GONZO’S WORLD: HOW BAD WAS SESSIONS’S DECISION IN MATTER OF A-B-, GRATUITOUSLY REWRITING U.S. ASYLUM LAW TO STRIP WOMEN, VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, & GANG VIOLENCE OF ESSENTIAL ASYLUM PROTECTION? – So Bad, That House GOP-Controlled Appropriations Committee Unanimously Approved A Provision That Would Reverse Matter of A-B-!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gop-led-house-committee-rebuffs-trump-administration-on-immigrant-asylum-claim-policy/2018/07/26/3c52ed52-911a-11e8-9b0d-749fb254bc3d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e5e5bb03b491

Seung Min Kim reports for the Washington Post:

A GOP-led House committee delivered a rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration policies this week — an unusual bipartisan move that may ultimately spell trouble for must-pass spending measures later this year.

The powerful House Appropriations Committee passed a measure that would essentially reverse Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s guidanceearlier this year that immigrants will not generally be allowed to use claims of domestic or gang violence to qualify for asylum. The provision was adopted as part of a larger spending bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security, an already contentious measure because of disputes over funding for President Trump’s border wall.

But one influential Senate Republican and ally of the White House warned that keeping the asylum provision could sink the must-pass funding bill, and other conservatives who support a tougher line on immigration began denouncing it Thursday.

“Why is @HouseAppropsGOP voting to undermine AG Sessions’s asylum reforms & throw open our borders to fraud & crime?” tweeted Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), who often has Trump’s ear on key issues. “The amendment they adopted [Wednesday] is the kind of thing that will kill the DHS spending bill.”

The amendment, written by Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), would bar funding from government efforts to carry out Sessions’s asylum directive. It passed the committee unanimously.

Sessions laid out guidance last month that said victims of domestic abuse and gang violence that is “perpetrated by non-governmental actors” will generally not be allowed to obtain asylum in the United States, an effort he said was meant to cut down on fraud.

[Sessions: Victims of domestic abuse and gang violence generally won’t qualify for asylum]

But Democrats and immigrant rights advocates have criticized Sessions’s move, warning that it would disqualify tens of thousands of immigrants fleeing violence in their home countries. His decision came as the administration was implementing a “zero-tolerance” policy that subjected everyone who crossed the border illegally to criminal prosecution, causing migrant parents to be separated from their children.

One senior Republican official said it was unlikely that the provision would stay intact once the House and Senate merge their spending measures, adding that “not every vote taken is to make law, but to move the process forward.”

With their respective bills for DHS funding, the two chambers are already headed for a clash over border wall spending, with the House allocating about $5 billion for it, while the Senate sets aside $1.6 billion.

Still, both advocates and opponents of more generous immigration policies were surprised at the committee’s move to approve the asylum measure unanimously.

“I think there was a general impression that things like that, that would undermine what the administration’s policies are, would be partisan fights and partisan battles,” said Josh Breisblatt, a senior policy analyst for the American Immigration Council.

Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), who leads the panel overseeing DHS funding, spoke in favor of the Democratic-sponsored provision, saying: “As a son of a social worker, I have great compassion for those victims of domestic violence anywhere, especially as it concerns those nations that turn a blind eye to crimes of domestic violence.”

Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, noted that Yoder flew on Air Force One just this week and that Trump had already singled out Yoder for praise on Twitter, thanking him for securing the $5 billion in wall money in the DHS spending measure.

“He got the funding for the wall in there, and the president endorsed him, and he approved this amendment and spoke in favor of it,” Krikorian said. “That basically makes the wall not all that useful, at least for immigration purposes.”

Seung Min KimSeung Min Kim is a White House reporter for The Washington Post, covering the Trump administration through the lens of Capitol Hill. Before joining The Washington Post in 2018, she spent more than eight years at Politico, primarily covering the Senate and immigration policy. Follow

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Well, at least Sessions’s scofflaw actions are creating some bipartisanship in the House of all places (even though, as the article suggests, there is almost no chance of this actually becoming law).

You know folks are doing the smart and right thing when leading restrictionist zanies like Sen. Tom Cotton and Mark Krikorian go bonkers!

