for those in facilities where they are offered, are usually not available on a confidential line (making them generally not usable for attorney-client communication) and detained individuals often face severe obstacles in accessing the minutes at all. The VAV program, similarly, is in practice often inaccessible to attorneys trying to reach their clients.

a) The 500 free minutes do not meaningfully enhance legal access because they are usually available only on non-confidential lines and the length of calls is restricted.

ICE describes in the Access Memo that 520 minutes per month are provided to individuals detained in all facilities with Talton operated phone systems. The list of Talton-served facilities is

  9

 available on the AILA website here. However, these minutes are of limited utility in enhancing access to legal counsel for two primary reasons: First, the minutes can generally be used only in 10 or 15-minute increments after which time the call automatically cuts off, disrupting attorney-client calls and making conversations with interpreters particularly difficult. Second, in most cases it appears the minutes are available only on phones in public areas of housing units, and therefore cannot be used for confidential attorney-client communication. It has also been our experience that it is difficult for individuals who do not read Spanish or English to access the minutes at all, as the instructions for how to use them are usually provided in English and Spanish without accommodation for speakers of other languages, including indigenous languages.

Our own legal service teams and clients have experienced these challenges:

➔ The Otay Mesa Detention Center in California is one of the facilities ICE claims provides 520 free minutes. NIJC provides legal services to individuals at the Otay Mesa facility, and has found it to be difficult and often impossible for attorneys providing remote representation to get a secure line set up using clients’ free minutes. One NIJC attorney has had some success in doing so by calling the facility, asking for her client to submit a form adding her to their attorney list, and then calling her back. However, she has found this to only work in rare instances and notes that it usually takes at least three days’ advance notice.

➔ The American Immigration Council works with partners who provide legal services at the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico, which is also on the list of facilities providing 520 free minutes. However, the free minutes available at the Otero facility are available only on recorded lines from phones in public areas of the housing units, thus not confidential. In July 2020, a law clerk with EPIC shared that they had conducted an intake interview with a potential client at Otero which had to be conducted over four short calls, because the first three calls were free ten minute calls that automatically cut off. The client paid for the fourth call, which cut off before the intake could be completed. This made it difficult to maintain a conversation, caused confusion, and impeded the law clerk’s ability to ask the client a full range of questions.

➔ The practice of dividing the 520 monthly minutes into calls of such short duration that they disrupt attorney-client communication was confirmed by ICE Assistant Field Officer Director Gabriel Valdez in a written affidavit filed in Torres v. DHS stating that as of April 2020 at the Adelanto facility, the 520 free minutes were provided as a maximum of 13 calls per week, with each call permitted to last no longer than 10 minutes. Legal service providers at Adelanto also confirm that these free minutes are provided only on

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 the phones in the common spaces of the Adelanto facilities, where attorney-client confidentiality is not protected.

b) The Virtual Attorney Visitation (VAV) program is severely compromised in its utility by restrictions on usage and technology problems, and in certain facilities does not even appear to be operational.

ICE describes in its Access Memo that the VAV program was expanded from five to nine facilities in Fiscal Year 2020, allowing legal representatives to meet with their clients through video technology in private rooms or booths to ensure confidentiality of communications. ICE posts a list of the facilities it claims are VAV-enabled here.

Many of our legal service teams had never heard of the VAV program until reviewing the ICE Access Memo, which speaks to the extent to which it can be utilized in practice. Included in ICE’s list of VAV-enabled facilities are three facilities where SPLC currently provides services—the Folkston ICE Processing Center, the LaSalle ICE Processing Center, and the Stewart Detention Center. Yet SPLC’s legal teams are entirely unaware of any VAV programs having been accessible at any of these three facilities in Fiscal Year 2020. While some VTC capacity was present at these facilities using Skype, they do not appear to have been part of the VAV program which is largely conducted using Teams and WebEx, according to the Access Memo. Further, the number of confidential VTC rooms in use at these facilities was dismally low. In the Stewart Detention Center, for example, which can detain up to 2,040 people, there are only two VTC rooms, neither of which are confidential.

Another facility on ICE’s list of VAV-enabled facilities is the Otay Mesa Detention Center, where NIJC provides legal services. Yet NIJC’s attorneys who represent individuals at Otay Mesa through a program focused on ensuring legal representation for LGBTQI individuals have found that there is no way for NIJC to schedule legal calls or VTC sessions for free, through the VAV or any other program. For one current NIJC client, the legal team must provide funds to the client’s commissary to be able to speak with them, and even then the calls cut off every ten minutes.

The ICE website describes the VAV program as providing detained individuals access to their attorneys in a “timely and efficient manner.” Yet at the Boone County Jail, one of the listed VAV-enabled facilities, NIJC’s clients report that there are very limited available hours for attorneys to call through the VAV program, and they must be requested well in advance. On one occasion, for example, an NIJC attorney called to ask for a VAV session in the ensuing 48 hours and was told none were available. Instead, the facility staff directed the attorney to the iwebvisit.com website where she could “purchase confidential visits” at $7.75 per 15-minute interval. Boone strictly limits the availability of free confidential VAV calls, and charges for calls

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 occurring during many slots in normal business hours. Given the limited availability that Boone provides for free calls on the VAV platform, NIJC has had to pay these fees in order to communicate with clients. Additionally, the quality of the videoconferences on the platform used by Boone County Jail is poor, and NIJC attorneys and advocates struggle to hear clients. Finally, the process for adding third-party interpreters through Boone’s system is extremely onerous, which raises serious concerns about accessibility for speakers of diverse languages. Third party interpreters are unable to join calls unless they go through a registration and clearance process with the jail and like attorneys, must also pay fees for 15-minute intervals if the call takes place during certain hours.

III. ICE’s stated increased coordination with Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) to address issues with access to legal counsel has not been communicated to legal service providers.

ICE notes in its Access Memo that it has designated Legal Access Points of Contact (LA-POC) in field offices, who are intended to “work with the ICE ERO Legal Access Team at headquarters to address legal access-related issues and to implement practices that enhance noncitizen access to legal resources and representation.” Among the four organizations authoring this memo, none of our legal service teams reported knowing how to access these designated points of contact or had experienced them resolving concerns or issues. For many of us, the Access Memo was in fact the first time we had even heard of LA-POCs, which is fairly remarkable given that all four of our organizations either provide large quantities of legal services to detained individuals or represent other organizations that do.

***

Meaningful and prompt access to confidential communication with counsel is literally a life and death matter for individuals who are in ICE detention. Barriers to communication can prevent an individual from being fully prepared for a court hearing that will determine whether they are permanently separated from their loved ones. A lack of confidential space for attorney-client communications can mean that an LGBTQI person may never feel safe to disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity, compromising both their own safety and their ability to present their full claim to asylum or other protection.

ICE has submitted this report, in effect asking Members of Congress to believe that they have been responsive and thoughtful in their approach to ensuring access to counsel, even while legal service providers are forced to seek emergency relief in the federal courts simply to be able to communicate with their detained clients. The ICE Access Memo represents a disingenuous and cavalier approach to a gravely serious topic, and we urge Chairpersons Roybal-Allard and Murphy to hold the agency accountable.

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

Previous coverage from “Courtside:”

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/03/29/the-gibson-report-03-28-22-compiled-by-elizabeth-gibson-esquire-managing-attorney-nijc-headliners-ice-lies-to-congress-about-attorney-access-bia-flagged-by-11th-for/

You don’t have to be a “legal eagle” to understand that putting “civil” immigration prisons (the “New American Gulag”) in obscure locations like Jena, LA, and elsewhere in the notoriously anti-immigrant Fifth Circuit is, among other illegal objectives, about restricting access to lawyers and running roughshod over due process and fundamental fairness.

But, don’t hold your breath for a day of reckoning for immigration bureaucrats peddling lies, myths, and distortions.

Sadly, accountability for White Nationalist abuses of asylum seekers and other migrants by the Trump regime hasn’t been a priority for either a moribund Congress or the Biden Administration. And, a “New Jim Crow” 5th Circuit loaded with Trump judges isn’t likely to stop abuses of due process as long as they are directed primarily against persons of color. See, e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/nov/15/fifth-circuit-court-appeals-most-extreme-us?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other.

