JUSTICE GORSUCH EXPRESSES SOME SKEPTICISM ABOUT GOV’S UNLIMITED POWER IN IMMIGRATION DETENTION CASE!

6https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/chrisgeidner/supreme-court-dhs-immigrant-detention

Chris Geidner reports for BuzzFeed News:

In a case that the ACLU says could affect thousands of immigrants, the Supreme Court on Wednesday considered when the government has the right to detain a class of immigrants without a bail hearing.

Under a 1996 law, the federal government is allowed to detain immigrants whose criminal conviction or involvement in terrorism-related activities would make them inadmissible or deportable. The law says the government “shall” take any of those immigrants into custody “when the alien is released” from criminal custody. The question before the justices is: What happens if the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t do so immediately?

The arguments on Wednesday focused on the technicalities of the 1996 law, rules of grammar, and timelines — not the sort of fiery rhetoric usually favored by President Donald Trump or Attorney General Jeff Sessions when talking about immigrants.

And while the case was granted to resolve the question of whether the statute still applied if DHS does not act immediately — whether there is any time restriction — the arguments shifted to a question of what limitation would be reasonable.

After a back-and-forth with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and a question from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Neil Gorsuch spoke up early in the Wednesday arguments, asking, “[D]oes the government have any view about if ever the obligation [to take an immigrant into custody] lapses? Could it be 30 years? … Thirty years, and the government was aware of him the entire time and chose not to act. … Is there any limit on the government’s power?”

The government lawyer, Zachary Tripp from the Solicitor General’s Office, said the law created “a continuing obligation” that “does not lapse.”

Later, when Justice Stephen Breyer raised a similar question and Tripp began answering about when certain underlying crimes would be covered under the detention provision, Gorsuch interjected, said that back-and-forth was “quibbling,” and redirected Tripp to the larger question: “Justice Breyer’s question is my question, and I really wish you’d answer it.”

Breyer then stated his question more directly: “Is the government’s position that this paragraph, which says shall be arrested upon release, applies to a person who has been released 50 years before?”

Tripp, not giving in at all, said the government’s position is “absolutely that this applies regardless of the time” that’s passed.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.

I had predicted the possibility that Justice Gorsuch’s past jurisprudence questioning the extent of and deference to Executive Power could make him an “honest broker” in some immigration cases.

I’d like to believe Justice Kavanaugh’s testimony that he will approach cases in a fair and impartial manner. But, neither his partisan outburst during his conformation nor his fawning performance during the unnecessary “formal swearing in” that became a Trump campaign rally were very encouraging from a fairness and impartiality standpoint.

Both his reputation and the country would be better served if he filled the “open minded conservative” role played by his predecessor and mentor Justice Kennedy rather than the “bought and paid for partisan vote” that all the Senators and Trump expect him to be.

Indeed, the one unifying theme of the Senate confirmation process was that all believed that he would perform as a totally predictable right-wing partisan vote. If he doesn’t live up to this expectation, the Dems will be (pleasantly) shocked and the GOP outraged at his “betrayal.” That’s why he would do well to at least occasionally listen carefully to the analysis of some of his more “liberal leaning” colleagues.

Here’s the full transcript of the oral argument courtesy of Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Immigration Community: https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2018/16-1363_h315.pdf

PWS

10-11-18

THE HILL: NOLAN COMMENTS ON THE ADMINISTRATION’S FAMILY DETENTION PROPOSAL

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/406656-trump-moves-to-detain-immigrant-children-with-their-parents

 

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Proposed regulation

On Sept. 7, the Trump administration filed a proposed rule to establish final regulations that would replace the Settlement Agreement.

According to DHS, the proposed regulations would implement the relevant, substantive terms of the Settlement Agreement with minor revisions to accommodate changed circumstances, and to implement closely-related provisions in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

The main benefit would be the creation of a federal licensing scheme for additional Family Residential Centers that would provide care for alien minors and their parents.

According to the American Immigration Council, “shifting the licensing and oversight of facilities that hold children to DHS is profoundly problematic, given the lack of expertise the department has in child welfare and its poor track record on oversight of adult facilities.”

Maybe, but if a challenge to the regulation goes to court, the main issue is likely to be whether administration officials can bypass an explicit statutory provision requiring mandatory detention in expedited removal proceedings with a settlement agreement.

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Go on over to The Hill at the link to read the rest of Nolan’s article which contains summaries of the Flores settlement and the expedited removal process.

PWS

09-17-18

BREAKING: WHAT DID I TELL YOU? – HASTE MAKES WASTE! – TRUMP SCOFFLAWS FORCED TO AGREE TO REHEAR ASYLUM CASES OF THOSE DENIED DUE PROCCESS THROUGH FAMILY SEPARATION!!!!

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/13/17853770/children-separated-news-update-parents-trump

Dara Lind reports for Vox News:

As many as 1,000 parents separated from their children are getting a second chance to stay in the US

In a huge reversal, the Trump administration is giving families another chance to claim asylum — and even some parents who’ve already been deported might be eligible.

A Honduran father and his 6-year-old son worship during Sunday mass on September 9, 2018, in Oakland, California. They fled their country seeking asylum in the US.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Trump administration has just agreed to give parents who were separated from their children at the US-Mexico border earlier this year a second chance to make asylum claims in the US.

The Department of Justice has negotiated an agreement that covers three lawsuits filed against the government over the family-separation policy. Parents in the US who’d been ordered deported would get another chance to pass an interview demonstrating a “credible fear” of persecution — the first step in the asylum process.

If either the parent or the child passes the screening interview, families will be allowed to apply for asylum together. Some parents who don’t pass will be allowed to remain with their children in the US while the children’s cases are adjudicated.

And in some cases, the government is even willing to consider reopening cases for parents who were already deported from the US.

The agreement covers three lawsuits: Ms. L v. ICE, which forced the government to reunite separated families this summer; M- M- M- v. ICE, brought on behalf of children separated from parents; and Dora v. Sessions, a lawsuit from parents who had failed their initial asylum screenings because they were distraught after weeks of separation from their children.

If the agreement is approved by the federal judges overseeing the three lawsuits, it will result in a second chance for hundreds of parents. Muslim Advocates and the Legal Aid Justice Center, who represented the plaintiffs in Dora v. Sessions, believe it could give “well over 1,000” parents another chance at an asylum claim. And for many families, it will eliminate (or at least defer) the impossible choice between giving up a child’s legal case, and separating the family again by keeping the child in the US while the parent is deported.

Separating families made it much harder for parents to seek asylum

Under the Trump administration’s family separation policy, a parent who wanted to seek asylum in the US had one chance: to pass a “credible fear” screening interview with an asylum office.

If a parent passed the credible fear screening, he or she was given a chance to seek asylum before an immigration judge; if the parent failed, he or she could appeal the decision to an immigration judge, with much worse odds. Losing the appeal, or agreeing to drop the case, led to an order of deportation.

Generally, most asylum seekers pass their credible fear screenings. But evidence suggests that parents who were separated from their children often failed their interviews. Parents were often so consumed by grief over their separation from their children that they weren’t able to answer asylum officers’ questions fully and effectively, according to the lawsuit filed in Dora v. Sessions.

“Explaining the basis for an asylum claim is very difficult under the best of circumstances,” said one source familiar with the interview process but not professionally authorized to speak on the record. “When someone is a) detained, b) almost certainly unrepresented, and c) beside herself with fear and desperation because of having had her child taken from her,” the source continued, “it is almost impossible.”

By the time nearly 2,000 parents and children were reunited in July (thanks to Judge Dana Sabraw’s rulings in the Ms. L case ordering family reunification), the overwhelming majority of parents had already lost their cases and been ordered deported. But their children — who’d been placed on a separate legal track as “unaccompanied alien children” after being separated from their parents — often still had ongoing cases and a real chance of winning some form of legal status in the US.

So upon being reunited, hundreds of families were faced with the choice between returning to their home country together (and facing possible peril or persecution), and keeping the child in the US in hopes of winning asylum or another form of legal status — and separating the family anew. (Some parents alleged they weren’t even given this chance, and were coerced into withdrawing their children’s legal claims — and forcibly reseparated without warning if they refused to comply.)