PWS

07-27-18

WASHPOST: THE LATEST VULNERABLE GROUP TARGETED BY THE TRUMP/SESSIONS DEATH SQUADS: LGBTQ REFUGEES!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-sending-lgbtq-migrants-back-to-hell/2018/07/24/eb305d72-8ec3-11e8-8322-b5482bf5e0f5_story.html?utm_term=.c1e37f62bd81

From the Washington Post Editorial Board:

Trump is sending LGBTQ migrants ‘back to hell’

by Editorial BoardJuly 24 at 7:45 PM

IN THE 1990s, the United States was among the first countries to start granting sanctuary to LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers fleeing persecution stemming from their sexual orientation or gender identity in their home countries. Now the Trump administration, intent on turning back the clock on almost every major facet of immigration policy, is increasingly complicit in their mistreatment.

As administration officials have intensified their efforts to hollow out the asylum system — narrowing eligibility criteria, creating bottlenecks for would-be asylum seekers at legal ports of entry and tearing apart families as a means of deterring future applicants — LGBTQ individuals have suffered inordinately. That is particularly true in the case of those from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Central America where sexual and gender-based violence is pervasive.

There are no statistics to indicate that LGBTQ asylum seekers are refused admittance to the United States more (or less) frequently than other applicants, though the rate at which migrants of all sorts are granted asylum seems to be plummeting because of the administration’s policies. However, sending LGBTQ migrants back across the southwestern border to Mexico subjects them to heightened risks: According to the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, two-thirds of such individuals reported that they had suffered sexual or gender-based violence in Mexico after entering that country.

In the case of those deported to their countries of origin in the Northern Triangle, their fates are often even worse. A report last year from the rights group Amnesty International said LGBTQ deportees were effectively “sent back to hell,” based on the horrific conditions from which they fled in the first place. The UNHCR reported that 88 percent of LGBTQ asylum seekers had been victims of sexual and gender-based violence in their countries of origin.

Police and other law enforcement authorities in Central America and Mexico are often indifferent, and frequently overtly hostile, to the fate of LGBTQ individuals. A 34-year-old transgender woman interviewed by Amnesty International said she had fled El Salvador after receiving threats from a police officer who lived near her; when she tried to report him, she said, “the response was that they were going to lock me and my partner up.” She finally fled to Mexico, where she was harassed and abused by officials before finally being granted refugee status.

Another Salvadoran transgender woman interviewed by Amnesty International said that after reaching the United States, she was detained for more than three months in a cell with men — “they never took account of my sexuality or that I was trans.” (Immigration and Customs Enforcement sometimes, but not always, detains transgender women in a dedicated facility whose capacity is 60 beds.)

To qualify for asylum in the United States, migrants must prove they are subject to persecution in their home countries based on specific criteria, including identification with a particular social group, and that the government is either complicit in their mistreatment or powerless to stop it. By any reasonable assessment, many or most LGBTQ asylum seekers meet those criteria.

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The qualification of LGBTQ individuals for asylum was established more than two decades ago by the BIA’s decision in Matter of Tobaso-Alfonso, 20 I&N Dec. 819 (BIA 1990, 1994).

Since then, scores of well-documented LGBTQ asylum cases have been granted by the USCIS Asylum Office and in Immigration Court. Indeed, in the Arlington Immigration Court the cases were so well-documented by the counsel for the respondents that most could be “pre-tried” between the Assistant Chief Counsel and respondent’s counsel and placed on the Immigration Court’s “short docket” for brief hearings and granting of asylum.

Like refugees fleeing domestic violence, I found these cases to involve some of the most badly abused, most deserving, most grateful, and potentially most productive refugees that I dealt with over my many decades of involvement in t he U.S. refugee and asylum systems.

Once again, the biased, racist, White Nationalism of Trump, Sessions and their cronies have taken a well-working part of the asylum system and made it problematic.

We need regime change!

PWS

07-25-18

TAL & CNN: LISTEN AS TRAUMATIZED MIGRANT MOMS BEG FOR THEIR LIVES AND THEIR CHILDREN IN IMMIGRATION COURT – BUT THERE IS NO MERCY, LAW, OR DUE PROCESS IN THE AGE OF SCOFFLAW CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS!

Exclusive: Listen to separated moms beg for their kids in court

By Tal Kopan and Nick Valencia, CNN

Washington (CNN)Newly obtained audio reveals the anguish of parents separated from their children, as it pours from them in immigration court while a judge finds them ineligible to stay in the United States.

In recordings of two court proceedings obtained by CNN, two women who have been separated from their children plead with an immigration judge to reunite them, as he asks them if they have any evidence to back up their asylum claims.

Their attorneys also ask the judge to give them another chance to make their cases, citing their mental health after the prolonged separation from their children.