Nevertheless, as the GOP initiative to rewrite the history of racism in America rolls forward, it’s more important than ever to continually document  truth for the day in the future when America develops the communal courage to deal honestly with the past rather than intentionally and spinelessly distorting it.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-03-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸😎⚖️🗽👍🏼LAW YOU CAN USE:  Michelle Mendez and CLINIC Publish A New Practice Advisory on Opening & Closing Statements in Immigration Court
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!
  3. FROM THE HEIGHTS OF KASINGA TO THE DEPTHS OF AMERICA’S DEADLY STAR CHAMBERS: Will The Biden Administration Tap The New Due Process Army To Fix EOIR & Save Our Nation? 
  4. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯

🤪GARLAND’S ZANY COURTS! — AG Agrees That His Judges Will Comply With Constitution In Bond Cases, But Only In CD CAL!🤯

Yup, it’s a great settlement! But, only for those in the CDCA or who don’t understand how totally screwed up, unfair, directionless, visionless, and out of control Garland’s “Clown Courts” 🤡 are! 

Check out Hernandez v. Garland here:

https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/court-ice-cant-detain-immigrants-based-poverty

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

So, Garland agrees that “his judges” will comply with the Constitution, but ONLY in the CDCA. In the other 95% of Immigration Courts nationwide, they evidently are free to choose to act in a “normal” arbitrary and capricious unconstitutional manner. Nice!

Of course, by initially setting no bond or more than $10K in any case, DHS can unilaterally invoke the “regulatory clamper” (8 CFR 1003.19(i)(2)) to defeat any release on bond pending appeal. Since the BIA routinely holds bond appeals until the detained merits cases are complete, then dismisses them as “moot,” the Administration retains lots of tools to act unconstitutionally.

Another nice touch!

Does anyone truly understand how completely screwed up and unconstitutional Garland’s “star chambers courts” are? 

This is what “justice” looks like in 21st Century America, in a Dem Administration no less? Gimmie a break?

A better BIA might have imposed Constitutional due process requiring consideration of ability to pay nationwide, thus preempting the need for more Article III Court litigation and inconsistent decisions affecting the fundamental human right of liberty!

A “better BIA” might have properly limited the DHS’s unconstitutional authority to use the “clamper” to block release on bond, rather than reducing Immigration Judges to a “clerical” role. See, e.g., Matter of Joseph (“Joseph I”), 22 I&N Dec. 660, 674 (BIA 1999) (Moscato, Board Member dissenting, joined by Schmidt, Chair, and Heilman, Villageliu, Guendelsberger, Rosenberg, Jones, Board Members).

A better AG might have eliminated the unconstitutional “clamper” that gives ICE counsel unfair leverage in bond cases.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-01-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🇺🇸👨🏻‍⚖️👩‍⚖️NEVER TOO LATE: 22 YEARS AGO, FIVE OF US DISSENTED FROM THE BIA’S “ROLLOVER” TO IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT IN THE “JOSEPH II” BOND CASE — Four Of Us Were “Exiled” For Our Views — Now, The 3rd Circuit Says We Were Right! — Gayle v. Warden!
  2. ☹️HE BEAT THE GOVERNMENT TWICE IN COURT — But, After Three Years In Jail Without Being Charged With Any Crime, Omar Ameen Still Can’t Get A Bond From Garland’s Courts —  How Can A System Where The Prosecutor Makes The Rules & Picks The Judges, Mostly From The Ranks Of Former Prosecutors, Provide The “Fair & Impartial Judging” Required By Due Process?
  3. WHY EOIR 🤡 MUST GO ** CH. CI — Latest CLINIC Court Victory Over Regime Exposes Unholy (Not To Mention Unconstitutional & Unethical) Alliance Between EOIR & ICE Enforcement To Screw Kids! — The Bottom Is Unfathomably Deep @ The Deadly EOIR Clown Show🤡! —  “ICE is barred (both at the IJ and BIA levels) from seeking denials of continuances or other postponements to await adjudication of the I-589 filed with USCIS, seeking EOIR exercise of jurisdiction over an asylum claim where USCIS has initial jurisdiction under the terms of the 2013 Kim Memo, or otherwise taking the position that USCIS lacks initial jurisdiction over the class member’s asylum application.”
  4. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!

🤯ADMINISTRATIONS CHANGE  — EOIR “CULTURE” NOT SO MUCH! — “We’d Rather Fight Than Fix,” Remains Motto Of Garland’s Failed “Courts!”🤮

Tal Kopan
Tal Kopan
Washington Reporter, SF Chronicle

Tal Kopan @ SF Chron reports on latest public miscue:

A California lawyer tweeted what she saw in immigration court. The DOJ demanded she delete it

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — On Feb. 1, attorney Monika Langarica was in a San Diego courtroom watching as the Biden administration resumed hearing cases on a controversial immigration policy that requires migrants to wait in Mexico while they plead their case to enter the U.S. That evening, she wrote a series of tweets describing what she saw.

The next day, she received an email from the Justice Department that shocked her: The administration asked her to delete the tweets. They claimed she violated a policy against making a record of immigration court proceedings and threatened potential criminal penalties if she committed “further violations.”

The Justice Department retracted its request and apologized to Langarica after The Chronicle inquired about the threat, saying further review confirmed she was not tweeting from the courtroom and thus did not violate any policies.

Still, the surprising episode raised several issues, including First Amendment concerns, issues of transparency in the often secretive immigration courts as well as criticisms of the policy at the heart of the dispute.

“It (was) shocking, because we are in our right to observe these proceedings, we are in our right to share with the public what is happening in these court rooms,” Langarica said in an interview before the apology had been issued. Langarica is an attorney with the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy and formerly with the San Diego American Civil Liberties Union.

More here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/A-California-lawyer-tweeted-what-she-saw-in-16841515.php

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

Why would an agency with failure, problems, and valid criticism “coming out it ears” 👂 be wasting official time monitoring the Twitter accounts of court observers?

Assuming that were some legitimate reason, why wouldn’t the first reaction to Ms. Langarcia’s tweets be “Hey, let’s sit down with you and your friends and figure out how to fix this?”

Instead of having more “flackies” in their bloated bureaucracy to suppress the public trappings of failure and to “massage the message,” why not put the resources into getting better bodies out there to FIX THE MYRIAD OF PROBLEMS crippling the agency and making it a parody of justice? It’s going to take more than a band of public apologists in the PIO to outsmart brilliant, informed investigative reporters like Tal! 

It’s little wonder that EOIR doesn’t want light shed on what’s really happening in their “Star Chambers!” 

Star Chamber Justice
“Scream as loud as you want. Nobody’s going to hear you!”

Reminds me of one of my favorite “EOIR War Stories.” My Arlington colleague Judge Wayne “Tell It Like It Is” Iskra once truthfully said in open court said what most experts and his colleagues privately had been saying for ages: “This system is broken!” Unknown to Judge Iskra, however, a reporter was sitting in the audience and the comment received publicity, the thing that EOIR fears most!

Coming from a former two-time Chief Judge of the U.S. Army Criminal Courts, hardly known as a “bleeding heart liberal,” one would anticipate that Iskra’s blunt assessment might have spurred some immediate corrective action and internal reforms. But, the only action it created at EOIR was basically to tell Iskra to “sit down and shut up.” 