None of this would have happened if families hadn’t been separated to begin with. Under normal circumstances, if either a parent or a child passed an asylum interview, the government would allow them both to file asylum claims. And obviously, parents who weren’t traumatized by family separation might have had a better chance with their interviews. But simply reuniting the family didn’t solve the problem.

The government is agreeing to give reunited families the same chance they’d had if they’d never been separated

Here is what the agreement proposed by the government would actually do, if approved:

  • Parents who passed their initial “credible fear” interviews for asylum will be allowed to continue; this agreement doesn’t change those cases.
  • Parents who had lost their cases and been ordered deported will be given a full review to reassess whether or not they have a credible fear of persecution. This review will include a second interview for “additional fact-gathering” — during which a lawyer can be present (or can dial in by phone). Parents will be allowed to do this even if they didn’t ask for a credible fear interview when they were first arrested.
  • Parents who fail their credible fear screenings will be allowed to remain in the US and apply for asylum if their child passes his or her credible fear screening. The reverse is also true: If a child fails her asylum screening but the parent passes his, both parent and child will be allowed to apply for asylum. This is the way things normally work when families are apprehended together; by instituting it now, the government is essentially wiping away the legal side effects of family separation.
  • Parents who aren’t eligible for a credible fear interview because they had been deported before and were returning will still be allowed to avoid deportation if they meet a higher standard (“reasonable fear”) and qualify for something called “withholding of removal.” Even if they fail that standard, they will be allowed to stay in the US while their children are going through their asylum cases.
  • Parents who have already been deported will not have their cases automatically reviewed by the government. However, the plaintiffs in these lawsuits will have 30 days to present evidence to the government that particular parents should be allowed to return, and the government will consider those requests. (The agreement doesn’t make it clear whether deported parents will have their own cases reopened, or whether they will solely be allowed to return to stay with their children while the children’s legal cases are ongoing.)

If the agreement is approved, it will officially send the legal fight over family separation into its endgame phase. While hundreds of parents and children remain separated, the legal fight over reunification is largely about who’s responsible for carrying out various parts of the government’s reunification plan; the new agreement would set a similar plan up for the legal due process of parents and children making claims to stay in the US.

It would almost certainly run into similar implementation obstacles to the reunification plan, but it would set expectations that the government would provide this process by default, rather than moving forward with deportation.

The Trump administration is never going to wholly be able to erase the consequences of its decision to separate families as a matter of course. But it is now agreeing to give up the legal advantages that it accrued by separating parents’ and children’s cases — and forcing parents to go through interviews with life-or-death stakes without knowing when or whether they’d ever see their children again.

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I’ve been saying it over and over again. Why not just do it right, provide full Due Process, and follow the law?

Not only are the policies being promoted by Sessions, Trump, and the rest of the GOP White Nationalists unconstitutional, illegal, vile, and immoral, they are totally wasteful of limited Government resources (particularly in a time of GOP-fueled budget deficits) and unnecessarily tie up the Federal Courts. Contrary to Jeff Sessions’s false narratives, no court system anywhere has unlimited time for all the nonsense that the Government could potentially pursue. When common sense and sane prosecutorial discretion lose out, they whole system suffers.

Think what might have happened if, instead of wasting time and money on illegal family separation, unnecessary criminal prosecutions, and bending protection law out of shape, the Government had done the right thing and spent the money:

  • Working with NGOs and legal aid groups to release folks in locations where they could get legal assistance, virtually guaranteeing their appearance in Immigration Court;
  • Agreeing to grant the many domestic violence and other types of gang-related cases that could have been granted after proper preparation and documentation under a proper application of the law (before Sessions messed it up);
  • Taking all of the cases of long-term law-abiding residents off overloaded Immigration Court dockets so that the real contested asylum cases could be given priority without denying anyone Due Process or moving everything else back through “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”).
  • Any “bad guys,” or “true economic migrants” could have been given full hearings, denied, and removed. But, totally contrary to Sessions’s racist blather, most of the folks arriving are actually legitimate refugees. They could have been granted status and allowed to go out and work and study to make America better. I’ve found few individuals (including many native-born US citizens) more grateful and willing to work hard and contribute than those granted asylum.
  • The money spent on wasteful litigation and needless, cruel and inhuman, detention could instead have been used;
    • to establish a viable overseas refugee screening program in the Northern Triangle;
    • working with other countries to share resettlement responsibilities;
    • and trying to correct the situations in the Northern Triangle which gave rise to the refugee flows in the first place.

Sadly, this is hardly the first, and probably by no means the last, time that the US Government has been forced to reprocess large numbers of asylum seekers because of a failure to follow Due Process and do the right thing in the first place. Just check out the history of the ABC v. Thornburgh litigation and settlement (a case I was involved in during my time in the “Legacy INS” General Counsel’s Office).

Indeed, the Trump scofflaws are “doubling down” on every failed policy fo the past. They actually are at it again with their bone-headed proposal to thumb their collective noses at Judge Dolly Gee and withdraw from the Flores settlement and set up a “Kiddie Gulag” by regulation. Good luck with that. The Trump Scofflaws are already wasting your taxpayer money on more “tent cities in the Kiddie Gulag” that they almost certainly will be enjoined from using at some point. Then, cooler heads will prevail and we’ll undoubtedly have a “Flores II” settlement.

Also, compare the real role of immigration lawyers in enforcing the law and holding Goverment scofflaws like Sessions and Nielsen accountable with the totally bogus picture painted by Sessions in his false, unethical, and highly inappropriate speech to US Immigration Judges this week. Truth is exactly the opposite of nearly everything that Jeff Sessions says.

Our country can’t afford the scofflaw conduct, inhumanity,  immorality, and wastefulness of Trump, Sessions, Miller and their racist White Nationalist cabal. Vote for regime change this Fall!

Haste Makes Waste! Told ya so!

PWS

09-13-18

 

ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS CONTINUE TO LIE TO US COURTS! – ACLU PRESENTS DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE THAT ICE AND DOJ GAVE FALSE INFORMATION TO FEDERAL JUDGE IN DETROIT IRAQ CASE — SANCTIONS SOUGHT –“It is appalling that ICE wants to lock these people up and throw away the key, and even more appalling that ICE misled the court in order to do so.”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/ice-lied-about-detained-iraqis-aclu-alleges

Hamed Aleazez reports for BuzzFeed News:

ICE officials lied when they said that Iraq would take back more than 1,000 citizens of the country that had been ordered deported from the US, including dozens of people who have been detained for months, according to ACLU of Michigan filings in a federal case challenging the removal of Iraqis throughout the country.

The organization cited redacted information in federal court filings in Detroit Wednesday calling for more than 100 Iraqis who have been detained by ICE be released, for the court to sanction the agency for its misrepresentations, and for the secret documents to be made public.

Back in June 2017, the ACLU successfully got US District Judge Mark Goldsmith to block the deportation of around 1,400 Iraqis who had been targeted for removal, most for overstaying their visas or being convicted of crimes, after Iraq agreed to take back certain citizens in exchange for being taken off the Trump administration’s travel ban list.

Hundreds of these Iraqis were arrested in June throughout the country, mainly in Michigan. Goldsmith found that the Iraqis, many of whom are from religious minorities, would face torture or death based on their residence in the US, their publicized criminal records, or their religious affiliation.

In its filings, the ACLU claims that ICE’s declarations that Iraq had agreed to take all of them back were false. The Iraqi government has long had a policy of not accepting those who were being repatriated involuntarily to the country.

The executive order striking Iraq from the travel ban list cites Iraq’s willingness to return those Iraqis who have final orders of deportation but ICE officials ran into complications getting Iraq to take those who did not voluntarily want to go back, according to the ACLU.

In fact, the ACLU claims that ICE officials were so frustrated by Iraq’s unwillingness to take back those who did not voluntarily agree to be deported that it sought sanctions in July 2017 that would restrict certain types of visas given to Iraqi nationals.

“The government has fought for fourteen months to hide the truth,” said Margo Schlanger, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an attorney assisting the ACLU with the case, in a statement. “We’ve finally gotten the documents, and it turns out that what the government told the court is untrue. We hope the court will allow us to share the truth with the detainees, their families, and the public, all of whom deserve to know what is really happening in this case.”

ICE declined to comment on the filings because the case was ongoing.