In both cases, however, the judge denies the requests, and orders the women deported from the country. CNN has received permission from the women to share the audio of their hearings, but is not identifying them for their protection.

While the hearings are just two of thousands of similar proceedings regularly held across the country, they are an indication of the struggles of parents who have been separated from their children for weeks or longer in their quest to stay in the United States. Thousands of parents were separated from their children at the border under the Trump administration’s now-reversed “zero tolerance” policy that prosecuted all adults caught crossing the border illegally, including parents with their children.

Advocates for the immigrants broadly say the parents are being rejected for pursuing asylum at record numbers, in part because they are so distraught.

The hearings were conducted before Judge Robert Powell at the immigration court at the Port Isabel Detention Center on two separate days in July. During one of the hearings, the woman is audibly sniffling and distraught, telling the judge she feels too ill to continue. Neither lasts as long as 10 minutes.

“Well I’ll tell you what, ma’am, what I can do, I’ll put you on the back side of the calendar today, give you time to compose yourself,” Judge Powell tells her. “If you think you need to go to the medical unit, you can go to the medical unit. What do you want to do?”

“What I want is to be with my son,” the woman replies, via an interpreter.

More: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/24/politics/exclusive-audio-separated-parents-in-court/index.html

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

Obviously, no Due Process here!

No excuse for proceeding with a hearing of any type under these conditions! Is this how we want to be remembered? If not, what have you done today to promote “regime change” and to force both Congress and the Article III Courts to live up to their responsibilities and stop this abuse of our laws and our Constitution? This is a charade of a “court” system, in prisons, run by scofflaw child abuser Jeff Sessions and featuring some “judges” unwilling to stand up to his abuses and enforce Due Process (not to mention common sense, respect, and human decency).

These folks are entitled to fair access to counsel, a reasonable chance to prepare and document a case, and a fair and impartial judge. That’s not happening right now.

PWS

07-25-18

GONZO’S WORLD: AS SESSIONS RAMPS UP THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG,” RAMPANT SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE DETAINEES CERTAIN TO INCREASE! – AG’S Child Abuse Also Makes Him Complicit In Sexual Abuse! – See The Short Video By Emily Kassie Here!

Here’s Emily Kassie’s short documentary containing actual descriptions from victims and their abusers. Also starring refugee advocates Michele Brane of the Women Refugee Commisson, Barbara Hines, Esq., and others who “blow the whistle” on Sessions’s depraved policies and the unnecessary pain and suffering they are causing!

I Just Simply Did What He Wanted’: Sexual Abuse Inside Immigrant Detention Facilities – Video – NYTimes.com

By Emily Kassie

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000005559121/sexual-abuse-inside-ice-detention-facilities.html

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So, get this! Gonzo, for no particular reason, reverses a well-established, working precedent — agreed upon by all parties, sponsored by DHS, and the product of 15 years of painstaking work by attorneys on both sides — that protected abused women under our refugee laws. This precedent, Matter of A-R-C-G-, actually saved lives and helped some of the most deserving and long-suffering refugees I dealt with in my decades long career enter and contribute to U.S. society. It was a perfect example of how asylum law could and should work to protect the most vulnerable! A “win – win” for the refugees and for our country!

Then, Sessions intentionally creates a system where these already abused refugees are detained and further abused and persecuted in the United States. Then, he returns them (without fair consideration of their claims for protection) to the countries in which they were persecuted to face further abuse, torture, or death.

The problems faced by women in detention were well-known in the Obama Administration. In fact, the Trump Administration immediately abolished the office within DHS that had been established to deal with allegations of sexual abuse. So, this isn’t “mere negligence.” It’s knowing and intentional misconduct! Usually, that results in criminal prosecution or civil liability!

How perverse is Sessions? I’ll go back to Eugene Robinson’s question from a recent blog posted on “courtside:” Why aren’t kidnappers, child abusers, and promoters of sexual abuse like Sessions and his White Nationalist cronies in jail rather than holding high office? https://wp.me/p8eeJm-2O8

WE ARE DIMINISHING OURSELVES AS A NATION, BUT, THAT WON’T STOP HUMAN MIGRATION!

PWS

07-17-18

INSIDE SESSIONS’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – DESPERATE PLEAS FOR HELP FROM REFUGEE PARENTS IN THE GULAG! – “We feel like there is no way out of this nightmare because the asylum officials and the judges are against us. Please help us and bring justice to Texas!”

http://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/separated-parents-open-letter-to-us/index.html

CNN REPORTS:

‘Each day is more painful than the last’: Parents separated from kids beg US public for help

A section of the letter to the US people from parents at the Port Isabel Service Detention Center.