As always, EOIR was more concerned about “protecting itself” from a judge speaking truth than dealing with the consequences of that truth. As a result, the system is even more broken now than it was when Iskra had the audacity to “speak truth to power!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-08-22

Related posts:

  1. DEADLY ☠️ EOIR CLOWN SHOW 🤡 PLAYS ON UNDER BIDEN — ACIJ’S “Exit Interview” By SF Chron’s Tal Kopan Reveals Total Dysfunction, Systemic Abuse Of Human Rights, Waste Of Taxpayer Funds By Stunningly Incompetent DOJ — Other Than A Few Cosmetic Changes, Garland Enables Trump’s Abuses & Uses Barr’s Discredited, Politically & Racially Suspect “Judicial” Hiring Practices, Fails To Establish Due Process, Best Practices, Professionalism, Expertise, Respect For Human Dignity As Overriding Values! — Garland Presides Over “A ‘soul-crushing bureaucracy’ . . . shockingly unlike the regular American legal system.”🤮 Why Is He Ignoring Pressing Need For Progressive Reforms, Due Process Dedicated Judges?
  2. ⚖️FINALLY, HOUSE TO EXAMINE GARLAND’S DYSFUNCTIONAL, MISMANAGED, LEADERLESS IMMIGRATION “COURTS” & NEED FOR DUE-PROCESS-FOCUSED REFORMS! — Tal Kopan Reports For SF Chron!
  3. 🤮🆘CHAOS IN COURT!  — Unqualified, Controversial Barr Immigration Judge Quits In SF, Leveling Charges Of Systemic Incompetency @ EOIR HQ — “[I]t is hard to understand how any court system can function like this!” — Actually, It Can’t & Hasn’t Functioned As Anything But A Sick Joke For Years! 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️⚰️ — Garland Slow On The Uptake, As Outrage, Anger At His Inept Stewardship, Lack Of Due Process Leadership, Indifference To Institutionalized Racism Grows In Legal Community! — Tal Kopan Reports @ SF Chron
  4. ⚖️🤯🤮GARLAND’S OHIO JUDICIAL MELTDOWN — “High-Asylum-Denying” Immigration Judges Appointed By Barr & Sessions Remain On Garland’s Bench In Cleveland Despite Referring To Migrants As “Illegals” & “Pretty Virgins!” — EOIR Disciplinary System Remains As Opaque As Ever Under Garland!🏴‍☠️ Yulin Cheng Reports @ Columbus Dispatch!

🤮🤯☠️👎🏽 COMPLETE DISCONNECT @ “JUSTICE” — WHO WON THE 2020 ELECTION, ANYWAY? — Even As He Disses Progressive Human Rights Advocates & Bashes Migrants In Court, Garland Continues To Employ Highly Unqualified “Stephen Miller Acolyte” As Top Judge In His Biased & Broken “Courts!” —  Tracy Short “Cheered” Trump’s Most Heavy-Handed Enforcement Actions — Now He’s Garland’s “Top Judge” In a Wholly-Owned System That Abuses Migrants & Consistently Turns Out Sloppy, Unprofessional Work! 

 

https://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/1454701/docs-show-ice-atty-cheered-judge-s-arrest-first-of-many-

Docs Show ICE Atty Cheered Judge’s Arrest: ‘First Of Many?’

By Brian Dowling

Law360 (January 12, 2022, 2:09 PM EST) — A top U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney appeared elated when a sitting Massachusetts judge was indicted in 2018 for helping an immigrant in the country illegally evade custody, asking in an email if it would be “the first of many” such arrests, according to records made public in court Tuesday.

The email by then-ICE Principal Legal Adviser Tracy Short was part of a series of documents filed by a civil liberties group and government watchdog suing the agency to obtain even more records relating to the obstruction of justice charges against Newton District Court Judge Shelley Joseph.

Short posed the rhetorical question as a Fox News article circulated in emails among agency staff on the day Judge Joseph was indicted. In a later email to agency executives, Short said, “This is a great day.”

“Indeed,” responded Matthew Albence, ICE director of enforcement removal operations, according to the court filings. ICE chief of staff Thomas Blank allegedly chimed in, “Blessed.”

Short is now chief immigration judge for the U.S. Department of Justice‘s Executive Office for Immigration Review, while Albence and Blank have since moved into the private sector.

Judge Joseph is accused of helping the immigrant evade federal custody by allowing him to leave out the back door of her courtroom while agents from ICE were waiting out front to arrest him.

The case has been criticized by retired judges, academics and Massachusetts defense lawyers as an overreach by the federal government. Judge Joseph has argued that she acted within the scope of her judicial authority and therefore cannot be criminally charged. The issue is on appeal at the First Circuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and American Oversight, a government watchdog, attached the emails ICE produced to a motion for a pretrial win in the lawsuit they filed against the agency for records relating to the charges against Judge Joseph and her court officer Wesley MacGregor.

The civil liberties groups told U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley that the 83 pages of communications handed over by ICE in response to its records request “calls into serious question the adequacy of its search” for documents.

Among the groups’ concerns are that no records were produced for the 11 months that followed the incident, no text messages were searched, the search terms used were too narrow, and the agency never searched its Homeland Security Investigations Division even though the unit wrote a memo about the incident.

The groups asked the court to grant them summary judgment, order ICE to conduct a reasonable search — including emails and text messages — and release pages ICE is withholding under claimed exemptions from the public records law.

In December, ICE asked for a win in the case, saying it handed over what it needed to and withheld other sought-after documents that would harm pending criminal proceedings if released.

Judge Joseph and MacGregor have appealed a federal judge’s decision to not toss the charges on judicial immunity grounds. The First Circuit, in early December, heard the appeal and wrestled with how to define the judge’s immunity claim.

The ACLU’s records request was spurred by a November 2019 New York Times article that reported then-acting ICE Director Thomas Homan had been communicating with the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office in seeking legal recourse against Judge Joseph.

The ACLU requested records from March 15, 2018, through April 25, 2019, including emailed messages and letters between the U.S. attorney’s office and ICE about Judge Joseph, as well as records concerning an ICE investigation into the judge.

ICE told the ACLU in 2019 that it couldn’t do the search because the ACLU was a third party in the criminal case against Judge Joseph and needed her approval to access the records.

The ACLU protested and asked the agency to reconsider, saying that its request didn’t need Judge Joseph’s approval. In February 2020, the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor ruled that a records search could be made, but ICE has failed to respond to the ACLU’s request since then, the complaint says.

Daniel McFadden, an ACLU staff attorney on the case, said in a statement to Law360 that ICE’s decision to charge Judge Joseph was “unprecedented.”

“The public has a right to know how this prosecution arose, and whether it was part of a pressure campaign to force Massachusetts court officials to assist in federal immigration enforcement,” McFadden said.

ICE and the Department of Justice declined to comment on the filing when reached Wednesday.

The ACLU of Massachusetts is represented in-house by Krista Oehlke, Daniel L. McFadden and Matthew R. Segal.

American Oversight is represented in-house by Katherine M. Anthony.

ICE is represented by Michael Sady of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.

The case is ACLU of Massachusetts et al. v. ICE, case number 1:21-cv-10761, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

–Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.

Update: This article has been updated to include comments from the ACLU.

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

Look, whether Short can be fired or not, he has no business being the Chief Immigration Judge at EOIR. Short never held a judicial position before his inappropriate appointment under Trump. 

His career as a hard line, widely disrespected ICE Prosecutor took him through probably the worst Federal Court in America — the Atlanta immigration Court, a self-styled “Asylum Free Zone” where “due process and fundamental fairness go to die and be buried.”

No Senior Executive like Short has “life tenure” in a particular senior position. For example, former Chief Immigration Judge, current BIA Appellate Judge Michael J, Creppy, woke up one morning in 2006 to find himself  “out at OCIJ” and on his way to OCAHO, widely considered the “Siberia of EOIR.” His “offense:” “losing the confidence” of the then powers that were at DOJ and EOIR during the Bush II Administration! 

I had a similar experience when I was “pushed out” as BIA Chair and then Appellate Judge because Ashcroft and his team of hard liners (including the notorious neo-fascist nativist Kris Kobach) didn’t like my decisions standing up for the legal rights of migrants! 