Meanwhile, the ACLU pointed to people like Firas Nissan, who has been in the US for 17 years after fleeing Iraq because he had been threatened and locked up there. Nissan missed an asylum hearing in 2004 because of an illness and was ordered deported but was still able to live in the country by agreeing to check in with ICE officials for 13 years, the ACLU said.

Then, in June 2017, he was arrested by ICE officers and has been jailed ever since, one of the 110 Iraqis in detention, according to the ACLU.

“He is locked in solitary confinement 21 hours a day, is not receiving needed medical care, can rarely see his family, and has not been able to provide for them, though he was previously the family’s breadwinner,” attorneys with the ACLU wrote in their filing calling for his and others’ release.

The ACLU, citing the redacted information, believes that Nissan and the rest of the group should be released because prolonged detention is unconstitutional when deportation is unlikely. ICE, the group said, has argued that the detainees should remain in custody because they can be taken to Iraq via a charter flight if the federal injunction is lifted.

ICE has even struggled with deporting the small number of individuals who had agreed to be sent back to Iraq. The agency has only deported 17 of the 37 Iraqis who agreed to be deported, according to the ACLU.

“It is appalling that ICE wants to lock these people up and throw away the key, and even more appalling that ICE misled the court in order to do so,” said Miriam Aukerman, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Michigan, in a statement. “ICE’s dishonesty is the reason the detainees are behind bars, rather than home with their families.”

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I remember that one of my DOJ colleagues who spent a good chunk of his career litigating immigration cases in court was a total stickler for accurate citations. He got very upset if there was so much as an error of a single digit in the page number of a “pinpoint citation.” I asked him about it.  He related how as a young DOJ attorney he once had been publicly chewed out by a Federal Judge for an inadvertent citation error. He never forgot the experience and the value that the Federal Courts put on honesty and the highest quality of work from DOJ Attorneys. And, as any of us who worked in the DOJ in the “old days” knew, an attorney representing the Government was responsible for exercising “due diligence” to verify the truth of any representations made on behalf of an “agency client.”

In this case, apparently the information on the true position of the Iraqi Government was eventually ferreted out by the ACLU from ICE records. Therefore, it also should have been available to the DOJ attorneys representing the DHS. I guess that things have changed in both the DOJ and in the Federal Judges’ expectations for attorneys representing the Government and their agency clients.

PROGRAM NOTE: I am among a group of former Government officials who filed an amicus brief in behalf of the plaintiffs in this case.

PWS

08-31-18

TWO FROM TAL @ CNN: 1) RACISM TRUMPS IDEOLOGY IN TERMINATION OF NICARAGUAN TPS; 2) SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE UPDATE – HUNDREDS REMAIN SEPARATED WHILE ABUSER REMAINS AT LARGE, DISSING FEDERAL JUDGES!

‘Suicide,’ ‘catastrophe’: Nicaraguans in US terrified of looming end of protections

By Tal Kopan, CNN

Cassandra has lived and worked in the US over 20 years. Threats to her life have been made to her family and friends back in Nicaragua. It would be “suicide” to move back, she says.

But the Trump administration says she and thousands of other immigrants like her must do so by January.

On Jan. 5, roughly 5,300 Nicaraguans who have lived in the US since at least that date in 1999 will lose their protected status. If they have no other immigration status in the US, they will be forced to either return to the country or risk living in the US illegally.

The decision to end temporary protected status for Nicaraguans last November was overshadowed by similar Trump administration decisions to end such protections for hundreds of thousands more immigrants from neighbors Honduras and El Salvador. Nationals of Nicaragua received the shortest time frame of any of those TPS recipients to get their affairs together: 12 months.

But since that decision was made, Nicaragua has plunged into violence and political unrest, with at least 322 people dying there since mid-April, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States. By the White House’s own count, the toll is more than 350. The UN Refugee Agency has put out guidance to its member countries asking them to allow Nicaraguans to enter and to apply for asylum once there.

The situation is bad enough that the Trump administration sanctioned three Nicaraguan officials in July for human rights abuses, saying President Daniel Ortega and his vice president “are ultimately responsible for the pro-government parapolice that have brutalized their own people.”

In light of the violence, a bipartisan group of seven bipartisan lawmakers wrote to President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in late July asking the President to either reconsider ending temporary protected status for Nicaraguans or to designate a new status for them.

“It would be, frankly, I think, unacceptable to then send folks back to that same place that we’re sanctioning,” Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, one of those who signed the letter, told CNN. “It’s a barbaric regime that’s literally murdering people in the streets. … It would be a catastrophe, and it’s one that can be avoided.”

Diaz-Balart said he has not gotten a response from the administration to the letter, though he remains hopeful it will reverse course.

The Department of Homeland Security ignored repeated requests for comment from CNN about whether it’s considering extending further protections to Nicaraguans.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/30/politics/tps-nicaragua-trump-immigrants-fear/index.html

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Hundreds of immigrant kids remain separated from parents

By Tal Kopan, CNN

Hundreds of children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border remain separated from their parents, including 497 in government custody, according to a new court filing Thursday.

The figure includes 22 children under the age of five still in government care. Six of those are 4 years old or younger whose parents were deported without them.

A total of 1,937 children have been reunified with parents, up only 14 from last week.

The numbers have changed only slightly from last week, as the court filing from the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union case describes a slow and laborious process to try to connect the families that have been separated.

It remains unclear exactly how many parents were deported without their children, though it’s in the hundreds. By the government’s latest count, there are 322 deported parents who have children still in custody.

But the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of separated parents, says the administration has previously given it a list of deported parents that includes 70 additional cases. The administration said, according to the ACLU, that some of the discrepancy is due to kids being released from care. It’s not clear what will happen to those families.

US District Judge Dana Sabraw will hold a status hearing on the case Friday.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/30/politics/family-separations-hundreds-children-separated/index.html

 

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So, we send good folks who have been contributing to our economy and society back to likely harm at the hands of the repressive leftist Government of Nicaragua basically because they are Latinos. Of course, almost all of them have very plausible asylum, withholding, CAT, or cancellation of removal claims. So, more than 5,000 cases will needlessly be thrown back into our already overwhelmed Immigration Court system. No wonder the backlog continues to mushroom under Sessions’s White Nationalist policies! Racist-driven policies always come at a high cost!

In the meantime, Sessions continues publicly to thumb his nose at Federal Judges, while making less than impressive efforts to comply with their lawful orders. And, families and children continue to suffer from Sessions’s White Nationalist agenda.

PWS

08-31-18

 

EXPOSING SESSIONS’S DEADLY DUE PROCESS SCAM: JUDGE SULLIVAN BLOCKS ANOTHER POTENTIAL DEPORTATION TO DEATH AS SESSIONS-LED DOJ ARGUES THAT THE KILLING LINE NOT SUBJECT TO REVIEW — Pro Bono Counsel Jones Day Saves The Day, At Least For Now — “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”

https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2018/08/23/judge-who-forced-feds-to-turn-that-plane-around-blocks-another-deportation/?kw=Judge%20Who%20Forced%20Feds%20to%20%27Turn%20That%20Plane%20Around%27%20Blocks%20Another%20Deportation&et=editorial&bu=NationalLawJournal&cn=20180823&src=EMC-Email&pt=NewsroomUpdates&utm_source=newsletter

C. Ryan Barber reports for the National Law Journal:

Judge Who Forced Feds to ‘Turn That Plane Around’ Blocks Another Deportation

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan this month lambasted federal officials for the unauthorized removal of a woman and her daughter while their emergency court challenge was unfolding in Washington, D.C.

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for D.C. May 27, 2009. Photo by Diego M. Radzinschi/NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration not to depart a pregnant Honduran woman as she seeks asylum in the United States, two weeks after demanding that the government turn around a plane that had taken a mother and daughter to El Salvador amid their emergency court appeal challenging removal.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granted a temporary stay preventing the Honduran woman’s deportation following a hearing on her challenge to the administration’s decision to make it all but impossible for asylum seekers to gain entry into the United States by citing fears of domestic abuse or gang violence.

In court papers filed earlier this week, the Honduran woman’s lawyers—a team from Jones Day—said she fled her home country “after her partner beat her, raped her, and threatened to kill her and their unborn child.” The woman, suing under the pseudonym “Zelda,” is currently being held at a Texas detention center.