Once in power, the GOP makes good on its threats against asylum seekers and other migrants, without necessarily passing any legislation. By contrast, with weak-kneed, tone-deaf “leaders” like Mayorkas and Garland, Dems fail to keep their campaign promises and won’t even move the worst of the GOP holdovers out of key positions where they undermine justice and ruin human lives. 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-134-22

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️THE PROBLEM @ THE BORDER ISN’T THAT BIDEN HAS  SOFTENED TRUMP’S RACIST, WHITE NATIONALIST, SCOFFLAW RHETORIC! — IT’S THAT BIDEN, GARLAND, & MAYORKAS HAVE FAILED TO RESTORE A ROBUST ASYLUM SYSTEM AT LEGAL PORTS OF ENTRY, STAFFED WITH EXPERT ASYLUM OFFICERS & QUALIFIED IMMIGRATION JUDGES WHO WILL GRANT ASYLUM TO THOSE QUALIFIED, END IDIOTIC TRUMP-ERA MISINTERPRETATIONS & MIS-APPLICATIONS OF ASYLUM LAW, AND ARE DEDICATED TO DUE PROCESS FOR ALL! — Administration’s  Misguided “Trump Lite” Approach Continues To Create Human Misery,☠️⚰️ Trash The Law, 🤮 Without Addressing The Real Problems Generated By Years Of “Malicious Incompetence” 🤡🆘 In U.S. Asylum & Refugee Policies!  — Jack Herrera Reports From The Border For Politico!
  2. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽NY TIMES EDITORIAL MAKES THE CASE FOR ARTICLE I — “It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.” — Garland’s Abject Failure To Fix EOIR, Bring In Experts Highlighted, As Constitutional Due Process, Ethical, Human Rights, Racial Justice, Gender Equity, Diversity, & Management Farce @ EOIR Continues Under His Disgraceful Lack Of Awareness & Failure Of Courageous, Progressive Leadership!  — Progressives Can’t Remain Silent, Must “Raise Hell” 👹With Biden Administration About Garland’s Lousy Performance @ EOIR, As He Continues To Stack Immigration “Judiciary” With “Miller Lite Holdovers” 🤮 To The Exclusion of Progressive Experts Who Helped Put Biden Administration In Office!
  3. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

🤮🤯🏴‍☠️👎🏽GARLAND’S DOJ GOES “FULL MILLER LITE” ON TRAUMATIZED REFUGEE FAMILIES! — Some Dem “Strategists” Like New Policy: Dis Progressives, Abandon Campaign Promises, Trash Vulnerable Migrant Families Of Color In Hopes Of Appeasing White Nationalist GOP Nativists!

Maria Sacchetti
Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

Maria Sacchetti & Sean Sullivan report for WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/biden-separated-families-court-migrants/2022/01/12/5c592f74-725a-11ec-8b0a-bcfab800c430_story.html

Two months after President Biden said migrant families separated at the border under the Trump administration deserve compensation, his administration’s lawyers are arguing in federal court that they are not in fact entitled to financial damages and their cases should be dismissed.

The Justice Department outlined its position in the government’s first court filings since settlement negotiations that could have awarded the families hundreds of thousands of dollars broke down in mid-December.

Government lawyers emphasized in the court documents that they do not condone the Trump administration’s policy of separating the children of undocumented migrants from their parents. But they said the U.S. government has a good deal of leeway when it comes to managing immigration and is immune from such legal challenges.

“At issue in this case is whether adults who entered the country without authorization can challenge the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration laws” under federal tort claims laws, the Justice Department said in a Jan. 7 brief in a lawsuit in Pennsylvania. “They cannot.”

The legal strategy reflects the Biden administration’s awkward position as it shifts from championing the migrant families politically to fighting them in court. Migrant families have filed approximately 20 lawsuits and hundreds of administrative claims seeking compensation for the emotional and sometimes physical abuse they allege they suffered during the separations.

. . . .

But while immigrant advocates and liberals are likely to be furious at the administration’s position in court, some Democrats say privately that it has a political upside. The image of the administration fighting against the large payments, they say, could blunt GOP arguments that the administration is too soft on immigration.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link.

“Awkward” seems like a “sanitized term” for “duplicitous and immoral!”

So, I assume that the Dems who are unwilling to stand up for progressive values and the human rights of migrants will look to their GOP nativist, White Nationalist buddies for contributions and votes come election time. Contrary to DOJ’s misrepresentation to the courts, individuals regardless of status had a statutory and treaty right to seek protection in the U.S. regardless of manner of entry. The unconstitutional Sessions/Miller scofflaw conduct was intended to punish and deter individuals from asserting and vindicating their legal rights.

Additionally, so-called “illegal entries” are to a large extent fueled by illegal policies by both the Biden and Trump Administrations of not having an operating, fair, timely asylum system at legal ports of entry. This has been compounded by failure of both Administrations to establish robust, fair refugee processing systems for Latin America in the regions where the refugee situations are generated.

I have a different perspective: A party afraid to stand up for the values of its core constituency stands for nothing at all! And we already have a major “party of no values.” So, the “competition” for the “no values voters” might already be over.

Disgusting as the anti-democracy, White Nationalist GOP is, I must say that they know who their supporters are and aren’t afraid to act accordingly. Just who are the Dems representing in this disgraceful and cowardly race to the bottom being led by Garland and Mayorkas (with an assist from Vice President “Die in Place” Harris)?

The Biden Administration’s “policy” of abandoning asylum seekers and allowing the Immigration Courts to operate dysfunctionally with mostly “holdover judges” and ever-mushrooming backlogs hasn’t proved to be a “political winner” to date. So, why do the tone-deaf Dems pushing it believe it will help them in November?

Hopefully, at least some Federal Courts will see through Garland’s disingenuous smokescreen and stick the DOJ & DHS with judgements much larger than the ones they were afraid to agree to in settlement.

The Garland DOJ continues to squander time, resources, and goodwill by filling the Article IIIs with ill-advised “Stephen Miller Lite” litigation positions. And, these are the folks progressives are depending on to vindicate voting rights and hold the leaders of the insurrection accountable? Good luck with that! Garland appears to be too busy defending Stephen Miller’s policies to effectively push progressive, due-process-oriented positions in the Article IIIs or reform his wholly owned, totally dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-13-22

Related posts:

  1. CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. EOIR TARGETS UNACCOMPANIED KIDS FOR DEPORATION RAILROAD!
  4. CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻: Victims Of Trump, Miller, Sessions Child Abuse May Suffer Lifelong Damage Similar To That Of Holocaust Survivors! — “My mom and I have learned along the way that nothing seems to make it go away. Not her prayers. Not my ‘American Dream’ success. Not any logical explanation of how governments work or don’t work. My mother’s touch will always feel foreign to me.” — PLUS: BREAKING UPDATE: Just Released House Report Documents Regime’s Massive Human Rights Criminal Conspiracy Against CHILDREN!

☠️⚰️BORDER DEATHS: Opaqueness & Lack Of Accountability Common Threads According To New Reports!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/09/us/politics/border-patrol-migrant-deaths.html

Eileen Sullivan reports in The NY Times:

By Eileen Sullivan

Jan. 9, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Angie Simms had been searching for her 25-year-old son for a week, filing a missing persons report and calling anyone who might have seen him, when the call came last August. Her son, Erik A. Molix, was in a hospital in El Paso, Texas, where he was strapped to his bed, on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma.

Mr. Molix had suffered head trauma after the S.U.V. he was driving with nine undocumented immigrants inside rolled over near Las Cruces, N.M., while Border Patrol agents pursued him at speeds of up to 73 miles per hour. He died Aug. 15, nearly two weeks after the crash; even by then, no one from the Border Patrol or any other law enforcement or government agency had contacted his family.

The number of migrants crossing the border illegally has soared, with the Border Patrol recording the highest number of encounters in more than six decades in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. With the surge has come an increase in deaths and injuries from high-speed chases by the Border Patrol, a trend that Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, attributes to a rise in brazen smugglers trying to flee its agents.

From 2010 to 2019, high-speed chases by the Border Patrol resulted in an average of 3.5 deaths a year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2020, there were 14 such deaths; in 2021, there were 21, the last on Christmas.

The agency recorded more than 700 “use of force” incidents on or near the southern border in the last fiscal year. Customs and Border Protection does not disclose how many of those ended in death, or how many high-speed chases take place each year.

Crossing the border without documentation or helping people do so is full of risk regardless of the circumstances, and stopping such crossings — and the criminal activity of smugglers — is central to the Border Patrol’s job. But the rising deaths raise questions about how far the agency should go with pursuits of smugglers and migrants, and when and how agents should engage in high-speed chases.

Customs and Border Protection has yet to provide Ms. Simms, a fifth-grade teacher in San Diego, with an explanation of what happened to her son. She saw a news release it issued two weeks after the crash; officials say it is not the agency’s responsibility to explain. She said she understood that officials suspected her son was involved in illegal activity, transporting undocumented immigrants.

“But that doesn’t mean you have to die for it,” she said.

Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has a policy stating that agents and officers can conduct high-speed chases when they determine “that the law enforcement benefit and need for emergency driving outweighs the immediate and potential danger created by such emergency driving.” The A.C.L.U. argues that the policy, which the agency publicly disclosed for the first time last month, gives agents too much discretion in determining the risk to public safety.

In a statement to The New York Times, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, said that while “C.B.P. agents and officers risk their lives every day to keep our communities safe,” the Homeland Security Department “owes the public the fair, objective and transparent investigation of use-of-force incidents to ensure that our highest standards are maintained and enforced.”

But previously unreported documents and details of the crash that killed Mr. Molix shed light on what critics say is a troubling pattern in which the Border Patrol keeps its operations opaque, despite the rising human toll of aggressive enforcement actions.

. . . .

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

ACLU of Texas Released the following related fact sheet:

https://www.aclutx.org/en/fact-sheet-deadly-trend-border-patrol-vehicle-pursuits

FACT SHEET: THE DEADLY TREND OF BORDER PATROL VEHICLE PURSUITSpastedGraphic.png

Vehicle pursuits may make for exciting movie scenes and reality TV, but in real life, police chases are dangerous and often deadly. Yet the United States Border Patrol, the largest law enforcement agency in the country, increasingly engages in vehicle pursuits that result in mounting injuries and deaths. The agency operates with almost no transparency. This culture of impunity puts lives and communities at risk of grave harm each time a chase occurs.

The ACLU of Texas and ACLU of New Mexico partnered to produce the following fact sheet on the disturbing trend of deadly Border Patrol vehicle pursuits. We analyzed Border Patrol’s recently released vehicle pursuit policy,  which reveals troubling discretionary authority given to agents. We also evaluate the department’s deeply flawed oversight and investigation protocols surrounding the pursuits, including the involvement of Border Patrol’s Critical Incident Teams –  internal investigative units tasked with protecting the agency from liability and further obscuring the truth behind deadly vehicle pursuits.

Click the link below to download and read the fact sheet.

STAY INFORMED

Email address *

Zip code *

RELATED ISSUES

DOCUMENTS

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

Read Sullivan’s complete article and get the full version of the ACLU fact sheet at the above links.

ACLU of Texas Attorney Shaw Drake is one of my former Georgetown Law “Refugee Law & Policy” students and a proud member of the New Due Process Army. Proud of you Shaw! 😎It’s what the “new generation of practical scholars” or “applied scholars” does!👍🏼⚖️

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-10-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  2. SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”
  3. TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICY: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE!” — Also, ICE Intentionally Falsifies Court Hearing Dates — Where Is The Accountability?
  4. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”

🤮👎🏽WASHPOST SLAMS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FOR ABANDONING NEGOTIATIONS WITH FAMILIES WHO SUFFERED CHILD ABUSE BY SESSIONS & MILLER! — “Having condemned a policy that traumatized children and their parents, Mr. Biden now leads an administration fighting in court to deny recompense to those same families.”

“Floaters”
So, what’s the “dollar value” of brown-skinned human lives to Biden, Harris, &  Garland?  We’re about to find out!
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/05/president-biden-broke-his-promise-separated-migrant-families/

Opinion by the Editorial Board

January 5 at 2:18 PM ET

When the Trump administration wrenched migrant babies, toddlers and tweens from their parents as a means of frightening away prospective asylum seekers, it was guilty of emotionally torturing innocent children. Americans of every political leaning expressed revulsion toward the policy implemented in 2018, especially when it became clear that the government had kept no clear records linking parents with their children — in other words, no ready means to reunite the families.

President Biden, as a candidate and also once in office, made clear his own disgust at the so-called zero-tolerance policy, calling it “criminal.” He said, correctly, that it “violates every notion of who we are as a nation.”

Now the president, having explicitly endorsed government compensation that would address the suffering of separated migrant family members, has apparently had a change of heart — or political calculation. In mid-December, the Justice Department abruptly broke off negotiations aimed at a financial settlement with hundreds of affected families. Having condemned a policy that traumatized children and their parents, Mr. Biden now leads an administration fighting in court to deny recompense to those same families.

The government has no means of alleviating the trauma inflicted by the previous president’s egregious treatment of those families. That is particularly true as regards the children, whose torment has been described and documented by medical professionals, advocates and journalists. The babies and toddlers who didn’t recognize their own mothers when they were finally reunited; the depression; the fear of further separations, even brief ones — the human aftershocks of Donald Trump’s heartlessness will linger for years, and for lifetimes in some cases.

The administration compounds the hurt by breaking off negotiations on compensating victims. The government must be held accountable; compensation is the most potent and credible vehicle for achieving that.

Granted, there may be a political price to pay. Republicans had a field day blasting the White House after media reports this fall suggested the government might pay $450,000 to separated family members — a settlement that could amount to $1 billion if applied to the several thousand affected migrants. Mr. Biden, apparently unaware of the status of negotiations at that time, said the reports, first published in the Wall Street Journal, were “garbage.” He later backed away from that remark, saying he did not know how much money would be suitable but that some amount was certainly due.

Now, it seems, all bets are off. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, the government would enter into what would likely be years of costly litigation, in which Mr. Biden’s Justice Department would be in the awkward position of defending a policy that Mr. Biden himself — and most Americans — have condemned as evil. There is no predicting how individual judges or juries might react to documented accounts of harm done to children. No one should be surprised if some were to award enormous damages — conceivably in amounts that exceed the $450,000 contemplated in the now-stalled negotiations.

By walking away from the bargaining table, Mr. Biden has broken an explicit, repeated promise. Whatever the political calculus behind that decision, it is morally indefensible.

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

Garland fails to stand up for the rights of families of color — again. At the same time, he ties up resources on a frivolous DOJ defense of the indefensible!

“Replacement theory,” White Nationalism, and racism always have been and remain at the core of the GOP’s anti-democracy insurrection. It’s no coincidence that Trump’s plans to de-stabilize American democracy began with cowardly attacks on vulnerable migrants (enabled by a failed Supremes) and culminated in open insurrection.

The dots aren’t that hard to connect. But, Garland doesn’t seem to be able to do it!

If Garland can’t handle the “low hanging fruit” — like settling these cases and creating a progressive judiciary at EOIR who will stand up  for the rights of all persons while using expertise and “practical scholarship” to replace dysfunction with efficiency, his pledge to hold the January insurrectionists and their leaders accountable rings hollow!

I’m not the only one to note and question Garland’s uninspiring performance as Attorney General at a time of existential crisis. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Merrick-Garland-isn-t-going-to-save-16752522.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_opinioncentral&sid=5bfc15614843ea55da6b8709

For those who read the LA Times, there was a “spot on” letter to the editors today accurately characterizing Garland as the “Attorney General for different era.”

As I’ve noted before, this is NOT Ed Levi’s, Griffin Bell’s, or Ben Civiletti’s DOJ. It isn’t even Janet Reno’s DOJ. (I ought to  know, as I worked under each of the foregoing.)

It’s an organization that has become increasingly politicized over the last two decades (as it was during Watergate), and that allowed itself to be weaponized by Trump’s White Nationalist regime. EOIR, Executive Orders, and immigration litigation were perhaps the most obvious, but by no means the only, examples.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-22

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: UNETHICAL, 🏴‍☠️WHITE NATIONALIST,⚰️ MISOGYNIST 🤮“WAR CRIMINAL” ☠️JEFFREY ROSEN TAKES COWARDLY🐓 PARTING SHOT AT REFUGEE🦸🏻 WOMEN! — DOJ Clean-Out, 🧹🪠🧻Fumigation, & Restaffing With Ethical Attorneys Can’t Begin Soon Enough!
  2. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻IN NYT OP-ED, FORMER TRUMP DOJ ATTORNEY ERICA NEWLAND ADMITS COMPLICITY! — Having Undermined Democratic Institutions, Sold False Narratives To (Too Often Willing) Federal Judges, & Participated In Racist-Inspired “Dred Scottification” (“Dehumanization”) Of the Other Is Actually a BIG Deal! — So Is The Destruction Of Due Process & Fundamental Fairness In The Immigration Courts (Now, “Clown Courts”🤡, or “America’s Star Chambers”☠️) 
  4. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️COURTS OF APPEALS CONTINUE TO THROW ROTTEN TOMATOES 🍅 @ BIA’S ANTI-ASYLUM BIAS — Basic Analytical, Legal Errors Continue From Weaponized, Non-Expert “Star Chamber” ☠️ Posing As ”Tribunal!” — Judge Garland Must Fix This Inexcusable, Unnecessary, Systemic Failure Now! — Justice For Persons Of Color & Migrants Can’t “Wait For Godot!”