“Zelda is challenging a new policy that unlawfully deprives her of her right to seek humanitarian protection from this escalating pattern of persecution,” the woman’s lawyers wrote in a complaint filed Wednesday. The immigrant is represented pro bono by Jones Day partner Julie McEvoy, associate Courtney Burks and of counsel Erin McGinley.

At Thursday’s court hearing, McGinley said her client’s deportation was imminent absent an order from the judge blocking such a move. “Our concern today,” McGinley said, “is that our client may be deported in a matter of hours.”

U.S. Justice Department lawyers on Wednesday filed papers opposing any temporary stay from deportation. A Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, argued Thursday that the Honduran woman lacked standing to challenge the Justice Department’s new immigration policy, which makes it harder for immigrants seeking asylum to argue fears of domestic violence and gang violence.

After granting the stay preventing the Honduran woman’s deportation, Sullivan made clear he had not forgotten the events of two weeks ago, when he learned in court that the government had deported a mother and daughter while their emergency challenge to deportation was unfolding.

“Somebody … seeking justice in a United States court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her? It’s outrageous,” Sullivan said at the Aug. 9 hearing. “Turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States.”

Sullivan on Thursday urged Reuveni to alert immigration authorities to his order. Reuveni said he would inform those authorities, adding that he hoped there would not be a recurrence of the issue that arose two weeks earlier.

“It’s got to be more than hopeful,” Sullivan told Reuveni in court Thursday. Reuveni said he could, in the moment, speak for himself and the Justice Department, but not the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I cannot speak for ICE until I get on the phone with them and say this is what you need to do immediately,” Reuveni said.

Sullivan said he appreciated Reuveni’s “professionalism” and his efforts to “undo the wrong” that had been done to the Salvadoran mother and daughter earlier this month.

The government, after the fact, said it was reviewing removal proceduresin the San Antonio immigration office “to identify gaps in oversight.”

Stressing the need for a stay against Zelda’s deportation, McGinley said at Thursday’s hearing: “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”

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When individuals have access to high quality counsel like Jones Day, the courts pay more attention. That’s why Sessions & co. are working overtime to insure that individuals are hustled though the system without any meaningful access to counsel and, perhaps most outrageously, by excluding counsel from participation in the largely rigged “credible fear review process” before the Immigration Court. This isn’t justice; it isn’t even a parody of justice. It’s something out of a Kafka novel.

No wonder the Sessions-infused DOJ attorneys don’t want any real court to take a look at this abusive and indefensible removal of individuals with serious claims to relief without consideration by a fair and impartial adjudicator operating under the Constitution and our Refugee Act rather than “Sessions’s law.”

Judge Sullivan actually has an opportunity to put an end to this mockery of American justice by halting all removals of asylum seekers until at least a semblance of Due Process is restored to the system. The only question is whether  he will do it! The odds are against it; but, with folks like Jones Day arguing in behalf of the unfairly condemned, the chances of halting the “Sessions Death Train” have never been better!

(Full Disclosure: I am a former partner at Jones Day.  I’ve never been prouder of my former firm’s efforts to protect the American justice system and vindicate the rights of the most vulnerable among us. Congrats and appreciation to Jones Day Managing Partner Steve Brogan, Global Pro Bono Coordinator Laura Tuell, Partner Julie McEvoy, Of Counsel Erin McGinley, and everyone else involved in this amazing and much needed effort!) 

PWS

08-24-18

 

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS ACLU COULD FORCE TRUMP TO ELIMINATE ASYLUM SYSTEM!

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/401633-aclus-lawsuit-may-force-trump-to-stop-granting-asylum-applicationsr

 

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Sessions is trying to eliminate the need for asylum hearings on applications that are based on improper persecution claims. These meritless cases are contributing to an immigration court backlog crisis. If he is prevented from doing this by issuing precedent decisions to provide guidance on how asylum cases are supposed to be handled, the administration will resort to more extreme measures.

The United States does not have to grant any asylum applications. Asylum is discretionary, and the Supreme Court has held that the president can suspend the entry of aliens into the United States when he finds that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

 

The court declined to decide whether “some form of inquiry into the persuasiveness of a president’s finding is appropriate.” It seems unlikely, however, that the court would reject a president’s finding that discretionary asylum grants should be suspended until the immigration court backlog crisis is brought under control because allowing the backlog to continue is detrimental to the interests of the United States.

This would not leave asylum seekers without a way to avoid persecution. Withholding of removal is available too and it is mandatory when eligibility has been established. The main difference in eligibility requirements is that asylum just requires a well-founded fear of persecution, and withholding requires the applicant to establish that it is more likely than not that he will be persecuted.

But withholding does not entitle aliens to remain in the United States. It just prevents them from being deported to a country where they will be persecuted

. . . .

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

Read Nolan’s complete article at the link.

  • Unlike Nolan, I believe that the ACLU has properly stated a case for jurisdiction under INA 242(e)(3)(A)(ii). Sessions’s decision in Matter of A-B- has the force and effect of a regulation.  Moreover, the DHS implementing instructions give it the status of a “written policy” concerning credible fear and expedited removal. Here’s the complaint in Grace v. Sessionshttps://www.aclu.org/legal-document/grace-v-sessions-complaint
  • Contrary to what Nolan suggests in his article, a petition for review of A-B- is not an adequate remedy for these plaintiffs. First, Matter of A-B-, to my knowledge, is still on remand to the Immigration Judge. Therefore, there is no “final order” for judicial review purposes.
  • Second, Matter of A-B- has never been subject to judicial review in any court. Yet, the plaintiffs in Grace face a likelihood of return to persecution without ever having a chance to challenge A-B- through a petition for review. That’s the result of Sessions’s improperly cutting off access to the Due Process hearing system before an Immigration Judge. If Matter of A-B- is eventually overruled by one or more Courts of Appeals, the respondents will have already been improperly deported to persecution or death.
  • Nolan also uses some of the questionable EOIR statistics that I commented on separately in my preceding post: https://wp.me/p8eeJm-2W2
  • The idea that Trump could essentially repeal the US asylum system on the basis of bogus national security concerns seems preposterous on its face. Yet, in the perverted “Age of Trump,” and given the Supremes’ majority’s spineless performance in Trump v. Hawaii, I suppose anything is posssible.

PWS

08-16-18

 

JAIL FOR SCOFFLAW SESSIONS? — U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE EMMET G. SULLIVAN HAS HAD ENOUGH OF AG’S LAWLESS BEHAVIOR – THREATENS CONTEMPT OVER ILLEGAL DEPORTATION!— “This is pretty outrageous,” said U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/judge-halts-mother-daughter-deportation-threatens-to-hold-sessions-in-contempt/2018/08/09/a23a0580-9bd6-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html?utm_term=.61aa9f3c7462

Arelis R. Hernandez reports for the Washington Post:

A federal judge in Washington halted a deportation in progress Thursday and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration tried to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway.

“This is pretty outrageous,” U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

“I’m not happy about this at all,” the judge continued. “This is not acceptable.”

The woman, known in court papers as Carmen, is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union. It challenges a recent policy change by the Department of Justice that aims to expedite the removal of asylum seekers who fail to prove their cases and excludes domestic and gang violence as justifications for granting asylum in the United States.

Attorneys for the civil rights organization and the Department of Justice had agreed to delay removal proceedings for Carmen and her child until 11:59 p.m. Thursday so they could argue the matter in court.

But lead ACLU attorney Jennifer Chang Newell, who was participating in the court hearing via phone from her office in California, received an email during the hearing that said the mother and daughter were being deported.


Activists rally against the Trump administration’s immigration policies outside the New York City offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in July. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

During a brief recess, she told her colleagues the pair had been taken from a family detention center in Dilley, Tex., and were headed to the airport in San Antonio for an 8:15 a.m. flight.

After granting the ACLU’s request to delay deportations for Carmen and the other plaintiffs until the lawsuit is decided, Sullivan ordered the government to “turn the plane around.”

Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni said he had not been told the deportation was happening that morning, and could not confirm the whereabouts of Carmen and her daughter.

The ACLU said later that government attorneys confirmed to them after the hearing that the pair was on a flight en route to El Salvador. The Justice Department said they would be flown back to Texas and returned to the detention center after landing, the ACLU said.

Calls and emails to the Justice Department’s communications office were not immediately returned Thursday afternoon.

“Obviously my heart sank when I found out,” Chang Newell said. “The whole point of this was to get a ruling from the court before they could be placed in danger.”