🤮👎🏽FACT-CHECKING MAYOYKAS: 1) Haiti Is NOT Safe; 2) Asylum Seekers Are NOT A “Health Threat!”

Jacob Soboroff
Jacob Soboroff
Correspondent
NBC News

Jacob Soboroff @ NBC News With Truth About Deplorable, Unsafe, Conditions Facing Those Deported To Haiti:

https://www.today.com/video/migrants-return-to-haiti-following-deportations-from-us-mexico-border-122368581881

Thousands of Haitian migrants removed from a makeshift camp near Texas have been sent back to Haiti. Now we’re getting our first up-close look at what they are facing upon their arrival. NBC’s Jacob Soboroff reports for TODAY from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Sept. 30, 2021

Eleanor Acer
Eleanor Acer
Senior Director for Refugee Protection, Human Rights First

Human Rights First debunks myth that seekers present a COVID health threat:
ASYLUM DOES NOT THREATEN PUBLIC HEALTH

 

The last week saw more of the Biden administration’s despicable deportation of Haitians and use Title 42 to deny their right to seek asylum. The administration perpetuates the false claim that their use of Title 42 is not an immigration policy, but a public health one, despite the vehement disagreement of public health experts.
pastedGraphic.png
Courtesy Washington Times

Migrants, many from Haiti, wade across the Rio Grande

river to leave Del Rio, Texas to avoid possible deportation.

Human Rights First also responded to the administration’s plans to use Guantanamo Bay as a migrant detention facility.

 

“Sending people who are seeking protection to a place that is notorious for being treated as a rights-free zone is the last thing that the Biden administration should do,” Eleanor Acer, Senior Director of Refugee Protection at Human Rights First told NPR. “It is nothing more than a blatant attempt to evade oversight, due process, human rights protections and the refugee laws of the United States.”
Maria Sacchetti
Maria Sacchetti
Immigration Reporter, Washington Post

Even in rolling out otherwise more reasonable enforcement priorities for ICE, Mayorkas insisted on making the bogus claim that recent border arrivals present a “national security threat,” as reported by the WashPost’s Maria Sacchetti:

Mayorkas said in his memo Thursday that migrants who cross the border illegally, particularly those who arrived unlawfully over the past year or so, remain a “threat to border security” and a priority for removal. But the ACLU has argued in its lawsuit that migrants have a legal right to seek asylum.

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

“Courtside’s” rating of Mayorkas’s claims: 🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥🤥  

Who would have thought that more than eight months into the Biden Administration, we’d still be arguing about basics like “migrants have a legal right to seek asylum in the US?” See, INA section 208.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-01-21

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”
  2. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  3. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”
  4. CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH @ DHS: ICE DEPORTS BLACKS TO DANGER & POTENTIAL DEATH, MANY WITH NO DUE PROCESS!🏴‍☠️ — Legislators Call On Biden Administration To End Racist Enforcement Policies!

☠️⚰️🤮👎🏽BREAKING: DC CIR. OK’s BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S CONTINUED RETURN OF ASYLUM APPLICANTS TO DEATH ☠️ & DANGER WITH NO PROCESS!🏴‍☠️

Andrea Castillo
Andrea Castillo
Immigration Reporter
LA Times
Source: LA Times website

Andrea Castillo reports for the LA Times:

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-09-30/appellate-court-oks-biden-administration-to-keep-expelling-families-under-health-law

A federal appellate court Thursday temporarily granted the Biden administration’s request to continue the use of a public health order to quickly expel migrants with children who are stopped along the U.S. border.

A lower court had given the Biden administration until Thursday to limit use of the law, while immigrant and legal advocates proceeded with a lawsuit against it. The Trump administration had invoked the 1944 health statute, known as Title 42, to close the border to prevent people from entering the country, citing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.

The case, brought in the District of Columbia by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, focuses on families with children, meaning the administration can continue to expel single adults under the provision.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan found earlier this month that advocates were likely to succeed with their case. In a 58-page ruling, he wrote that migrant families subjected to Title 42 “face real threats of violence and persecution” and are deprived of statutory rights to seek protection in the U.S.

. . . .

****************
Read Andrea’s complete article at the link!

More unfair and unjustified returns of refugees to death and despair courtesy of an Administration that doesn’t care and Federal Judges unwilling to do their jobs! The dead can’t speak. But, history will judge all those involved in this disgraceful episode!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-30-21

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. 🤮🏴‍☠️GARLAND DOJ “POLISHES” OTHERWISE LACKLUSTER LITIGATION RECORD WITH BIG WIN FOR STEPHEN MILLER & HIS NEO-NAZI ANTI-ASYLUM POLICY! — “ There was no science involved, only anti-immigrant and anti-asylum animus.”
  2. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️SCOFFLAW ADMINISTRATION: Biden, Garland, Mayorkas Continue Trump Policies That Fuel Kidnapping Of Asylum Applicants, Aid Smugglers! — Molly O’Toole Reports @ LAT!
  4. ☠️⚰️ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN DIGNITY, & DUE PROCESS DON’T MATTER —Trumpist USDJ Shafts Asylum Seekers Of Color By Reinstating “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” (a/k/a MPP) Directed Against Asylum Seekers Of Color!

🆘🏴‍☠️ “ROGUE DEPARTMENT” 🤮— PROGRESSIVE IMMIGRATION/HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS WERE THE FIRST TO ALERT AMERICA TO THE UNBRIDLED CORRUPTION AT TRUMP’S DOJ AND THE ASTOUNDING ETHICAL FAILURES & MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE AMONG ITS EMPLOYEES! — Garland Might Think That “Going Slow” While DOJ Dishes Out Injustice Is “A-OK“ — Many Of Us Don’t!

 

Sessions in a cage
Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com
Republished under license
Billy Barr Consigliere
Bill Barr Consigliere
Artist: Pat Bagley
Salt Lake Tribune
Reproduced under license

Judge Garland wonders whether there could be some “problems” with these guys and their corrupt agendas. Meanwhile, his DOJ continues to sink deeper into the muck every day! Hey, what’s the rush? It’s “only justice” and human lives at stake here! Garland seems to think that can’t compare with protecting important “Departmental prerogatives” to cover up past and perpetuate future injustices @ Justice! He’s wrong! Dead wrong in some cases!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/21/trump-doj-bill-bar-attorney-general-justice-department?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Peter Stone reports for The Guardian:

Donald Trump never did much to hide his dangerous belief that the US justice department and the attorneys general who helmed it should serve as his own personal lawyers and follow his political orders, regardless of norms and the law.

Former senior DoJ officials say the former president aggressively prodded his attorneys general to go after his enemies, protect his friends and his interests, and these moves succeeded with alarming results until Trump’s last few months in office.

The martyr who may rise again: Christian right’s faith in Trump not shaken

But now with Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, Merrick Garland as attorney general and Democrats controlling Congress, more and more revelations are emerging about just how far Trump’s justice department went rogue. New inquiries have been set up to investigate the scale of wrongdoing.

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Trump’s disdain for legal principles and the constitution revealed itself repeatedly – especially during Bill Barr’s tenure as attorney general, during most of 2019 and 2020. During Barr’s term in office, Trump ignored the tradition of justice as a separate branch of government, and flouted the principle of the rule of law, say former top justice lawyers and congressional Democrats.

In Barr, Trump appeared to find someone almost entirely aligned with the idea of doing his bidding. Barr sought to undermine the conclusions of Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, independent congressional oversight, and Trump critics in and out of government, while taking decisions that benefited close Trump allies.

But more political abuses have emerged, with revelations that – starting under attorney general Jeff Sessions in 2018 – subpoenas were issued in a classified leak inquiry to obtain communications records of top Democrats on the House intelligence committee. Targets were Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, who were investigating Kremlin election meddling, and also several committee staffers and journalists.

Democrats in Congress, as well as Garland, have forcefully denounced these Trumpian tactics. Garland has asked the department’s inspector general to launch his own inquiry, and examine the subpoenas involving members of Congress and the media. Congressional committees are eyeing their own investigations into the department’s extraordinary behavior.

“There was one thing after another where DoJ acted inappropriately and violated the fundamental principle that law enforcement must be even-handed. The DoJ must always make clear that no person is above the law,” said Donald Ayer, deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration.

Ayer thinks there could be more revelations to come. “The latest disclosure of subpoenas issued almost three years ago shows we don’t yet know the full extent of the misconduct that was engaged in.”

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link. Once again, thanks to Don Ayer, a former colleague in both public and private practice, for speaking out!

  • Don Ayer
    Don Ayer
    American Lawyer
    Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General
    Photo: www.ali.org

The record of anti-immigrant, White Nationalist bias at EOIR and the DOJ’s “Dred Scott” approach to justice for asylum applicants and other migrants is crystal clear! Thanks to the NDPA, courageous journalists, some “inside sources,” and the remarkable number of rebuffs from Federal Courts, the record on misfeasance and bias at EOIR, OIL, and the SG’s Office is clear. 

For example, there is no “issue” that Sessions’s “child separation policy” violated the Constitution, that he and other Government officials like Rod Rosenstein and Kristen Nielsen lied about it ( ‘We Need to Take Away Children,’ No Matter How Young, Justice Dept. Officials Said
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/us/politics/family-separation-border-immigration-jeff-sessions-rod-rosenstein.html?referringSource=articleShare), and that the DOJ attorneys defending this abomination at least failed to do “due diligence” and probably misrepresented to Federal Courts.

In many illegal child separation cases, as the Biden Administration is discovering, the damage is irreparable! Yet, only the the victims have suffered! The “perps” go about their daily business without accountability!

Every day, Garland’s lackadaisical approach to restoring “justice @ Justice” and his apparent indifference to individual human rights and fair judging continue to harm vulnerable asylum seekers and other individuals and disintegrate our legal system. It’s “not OK!”

Progressives and members of the NDPA must recognize, if they haven’t already, that they can’t count on Garland! They will have to continue to use litigation, legislation, oversight, FOIA, public opinion, and political pressure to get the immediate common sense progressive reforms and overdue personnel changes that Garland, Monaco, Gupta, and Clarke are avoiding. Garland might view “justice” as too abstract a concept to require his immediate attention. Many of us don’t agree! 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-22-21

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: UNETHICAL, 🏴‍☠️WHITE NATIONALIST,⚰️ MISOGYNIST 🤮“WAR CRIMINAL” ☠️JEFFREY ROSEN TAKES COWARDLY🐓 PARTING SHOT AT REFUGEE🦸🏻 WOMEN! — DOJ Clean-Out, 🧹🪠🧻Fumigation, & Restaffing With Ethical Attorneys Can’t Begin Soon Enough!
  2. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  3. 🤮👎🏽ULTIMATE HIPOCRACY: EVEN AS AMERICA FINALLY CELEBRATES JUNETEENTH HOLIDAY, DRED SCOTT & INSTITUTIONALIZED RACIST DEHUMANIZATION REMAIN REALITIES FOR BLACKS & OTHER MIGRANTS OF COLOR AT EOIR & DHS — Imprisonment Without Trial, Bogus Bonds, Mistreatment In The New American Gulag, Jim Crow “Courts,” No Rule Of Law,  Still Realities For Those Of Color Exercising Legal Rights In Broken System!
  4. 🤮👎🏽WASHPOST SLAMS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FOR ABANDONING NEGOTIATIONS WITH FAMILIES WHO SUFFERED CHILD ABUSE BY SESSIONS & MILLER! — “Having condemned a policy that traumatized children and their parents, Mr. Biden now leads an administration fighting in court to deny recompense to those same families.”

🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!

 

https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-united-nations-donald-trump-immigration-health-98d4da6cb6f2999787c3fcd3579de695?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=June4_MorningWire&utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers

Lee Gelernt
Lee Gelernt
Deputy Director
ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Program
PHOTO: ACLU
Elliott Spagat
Elliott Spagat
Reporter
Associated Press
Julie Watson
Julie Watson
Reporter, AP
PHOTO: Pulitzer website

Elliot Spagot and Julie Watson report for AP:

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration has quietly tasked six humanitarian groups with recommending which migrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S. instead of being rapidly expelled from the country under federal pandemic-related powers that block people from seeking asylum.

The groups will determine who is most vulnerable in Mexico, and their criteria has not been made public. It comes as large numbers of people are crossing the southern border and as the government faces intensifying pressure to lift the public health powers instituted by former President Donald Trump and kept in place by President Joe Biden during the coronavirus pandemic.

Several members of the consortium spoke to The Associated Press about the criteria and provided details of the system that have not been previously reported. The government is aiming to admit to the country up to 250 asylum-seekers a day who are referred by the groups and is agreeing to that system only until July 31. By then, the consortium hopes the Biden administration will have lifted the public health rules, though the government has not committed to that.

So far, a total of nearly 800 asylum-seekers have been let in since May 3, and members of the consortium say there is already more demand than they can meet.

The groups have not been publicly identified except for the International Rescue Committee, a global relief organization. The others are London-based Save the Children; two U.S.-based organizations, HIAS and Kids in Need of Defense; and two Mexico-based organizations, Asylum Access and the Institute for Women in Migration, according to two people with direct knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not intended for public release.

Asylum Access, which provides services to people seeing asylum in Mexico, characterized its role as minimal.

The effort started in El Paso, Texas, and is expanding to Nogales, Arizona.

A similar but separate mechanism led by the American Civil Liberties Union began in late March and allows 35 families a day into the United States at places along the border. It has no end date.

The twin tracks are described by participating organizations as an imperfect transition from so-called Title 42 authority, named for a section of an obscure 1944 public health law that Trump used in March 2020 to effectively end asylum at the Mexican border. With COVID-19 vaccination rates rising, Biden is finding it increasingly difficult to justify the expulsions on public health grounds and faces demands to end it from the U.N. refugee agency and members of his own party and administration.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link. 

Well, I’ll give them this. “Farming out” the asylum system to these NGO experts is better than the Trump approach. The Trump regime “outsourced” the American asylum system to Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. 

The common denominators among those countries is that the are all notorious for human rights abuses, corrupt government, dysfunctional legal systems, and lack of any semblance of a fair, functioning asylum adjudication system. Additionally, all are major senders of asylum seekers to America.

But, the Biden Administration’s “under the counter” approach is still fundamentally wrong! It’s yet another “haste makes waste gimmick” that lacks transparency, clear standards, accountability, and most of all, operates outside of any legal framework! 

That’s a recipe for arbitrariness, abuse, and unfairness. Even if the system were to produce decent results, the lack of transparency robs it of credibility. It’s therefore likely to be attacked by both advocates and restrictionists while being panned in the press — a self-created  “worst case” scenario of the type Dem Administrations seem to specialize in when it comes to immigration and human rights!

The solution here is to do what many of us have been recommending since the day the election results became final. That is, bring in outside experts to USCIS to lead and revitalize the Asylum Officer screening program and bring in real judges, largely from the outside, — progressive practical experts in asylum law committed to human rights and due process — to EOIR to establish legitimate precedents and insure fair, humane, and uniform treatment of asylum seekers.

It’s possible, indeed probable, that the U.S. representatives of some of the NGOs involved would be among the best experts to do this — leading human rights authorities  like Mark Hatfield at HIAS, Wendy Young at KIND, and Wendy Wylegala, also of KIND are obvious choices. 

So, put them and other practical experts like Professor Karen Musalo (Center for Gender & Refugee Studies), Eleanor Acer (Human Rights First), Professor Stephen Legomsky (former USCIS Chief Counsel), Associate Dean Jaya Ramji Nogales (Temple Law), Judge Ilyce Shugall (Round Table), Dean Kevin Johnson (UC Davis), Michelle Mendez (CLINIC), Professor Lenni Benson (Safe Passage Project), Professor Ingrid Eagly (UCLA Law), Laura Lynch (NILC), Professor Stephen Yale Loehr (Cornell Law), Jason Dzubow (The Asylumist), Professor Debi Anker (Harvard Law), Professor Michele Pistone (VIISTA/Villanova Law), and others like them on the payroll at USCIS and EOIR and let them fix the asylum system!

Experts like this could, if properly empowered, in relatively short order, establish a system that is legal, constitutional, fair, generous, humane, practical, efficient, and that complies with all of our international obligations. In other words, a “model system” that would serve the best interests of humanity and our nation!