To qualify for asylum, migrants must show that they have a fear of persecution in their native country based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a “particular social group,” a category that in the past has included victims of domestic violence and other abuse.

Carmen fled El Salvador with her daughter in June, according to court records, fearing they would be killed by gang members who had demanded she pay them monthly or suffer consequences. Several coworkers at the factory where Carmen worked had been murdered,and her husband is also abusive, the records state.

Under the fast-track removal system, created in 1996, asylum seekers are interviewed by to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of returning home. Those who pass get a full hearing in immigration court.

In June, Sessions vacated a 2016 Board of Immigration Appeals court case that granted asylum to an abused woman from El Salvador. As part of that decision, Sessions said gang and domestic violence in most cases would no longer be grounds for receiving asylum.

“The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim,” Sessions wrote at the time.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed on behalf of 12 migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — three of them children — all of whom failed their initial “credible fear” interviews.

Two of the children and their mothers were deported before the suit was filed. None of the adults had been separated from their children as part of President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy.

The lawsuit says Sessions’s ruling, and updated guidelines for asylum officers that the Department of Homeland Security issued a month later, subject migrants in expedited removal proceedings to an “unlawful screening standard” that deprives them of their rights under federal law.

Asylum seekers previously had to show that the government in their native country was “unable or unwilling” to protect them. But now they have to show that the government “condones” the violence or “is completely helpless” to protect them, the lawsuit says.

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

Here’s Tal Kopan’s  report for CNN:

Judge blocks administration from deporting asylum seekers while fighting for right to stay in US

By Tal Kopan, CNN

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from deporting immigrants while they’re fighting for their right to stay in the US — reportedly excoriating the administration and threatening to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt.

DC District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Thursday agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union that the immigrants they are representing in a federal lawsuit should not be deported while their cases are pending.

During court, Sullivan was incensed at the report that one of the plaintiffs was in the process of being deported, according to The Washington Post. He threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt if his order wasn’t followed, the report added.

“This is pretty outrageous,” Sullivan said, according to the Post. “That someone seeking justice in US court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/politics/judge-halts-deportations-sessions/index.html

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

Is a real judge finally going to hold America’s most notorious child abuser and scofflaw accountable? Is a strategy of sending DOJ lawyers into Article III Federal Courts to lie, misrepresent, obfuscate, and present largely frivolous legal positions finally going to backfire? Too early to tell, but this is a hopeful sign.

My recollection is that Judge Sullivan has always had a well-deserved reputation as a no-nonsense judge who demands the same professional performance from Government litigators as he does from the private bar. By contrast, I have previously pointed out how under Sessions DOJ lawyers too often conduct themselves in a flip and contemptuous manner that would have landed private lawyers in hot water. Things like falsely claiming that “there was no policy of family separation” when it was precisely what Sessions had created, as a deterrent, through his outlandish “zero tolerance” policy, and actually publicly bragged about.

That is, when Sessions wasn’t busy misrepresenting statistics, misapplying Biblical quotes, telling demonstrable lies (“asylum fraud is a major cause of eleven million undocumented individuals” — what a whopper!), and dehumanizing vulnerable asylum seekers and their families who are merely trying to get a fair chance to plead for their lives under US and international law. Or perhaps trying to promote a ludicrous fictional connection between Dreamer relief and genuine national security.

Hopefully, Judge Sullivan will continue to be outraged when he gets into the merits of the case and finds out just how Sessions has intentionally misconstrued asylum law, manipulated an agency that he de facto runs, and used CINO (“Courts In Name Only”) to deny Due Process, intentionally inflict misery, and impose potential death sentences on fine people, vulnerable human beings, many of whom deserve protection, not rejection, and all of whom deserve to be treated with respect and given a full chance to present their claims. I believe that the ACLU will be able to show Judge Sullivan how Sessions has arrogantly abused his authority and corrupted both the USDOJ and our entire justice system to advance his White Nationalist agenda.

The Government obviously knew that this mother and daughter were plaintiffs in this case. Their presence during litigation presented no threat whatsoever to the United States. The Government’s disingenuous, unnecessary, and contemptuous actions show exactly what kind of racial animus and disdain for human life and for the American justice system are behind Sessions’s actions. Let’s hope, for sake of our country and the innocent people he is harming, that Judge Sullivan finally holds “Scofflaw Sessions” accountable!

PWS

08-08-18

 

MIRIAM JORDAN @ NYT – CREDIBLE FEAR APPROVALS FOR REFUGEES AT BORDER PLUNGE AS A RESULT OF SESSIONS’S ASSAULT ON DUE PROCESS, WOMEN, HISPANICS, & THE US ASYLUM SYSTEM – ACLU Sues To Thwart White Nationalist AG’s Efforts To Make Border A Killing Field For The Most Vulnerable Among Us!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/us/migrants-asylum-credible-fear.html

Miriam writes for the NY Times:

Nine years ago, a Guatemalan woman named Irene said, she watched as gangs murdered her husband in front of her when he refused to pay them a “tax,” or extortion fee, to keep the family musical-instruments business open. Some of the assailants were imprisoned, and she continued to run the shop on her own.

Recently, though, the menace resumed, she said. The perpetrators, fresh out of prison, threatened to kill Irene if she did not pay. Fearing for her life, she fled to the United States with her 17-year-old daughter. They arrived at the southwest border seeking asylum on June 13.

Under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border enforcement policy, the 47-year-old woman was detained and her daughter was sent to a shelter. A few weeks later, Irene had her initial interview with an asylum officer, the first hurdle applicants must clear in the asylum process.

The officer, who conducted the interview over the phone, determined that Irene had not proved a “credible fear” of persecution if she returned home. Irene was dumbstruck. What was their definition of fear?

“I can’t go back to my country,” Irene, who asked that only her first name be used because she feared reprisals, said this week in a phone interview. “They’ll kill me if I go back.”

Immigration attorneys and advocates report that asylum applicants in recent months are failing their crucial initial screenings with asylum officers at the border in record numbers, the first sign that the Trump administration is carrying out promises to reduce the number of people granted asylum in the United States and limit the conditions under which it is granted.

New reports that people are being rejected at the border with only a cursory review of their claims has raised an alarm among immigrant advocates, who warn that many of those with legitimate claims are being sent home to face danger, or even death, despite international laws that guarantee the right of the persecuted to seek sanctuary in other countries.

Behind the new practices are recent changes to asylum adjudication unveiled by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June. Critics have said those changes render it all but impossible for those fleeing domestic abuse, gang brutality and other violence to win protection in the United States.

Mr. Sessions’s decision was codified in a memo issued in July to the officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who conduct credible-fear interviews at the border.

. . . .

Data suggests that the number of people succeeding in making a case for credible fear began to decline sharply earlier this year, even before Mr. Sessions announced his new legal guidance.

According to figures collected and released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which tracks immigration statistics, findings of credible fear in immigration court began to “plummet” in what appeared to be a “dramatic change” during 2018. During the six months ending in June, only 14.7 percent of the case reviews in immigration court found the asylum seeker had a credible fear. Approval levels were twice that level during the last six months of 2017, the researchers found.

Eileen Blessinger, the attorney representing Irene, the Guatemalan woman, tweeted a photograph on July 12 of a stack of papers. “This is what 29 blanket credible-fear interview denials looks like,” she wrote, noting that among her clients who had been detained apart from their children, “every single separated parent” who was interviewed had received a negative determination.

She said that the trend has persisted since last month’s tweet.

“I haven’t met a single person in the last few weeks who passed their credible-fear interview,” said Allegra Love, executive director of the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, who leads a team of lawyers assisting migrants in detention in New Mexico. She added, “We have never seen such a high volume of denials.”

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the new policies, which it argues violate due process “in numerous respects” and effectively close the door to asylum to people fleeing domestic abuse and gang brutality.

The lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the judge to declare the new credible-fear policies illegal and to enjoin the government from applying the new standards.

“This is a naked attempt by the Trump administration to eviscerate our country’s asylum protections,” Jennifer Chang Newell, the managing attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “It’s clear the administration’s goal is to deny and deport as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.”

. . . .

Paul W. Schmidt, who retired as an immigration judge in 2016, said it appears that the attorney general’s move to reinterpret judicial precedent was “very intentional — to undermine claimants from Central America.”

“Sessions has made it much, much more difficult to fit your case into a category for relief, even if you have suffered very serious harm,” said Mr. Schmidt, who served as chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals from 1995 to 2001.

One case decided before Mr. Session’s decision provides an example of how such cases were often handled in the past. In 2015, a Guatemalan woman named Ana decided that she and her then 11-year-old daughter could no longer endure the relentless psychological and physical aggression inflicted on them by her former partner. They had reported the abuse to local police, to no avail, and finally journeyed north to seek refuge in the United States.

Ana passed the credible-fear interview and moved with her daughter to Kentucky, where a lawyer helped them make their case before an immigration judge.

In early June, a week before Mr. Sessions’s new legal guidance, Ana was granted asylum and the right to remain legally in the United States. “I thank God we can be where we are safe, instead of returning to danger,” she said.

********************************************
Read Miriam’s entire story at the link.
I’ve heard USCIS officials claim that “nothing has changed” in the credible fear interview process or results as the result of Sessions’s rewrite of asylum law in Matter of A-B-, and his overtly anti-asylum, anti-Hispanic, anti-female message which has certainly been echoed by the actions of USCIS Director Cissna. Cissna has removed “customer service” (read “human service”) from the agency’s mission. I have been and remain highly skeptical of those claims of “business as usual.”
Perhaps those officials need to go down to the border and watch while the “Irenes of the world” are improperly blocked by their officers from even having a chance to put on a full asylum case before an Immigration Judge. This is neither Due Process nor is it compliance with the Refugee Act of 1980, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the Convention Against Torture. It’s disgusting, plain and simple! A low point in U.S. history for which even career Civil Servants who are “going along to get along” with Sessions’s vile and lawless message have to bear some responsibility. And that definitely includes some U.S. Immigration Judges “rubber stamping” these parodies of justice. History is recording who you are and what you have done and continue to do.
Indeed, what is “their definition of fear?” Obviously, nothing suffered or to be suffered by those with brown skins under the Sessions regime.
For years, even before Trump, the law has been intentionally manipulated and unfairly tilted against asylum seekers from Central America by “captive” judges working for the DOJ and responding to political pressure to reduce the flow of refugees across the Southern Border. But, Sessions has removed all vestiges of Due Process and legality —  he overtly seeks to send vulnerable asylum seekers back to danger zones without fair hearings.
If these folks could get lawyers, gather evidence, and have a fair hearing before an impartial judge, and an interpretation of protection law consistent with the generous aims of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the international Convention that it implements, and a right to seek corrective review before “real courts” (those not working for Sessions) they would have a decent chance of qualifying for protection. Beyond that, even those who don’t satisfy all of the arcane technical requirements for asylum often face life-threatening danger in countries where the government protection system has broken down or joined forces with gangs and abusers. They should also be offered some type of at least temporary refuge.That’s exactly what the 1959 Convention and Protocol contemplated and some other countries have implemented. 
Some day, we as a nation will be held accountable, if only by history, for what Trump, Sessions, and the White Nationalists are doing to refugees and migrants of color under the cover of, but actually in contravention of, the law (and human decency). But those who are “going along to get along” by not standing up to these abuses of Executive Power, Due Process, and human rights will also be complicit!
PWS
08-08-18

TED HESSON @ POLITICO: DHS TO ACLU ON SEPARATED PARENTS: “Go find ‘Em Yourself. Not Our Problem!”

Ted Hesson reports for Politico:

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

Yeah, as I was saying about lack of accountability in my previous posting. Seems like it’s time for the U.S. District Judge to start issuing some contempt citations for Government officials and lawyers. Perhaps a few days in jail for Secretary Nielsen would light a fire under her to correct the Constitutional abuses undertaken under her authority. And it seems to me that the disingenuous court filings from DOJ in behalf of DHS are more than enough to file disciplinary actions against the DOJ Attorneys and to haul Sessions into court for possible contempt proceedings.

As I’ve said before, if any private lawyer conducted themselves before the District Court the way the Trump Administration did in this case, he or she would be in danger of losing both freedom and license to practice law. But, the laws don’t seem to apply to this Administration the way they do to the rest of us.

PWS

08-02-18

TAL @ CNN: WHILE GOVERNMENT CLAIMS TO COURT THAT FAMILY REUNIFICATION HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL, IN FACT, THE SITUATION REMAINS A SELF-CREATED MESS, RIFE WITH UNNECESSARY CRUELTY, HEARTBREAK, UNFATHOMABLE CHOICES – The Ugliness Of What Trump & Sessions Have Done & How They Have Done It Will Haunt Our Country For Decades!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/26/politics/separated-parents-facing-deportation/index.html

TAL REPORTS ON CNN:

Washington (CNN)What strikes Lauren Kostes is the silence.

“It’s just depressed silence. It’s a heartbreaking kind of silence,” she said.
It’s the moment when she tells an immigrant parent they are set to be deported and must choose whether to take their child with them.
“They know that with this, their relationship with their child will be forever changed. And you can clearly see them going through every consequence in their head,” said Kostes, an immigration attorney with legal assistance foundation Florence Project.
Thursday marks a court-ordered deadline for the government to reunite families it separated at the border. Of the nearly 2,600 children the government identified as separated from their parents, more than 460 have parents who are likely to already have been deported without them, something the government says was done with the parents’ consent.
Of the ones still in the US, 900 are facing final orders of removal that could result in them being deported as soon as the federal judge in the reunions lawsuit lifts a temporary hold he put on deporting separated families.
Even before the Trump administration deployed a policy that separated those thousands of immigrant families at the US border, immigration attorneys have at times had to inform clients that their children may have stronger claims to stay in the US than they do as a family. For some families, leaving the child behind is the only way they see to save that child’s life.
Under normal circumstances, that’s a difficult decision. So the American Civil Liberties Union is asking the judge to give parents seven days after reunification to make the decision, given the added trauma and confusion caused by the separation in the first place, as a part of the lawsuit it brought over the separations.
Audio obtained exclusively by CNN of mothers appearing in immigration court while separated from their children gives voice to the anguish they face. “I cannot continue with this anymore. What I want is to be with my son,” one woman pleads with the judge as he tries to conduct a hearing on whether she can pursue asylum in the US.
Those mothers were ordered deported by the judge but remain in the country, CNN confirmed. They have since been reunited with their children.
But for the parents facing deportation, in that moment, they are “thinking, ‘What does this mean? What does this mean for me, what does this mean for my child, what is the best decision?’ ” Kostes said. “It’s a silence of processing and working through every possibility.”

Separations lead to complicated court cases

When the administration began separating migrant families who had crossed the border without permission as part of its “zero tolerance” prosecution initiative, it split their immigration cases as well. Parents remained in detention near the border for the most part, moving rapidly through court dockets historically unfriendly to immigrants’ claims that found hundreds of them eligible for deportation. That process was only compounded by a reinterpretation of asylum law by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that made it nearly impossible for victims of gang and domestic violence to qualify for asylum in the US. Experts say that reversal has especially affected the Central American migrants who try to cross the southern border, thousands of whom cross each month.
The separated children were put into Health and Human Services custody and given their own court proceedings. Court settlements and anti-human-trafficking laws in the US also give children a different set of protections than families and adults have in the immigration system, generally meaning their court cases proceed much more slowly than their parents’ and giving them a better chance of qualifying for protections in the US.
Once the parent is given an order of deportation, they are presented with a form by the government, offering them to either be deported with their child or without.
The separation process is difficult for lawyers as well.
The ACLU has also argued that the separation has made offering legal advice to those families more complicated. Asylum claims require detailed evidence and testimony, and in some cases, the parent or child may have access to evidence the other does not. Parents are under extreme emotional distress during the separation, their attorneys say. Children, meanwhile, are given caseworkers, who may have worked with the child to determine possible claims they have in the US.
When they are reunited, there are other barriers to giving adequate legal advice. In a Wednesday court filing, the ACLU included an affidavit from Manoj Govindaiah of the nonprofit Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. He described reunited families being inseparable and deeply suspicious of anyone, even those purporting to help.
“In one case, we had been discussing the complicated procedural posture of the father’s and his son’s cases, that he had received a negative expedited removal order and was facing deportation, while his son could still apply for asylum. When he asked for clarification of what that meant, I explained that it could result in his son remaining in the United States without him. We could not complete our meeting because his crying prevented us from effectively discussing his legal case,” Govindaiah wrote.
Kostes said she and her colleagues will often have to counsel the parents over multiple visits regarding their options. The weight of the decision is often too much for one meeting, she said.
With separated parents in particular, she said, many have been asked to make this decision before they have seen their child and with little communication — at best.
“What we are seeing is the parents accept that for the child it’s best for them to stay here, but we’re hearing things like, ‘If they deport me, I just want to say goodbye to my child. I’ll accept deportation but I just want a chance to say goodbye,’ and that’s just really heartbreaking,” Kostes said.