The current opaque, chaotic, arbitrary mess at our Southern Border (essentially the Biden Administration’s version of “Hunger Games”) serves nobody’s interests excepts cartels and smugglers. It’s also likely to kill record numbers of asylum seekers unless fixed, NOW! https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/summer-migrant-deaths-southern-border/2021/06/03/a03d7bb8-c3a6-11eb-8c34-f8095f2dc445_story.html

Bringing in the experts seems like an outstanding, “no brainer” alternative to the godawful, dysfunctional, disgraceful mess that the Trump kakistocracy left at USCIS and EOIR, much of which continues to ramble on, further off the rails all the time, under Mayorkas and Garland. The Biden Administration can’t, and won’t, get the job done on asylum and racial justice without radical, yet logical and badly needed, personnel and leadership changes at USCIS and EOIR!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-04-21

Related posts:

  1. 🇺🇸🗽⚖️GEORGE W. BUSH INSTITUTE REPORT: GENDER VIOLENCE ☠️⚰️DRIVES CONTINUING REFUGEE FLOW TO U.S. — Dishonesty Of Sessions’s Misogynistic Attack In Matter Of A-B- 🤮 Exposed Again! — Yet, Garland Fails To Take Action To End Misogyny, Anti-Asylum Culture @ EOIR, Even As He Also Fails To Insist On The Restoration Of The Rule Of Law @ Our Borders! —  WHY?🤯
  2. 😰NO HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR FAMILIES IN “THE NEW AMERICAN GULAG”☠️⚰️ — As Kakistocracy Of War Criminals 🤮🏴‍☠️ Departs, Will President Biden Have The Wisdom & Guts To Move Beyond “The Dem Border Alarmists” & Get The Progressive Leaders 🦸🏽‍♂️⚖️ From The NDPA In Place To Bring Due Process & Order To The Border?🗽🇺🇸
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️RACE IN AMERICA: CARRIE ROSENBAUM “GETS IT,” EVEN AS MAYORKAS, GARLAND, HARRIS & THE OTHER BIDEN HYPOCRITES PRETEND NOT TO:  “Immigration reform, and a more robust application of the Equal Protection doctrine to all those inside the country, and at our borders, is necessary to move towards meaningfully dismantling systemic racism.”

🏴‍☠️🤮👎🏻☠️ARBITRARY, CAPRICIOUS, ILLEGAL, INHUMANE, DEADLY ⚰️ DEFINES BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S SOUTHERN BORDER POLICY! — Gross Failure To Stand Up For Constitution, Rule Of Law, Human Dignity!

Biden Muddled Liberty Message

Biden Muddled Liberty Message

Biden Border Message
“Border Message”
By Steve Sack
Reproduced under license

NBC News Reports from the “Law Free Zone” (“LFZ”) established by Biden Administration at the Southern Border:

https://apple.news/A355LpPmARmKZtO-iBa6C7A

Under Biden, crossing the U.S. border has become like a lottery. Timing is everything.

“Sometimes I ask myself why they [let me stay] and they deported others,” said a 20-year-old Nicaraguan man. “And I give thanks to God.”

by Julia Ainsley, Didi Martinez and Kenzi Abou-Sabe | NBC NEWS

Julia Ainsley
Julia Edwards Ainsley
Investigative Reporter, NBC News

. . . .

“We will see more deaths. And that’s the sad truth for us,” Copp said.

Immigration advocates also believe uncertainty surrounding the Title 42 policy is driving many migrants to take more dangerous routes to avoid being apprehended all together.

“The Biden administration’s retention of Title 42 and refusal to open the legal ports of entry is having the perverse effect of forcing desperate asylum seekers fleeing danger to cross between the ports, which is to nobody’s benefit,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s immigrants’ rights project and a lead plaintiffs’ lawyer in a lawsuit challenging the use of Title 42.

For now, the Biden administration has made no promises of end dates for the Title 42 policy, even as Covid-19 restrictions ease across the country. Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said that the policy is in place to protect both migrants, who would need to be kept temporarily in congregate care settings if allowed in, and agents.

Gelernt said the policy of only guaranteeing unaccompanied children entry forces some families to self-separate in order to give their children the best chance of seeking asylum in the U.S.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the link. A “lottery” for human lives! What’s next for the Biden/Harris Administration, “Hunger Games V?”

Mayorkas’s claim is pure BS! 💩 This inane, illegal, immoral, and unnecessary policy “protects” nobody except smugglers and traffickers! And, the idea that at this point, it is required by COVID is absurd on its face! 

By contrast, Lee Gelernt of ACLU, a long-time inspirational leader of the NDPA, speaks truth! The Southern Border can’t be regulated without repealing the illegal Title 42 restrictions and immediately re-establishing the rule of law. That includes timely professional screening by expert Asylum Officers working for USCIS; a fair, robust, generous, practical, due-process-oriented application of asylum and other protection laws by a radically reformed EOIR utilizing the services of real Immigration Judges who are experts in asylum law; and close cooperation and support from NGOs, local governments, religious, and private bar groups to provide universal representation to asylum seekers and to lead and implement resettlement efforts throughout the U.S.

Lee Gelernt
Lee Gelernt
Deputy Director
ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Program
PHOTO: ACLU

The expertise, practical problem solving ability, and resources are available. Most of it is in the private/NGO/academic sectors right now. These are the leaders and experts the Biden Administration should have brought into Government “right off the bat” to solve the problem, but has tragically failed to do so. Not like they were’t told well in advance!

It won’t happen with the bureaucrats and “tunnel visioners” the Biden Administration is relying upon  — folks committed to repeating the failures of the past who lack the experience, vision, courage, independence, and creative problem solving ability necessary to lead the way to a better future. Using the law (or lack thereof) as a “deterrent” and issuing threats won’t stop desperate refugees from coming. As we can see, it only “turns them off” on using our (unavailable and now largely defunct) legal system and drives them first into the hands of traffickers and smugglers and eventually into our underground “extralegal” population.

Human migration is eons older than our republic! It won’t be eradicated or turned off and on by the utterances and actions of politicos and law enforcement officials.  It requires a thoughtful, informed approach that has been largely absent from our government for decades, which is why the failures and resulting human trauma, wasted resources, and squandered human opportunities persist Administration after Administration, regardless of party and rhetoric.

Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions had no problem running all over the rule of law when he wanted to implement his illegal, White Nationalist, misogynist agenda and degrade asylum seekers with dehumanization and “Dred Scottification” of the other, primarily women, children, and  individuals of color.

Unfortunately, by contrast, the Biden Administration, is too weak-kneed to stand up for the rule of law and human dignity!

But, folks like Julia Ainsley and her team are making a permanent public record. As in the Trump Administration, the Biden Administration doesn’t appear to recognize the concept of accountability in Government, particularly as applied to itself. But, I doubt history will be as kind and as accommodating to those, regardless of political affiliation, carrying out these illegal, irrational,  inhumane, and “designed to fail” policies.

Perhaps, the “dead can’t speak!” ☠️⚰️ But, others certainly can and will speak for them and see that the abusers of humanity are held accountable.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-02-21

Related posts:

  1. 🗽⚖️🇺🇸LEE GELERNT @ ACLU SAYS BIDEN ADMINISTRATION “cannot farm out the asylum system.” Yet, That Appears To Be Largely What They Are Doing Under New, Previously Unpublicized Program!
  2. VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS THINKS RULE OF LAW DOESN’T APPLY TO RICH NATION THAT ILLEGALLY TURNS DESPERATE REFUGEES AWAY, SUGGESTS GUATEMALANS SHOULD DIE IN PLACE! — “Deterrence Statement” Won’t Stop Migration, Won’t Appease Nativist-Restrictionists, But Will Cost Her Support From Human Rights Progressives Who Helped Elect Her!  — There Will Be No Workable Solutions At Our Southern Border Without a Functional, Robust Legal Asylum System That Complies With Due Process!
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. 🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻STILL SCOFFLAWS AFTER ALL THESE MONTHS: UNHCR SPEAKS OUT AS BIDEN, HARRIS, GARLAND, MAYORKAS CONTINUE TRUMP-MILLER POLICIES OF ILLEGAL, IMMORAL, UNNECESSARY RETURN OF ASYLUM SEEKERS WITH NO DUE PROCESS UNDER BOGUS TITLE 42 RATIONALE! — Ever Wonder Why Racial & Gender Justice & Equity Are Mirages In Today’s America? — Look No Further Than The “Dred Scottification” Of “The Other” @ DOJ & DHS On Display Every Day!