A harrowing choice

Many thus far have opted to be deported alone.
Trump administration officials have portrayed the decision as an easy one. Asked by reporters about the potentially hundreds of parents deported without their children over the course of the zero tolerance policy, officials reiterated the parents had consented.
“Those individuals, as has always been our policy, were provided the opportunity to take their child with them pursuant to their removal. Those individuals declined to do so,” said Matthew Albence, chief of Enforcement and Removal Operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “They are not going to generally take that child back with them after they’ve accomplished their smuggling.”
“Why we’ve seen many of these parents who have been removed decline to take their child is because they completed the smuggling act,” he said in a different call. “That was the intended goal of their illegal entry in the first place.”
The parents for the most part have been charged only with misdemeanor illegal entry to the US, if anything, and not with smuggling.
Attorneys like Kostes, who works with the nonprofit immigrant assistance program the Florence Project, say the reality for these parents is much starker and more difficult.
For many Central Americans, the journey north is spurred by gang threats, according to experts and immigration advocates. In one example, Lenni Benson, a New York Law School professor who’s executive director of the legal assistance program Safe Passage Project, had a recent client on the border who was facing deportation and had to decide whether to take her 17-year-old daughter with her. CNN has agreed to withhold her identity for safety considerations.
The Central American migrant ran a small business back home with her daughter. As the business grew, the blocked-number calls started.
The gangs began to threaten and try to extort her. She changed her number. They found her again and kept calling. Then the gangs began telling the mom, a survivor of assault herself, what her daughter looked like and what time the girl would leave home in the morning.
The mother told Benson the gangs “said that ‘she would pay the price. And I know what they do to people,’ ” Benson recounted the woman telling her.
The mother did not tell her daughter about the threats, but they packed up and sneaked into the US. The two were held together in family detention, but Benson had to tell the mother that if she failed to convince the government to re-hear her plea for asylum, her daughter may have an independent claim because of the nature of the threats.
“It was horrible to say, as a lawyer, as a law professor, as a mother, as a human being,” Benson said. “I said to myself, ‘What would I do?’ I would do what parents have always done and said, ‘My child comes first.’ “
Most of the children whose parents opt to leave them in the US are older, usually 11 and up, Kostes said. They are also likely to have family in the US who can care for them.
CNN spoke with one woman, Jennifer, who was in detention awaiting reunification with her 6-year-old daughter. She has not yet been ordered deported, but said that if she had to make the choice, she would take her child. CNN agreed to identify her only by her first name.
“It was a really hard decision to make. I was going to decide to take my child because I didn’t know what else to do,” Jennifer said of her decision to flee to the US, as translated by CNN. “Of course I would take her (if deported). I can’t leave her. … Thank God I didn’t have to make the decision.”
But Jennifer says she cannot go home to Honduras, where the gangs are threatening her family even after she tried to move to the mountains away from them. “The gangs are everywhere,” she added.
“For those who were going to leave their kids behind … they would do it for a better future for the child,” Jennifer said. “In Honduras, for real, there’s nothing there for them.”
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that Lenni Benson is a professor at New York Law School.

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

And, as stories elsewhere have shown, these cruel, unnecessary, and downright idiotic policies are far from promoting effective law enforcement. In fact, Sessions has actually abused his power by making the border and the country less safe in almost every conceivable way!

I go back to Eugene Robinson’s key question: why are the wrong individuals in jail here? Why aren’t those in this Administration, like Sessions, who knowingly and intentionally created this mess being held accountable?

PWS

07-27-18

LISTEN TO TAL KOPAN AND CATHERINE SHOICHET OF CNN DISCUSS SEPARATION OF MIGRANT FAMILIES ON THIS PODCAST!

Here are Tal and Catherine for your listening pleasure:

http://podcasts.cnn.net/embed/single/skin/xqwdnq/the-latest-in-immigration.html

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My takeaways:

  • No immigration crisis here; this is a humanitarian crisis created solely by the cruel and perverted actions of this Administration;
  • Good Government solves problems; the Trump Administration creates problems that it has neither plans nor the ability to solve = Bad Government;
  • It’s always easier to create a mess than to clean it up;
  • Each individual lawsuit against the Trump Administration is an important step in upholding American democracy;
  • Only the Article III Courts have the ability to get some truth out of an inherently dishonest and disingenuous Administration;
  • The free press is playing a critical role in exposing the intentional cruelty, incompetence, and fundamental dishonesty of the Trump Administration;
  • Messing with kids is always stupid as well as inhumane;
  • Under the GOP, Congress has abdicated its role, basically leaving the Executive and the Judiciary to govern;
  • Right now, Trump has the upper hand with the GOP Congress stuffing the Courts with “go along to get along” appointees who won’t stand up for our country or to Trump & Sessions!

CONCLUSION: WE NEED REGIME CHANGE NOW! THE ONLY WAY TO GET IT WILL BE AT THE BALLOT BOX THIS FALL. GET OUT THE VOTE! JUST SAY NO TO TRUMP, SESSIONS, THEIR GOP ENABLERS & THEIR REGIME OF CRUELTY, INCOMPETENCE, & DISHONESTY!

PWS

07-18-18

 

COURTS: TIMEOUT ON THE KILLING FLOOR! – JUDGE SABRAW TEMPORARILY HALTS DUE-PROCESS-LESS DEPORTATIONS OF REUNITED FAMILIES TO HARM’S WAY – Will Hear Arguments From Both Parties, As He Tries To Figure Out Just What Nefarious Plan Sessions Has Up His Sleeve Now!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/family-separations-border-reunification/index.html

Tal Kopan and Laura Jarrett report for CNN:

(CNN)A federal judge on Monday ordered the US government to temporarily pause deportations of reunited families to allow attorneys time to debate whether he should more permanently extend that order.

San Diego-based US District Court Judge Dana Sabraw addressed the issue at the top of a status hearing in a continuing family separations case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Sabraw ordered the pause to allow for a full written argument on the ACLU’s request to pause deportations of parents for a week after reunification.
The ACLU argued that the week would be necessary for parents to have time to fully consider the decision whether to have their children deported along with them.
The ACLU’s filing was made earlier Monday morning, and Sabraw gave the Department of Justice a week to respond.
But in the meantime, he ordered a “stay” of deportations until that issue can be litigated.

Fact-checking Trump's claim on family separation

Lawyers for the ACLU said their motion was due to “the persistent and increasing rumors — which Defendants have refused to deny — that mass deportations may be carried out imminently and immediately upon reunification.” They argue this issue is “directly related to effectuating the Court’s ruling that parents make an informed, non-coerced decision if they are going to leave their children behind.”

“A one-week stay is a reasonable and appropriate remedy to ensure that the unimaginable trauma these families have suffered does not turn even worse because parents made an uninformed decision about the fate of their child,” the ACLU’s lawyers added.
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Sounds like in the end, the “No-Due-Process Deportation Machine” will be allowed to resume. But, at least this gives the Judge a little time to pin the Government down on exactly what they are doing and to see for himself how Due Process is being compromised on a large-scale basis. In the end, permanently halting the “Deportation Railroad” might be beyond the scope of this particular suit.  Stay tuned for the result. However it comes out, it’s always good to make a complete record of the Government’s misconduct and revolting disrespect for laws, human life, fundamental fairness, and human dignity for the history books and future generations.
And, many thanks to Tal & Laura for being “on top” of his breaking story.
PWS
07-16-18

BREAKING: FEDERAL JUDGE IN WASHINGTON STATE SLAMS TRUMP/SESSIONS POLICIES OF INDEFINITE DETENTION OF ASYLUM SEEKERS! – Corrupt & Immoral Government Officials Like Trump & Sessions Once Again Prove To Be Scofflaws!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/us-judge-blocks-trump-crackdown-on-asylum-seekers-bars-blanket-detentions-of-those-with-persecution-claims/2018/07/02/cdc707ba-7e36-11e8-b660-4d0f9f0351f1_story.html?utm_term=.6bf3dd67206d

Spencer Hsu reports for the Washington Post

A federal judge in Washington on Monday ordered the U.S. government to immediately release or grant hearings to more than 1,000 asylum seekers who have been jailed for months or years without individualized case reviews, dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrants.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ignored its own policy stating that asylum applicants who establish a “credible fear” of persecution in their native country must be granted a court hearing within seven days or released.

He granted a preliminary injunction preventing the government from carrying out blanket detentions of asylum seekers at five large U.S. field offices, including those currently held, pending resolution of the lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued in March after finding detention rates at the offices surged to 96 percent in the first eight months after President Trump took office in 2017, up from less than 10 percent in 2013.

The ACLU says the mass imprisonment of people seeking refuge while awaiting immigration court hearings stems from policies promoted by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions that amount to a deterrent to using the asylum provision. The policy, the ACLU argued, unlawfully denies asylum seekers as a group based on only one of the factors used to assess the danger an individual poses: how long they have been in the United States.

“As the events of recent months make clear, the question of how this nation will treat those who come to our shores seeking refuge generates enormous debate,” Boasberg wrote in a 38-page opinion, an allusion to the administration’s family-separation policy recently implemented and then abandoned amid international condemnation.

“This Opinion does no more than hold the Government accountable to its own policy, which recently has been honored more in the breach than the observance. Having extended the safeguards of the Parole Directive to asylum seekers, ICE must now ensure that such protections are realized,” Boasberg said.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of nine detained asylum seekers from Haiti, Venezuela and other countries who were initially determined to have credible stories and have been jailed for up to two years awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, lawyers said. Two have been granted asylum and released since the case was filed in March, said attorneys with the ACLU and the Covington & Burling law firm.

The court action named the Department of Homeland Security and its sub-agency ICE, which detains immigrants, and the Justice Department, which runs the immigration courts where immigrants can seek bond hearings.

. . . .

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Read Hsu’s full report at the link!

Lies, illegal actions, and human rights abuses have become a way of life for Trump & Sessions. Notably, EOIR has also joined this “Unholy Alliance.” Just more reasons why 1) we need an Article I Immigration Court; 2) we need regime change through the ballot box this Fall!

Once again, what I have been saying all along has been proved correct.  There isn’t a problem with the legal structure of U.S. asylum and protection laws. There is a huge problem with the way our dishonest, immoral, White Nationalist regime abuses those laws and tramples on the rights of individual asylum seekers!

Join the New Due Process Army today!

PWS

07-02-18

SCOFFLAWS: SESSIONS & NIELSEN LIE, CONFUSE, AND OBFUSCATE TO HIDE REAL ILLEGAL INTENT BEHIND CHILD ABUSE POLICY!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trumps-family-separation-policy-is-meant-to-deter-immigration-that-could-make-it-illegal_us_5b194b89e4b0599bc6e17605

Roque Planas reports for HuffPost:

You won’t hear Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen call this “deterrence.”

The aim of President Donald Trump’s new policy of splitting kids from their mothers at the border is, in a word, deterrence: The White House wants to discourage more immigrants from trying to enter the United States.

Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s secretary of homeland security, is careful not to say this outright — she dodged a direct question on the subject from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) at a hearing last month.

Central American immigrants walk after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents in Febru

JOHN MOORE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Central American immigrants walk after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents in February near McAllen, Texas. The Trump administration adopted a policy in May of intentionally separating mothers from their children at the border in order to deter migrants from crossing illegally into the U.S.

There’s a reason Nielsen and other administration officials shy away from attaching the word “deterrence” to the new policy: Changing immigrant detention policy as a way to deter undocumented people from coming to the U.S. is illegal, federal courts have repeatedly ruled. So now she and other Trump administration officials find themselves struggling to defend a family separation policy whose clear ambition is deterrence.

A growing number of mothers have crossed into the United States since 2014, often from Central America and often requesting asylum. Other administration officials were blunter in the past when discussing a policy that would split the families up to scare them away from coming.

The Department of Homeland Security was considering separating children from their parents “in order to deter” undocumented immigration, White House chief of staff John Kelly told CNN while serving as Nielsen’s predecessor last year. And Gene Hamilton, a former aide to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asked participants at a meeting last August on the policy to “generate paperwork laying out everything we could do to deter immigrants from coming to the U.S. illegally,” according to The New Yorker.

Whether or not the deterrence goal is spelled out, the strategy is likely to backfire. Former President Barack Obama learned that lesson in 2015, when a federal judge in Washington blocked his plans to lock up Central American immigrant mothers and their kids without bond to deter others from trying to cross the border.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled that the federal government can’t detain immigrants indefinitely for the sake of deterrence alone. Instead, the decision to detain needed to be based on whether the immigrant posed a threat to the community or a flight risk.

The Obama administration was forced to provide bond hearings to the migrants in family detention. A separate ruling that year ordered the Obama administration to start releasing people from family detention after three weeks in order to comply with the Flores settlement, a 1997 deal that bars the government from locking up children in detention centers.

The Trump administration hopes to skirt the rulings that got Obama officials into trouble by prosecuting immigrant parents at the border. The federal government can’t jail children while their mothers await trial, so immigration authorities transfer them to the Office of Refugee Resettlement to find a sponsor or to non-secured facility to hold them, as if they arrived by themselves.

But this legal maneuver stands on the same shaky ground.

“Whether the deterrence to seeking protection is being done by detaining families or separating families doesn’t make a whole lot of difference,” said Michelle Brané, the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “They’re both punishing families for seeking protection, and protection to which they have the right under U.S. law.”

The Trump administration is already running into legal trouble over its policy. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court in Southern California to overturn Trump’s family separation policy, asking U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw for a nationwide injunction to halt the practice. At a hearing on May 4, Sabraw repeatedly asked whether the Trump administration had adopted the family separation policy to deter others.

“If there were a blanket policy to separate for deterrence value, would that be legal?” Sabraw asked, according to a transcript of the hearing. “Would that pass muster under the Fifth Amendment?”

The judge did not receive a straight answer. The government’s lawyer, Sarah Fabian, instead argued that the government wasn’t separating mothers from their kids systematically, and only following existing immigration law to do so.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions undermined her argument three days later, when he announced that the Justice Department’s “zero tolerance” policy for prosecuting border-crossers included mothers who cross with their children.

Lee Gelernt, the lawyer leading the ACLU lawsuit, called the government lawyer’s unwillingness or inability to defend family separation on the merits without resorting to the legally fraught term “deterrence” significant.

“The government still needs a persuasive justification for separating children,” Gelernt wrote in an email. “And the government has not provided one.”

On Wednesday, Sabraw ordered that the case against family separation can move forward, over the Trump administration’s objections. Although he has yet to rule on the case’s merits, his order did not augur well for the federal government.

Implementing a family separation policy to deter other migrants “arbitrarily tears at the sacred bond between parent and child,” Sabraw wrote. “Such conduct, if true, as it is assumed to be on the present motion, is brutal, offensive, and fails to comport with traditional notions of fair play and decency.”

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Ah, the never-ending legal, moral, and intellectual corruption and dishonesty of the Trumpsters!

Take depositions — force them to lie under oath or admit they have been lying publicly. And, as I recently pointed out, most Article III Federal Judges, who actually have contempt of court authority, take a dim view of perjury by Cabinet Officers in their court proceedings.

I also think that even under the Supreme’s restrictive standards, there is an ever increasing possibility of actually imposing monetary damages on Nielsen, Sessions, and others for their intentional denial of Constitutional rights and their dishonest schemes to conceal their true intent. I actually think that when the full truth some day comes out, we will find not only illegal deterrence, but rather clear evidence of racial animus underlying Sessions’s policies. To be honest, Sessions has turned the entire U.S. Immigration Court system into a tool for enforcement deterrence — a huge violation of Due Process, as well as an astounding conflict of interest and violation of ethics.

Also, not surprisingly, the name of Sessions’s restrictionist crony Gene Hamilton has surfaced in connection with this scheme.

PWS

06-11-18