(CNN)In an act of sheer desperation, dozens of migrant parents separated from their children wrote an open letter to the US public, hoping someone — anyone — can help get them out of this “nightmare.”

The joint letter, from 54 detainees at the Port Isabel Service Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, said the parents came to save the lives of their children. That their children don’t recognize their voices anymore. That they never expected the trauma they’re enduring.

Here’s the text of the parents’ letter, translated from Spanish:

July 15, 2018

To the United States public:

Please help us. We are desperate parents.

We are not criminals, but we need your help.

We came to this country to save our lives and the lives of our children. We were not prepared for the nightmare that we faced here. The United States government, kidnapped our children with tricks and didn’t give us the opportunity to say goodbye.

It’s been more than a month and we haven’t been told much about our children. They are living in places with strangers. We’ve been told that some children are living with new families. Each day is more painful that the last.

Many of us have only spoken with our children once when we have the opportunity to speak with them (which is very difficult because the social worker never answers.) The children cry, they don’t recognize our voices and they feel abandoned and unloved. This makes us feel dead in life. Even with all this trauma, nightmares, anguish and pain that this government is imposing on us and our children, we still have to fight for our asylum cases. But the government doesn’t give us the opportunity to fight our cases and the judges don’t give us the opportunity to speak up.

The asylum official is denying nearly all cases and so are the judges. They don’t give us an opportunity to explain why we came here. We also feel pressured to sign for our deportation as a quick means to reunite with our children.

We feel like there is no way out of this nightmare because the asylum officials and the judges are against us.

Please help us and bring justice to Texas!

Letter translated by CNN’s Rosa Flores.

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

Each day, Jeff Sessions mocks our legal system, degrades America as a country, and each of us as human beings! As those he persecutes appear more human, we are dehumanized by allowing Sessions to continue his program of child abuse!

PWS

07-16-18

NEWS FROM JUST OUTSIDE SESSIONS’S “AMERICAN KIDDIE GULAG” – MOTHER & SON “CAMP OUT” NEARBY IN SEARCH OF TRUTH ABOUT OUR NATION’S OFFICIAL PROGRAM OF CHILD ABUSE! — “These children are victims of state-sanctioned violence — they are essentially experiencing child abuse — and the organizations claiming to serve children are wholly complicit in this abuse.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mom-camping-tender-age-shelter_us_5b476891e4b0e7c958f8cbd8

Ashley Casale writesin HuffPost:

In June, once school let out in rural Dutchess County, New York, I packed up my 7-year-old son and drove 2,054 miles to the Texas-Mexico border. I needed to see with my own eyes what is happening to migrant children separated from their parents as a result of the Trump administration’s escalated “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

I told my son we were going, in person, to demand the reunion of children and parents. Gabe was up for the trip, no questions asked, as he always is when I tell him there is activism to be done. After two nights of sleeping in our car, three days of driving, and 1,764 inquiries of “are we there yet,” we arrived in Texas.

We visited six shelters in the border towns of Raymondville, Combes and Brownsville, and asked for tours. We were denied. Next, we asked to speak with representatives from BCFS or Southwest Key Programs, the organizations that operate these shelters. We were denied again. We were given business cards with the names of public relations officials to call, and repeatedly directed back to the Department of Health & Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families.

None of these contacts promptly returned my calls. So we pitched a tent outside Casa El Presidente, the “tender age” shelter operated by Southwest Key Programs in Brownsville, where children from the ages of 0 to 12 are being held, and we hunkered down for the night. Two weeks later, we are still here.

Our message is this: Reunite these small children with their detained parents now.

Every morning between 9 and 9:45 we can hear the sounds of children playing not far from our encampment. To get close enough to the opaque playground fence outside the shelter, we have to trespass in front of an abandoned building on the adjacent lot. From there, we can see the shapes of children running around — their little feet under the fence, the balls they are playing with flying up in the air. But we must make our glimpses stealthy and quick: Within 15 minutes, without fail, a police car arrives and circles the abandoned lot. Someone inside Southwest Key Programs has called the authorities because we have come too close to seeing the detained children.

COURTESY OF ASHLEY CASALE

A photo Gabe took of kids playing in the back of Casa El Presidente. In the bottom left corner are freelancers for The New York Times.

We have become buddies with news crews who are covering what is happening at Casa El Presidente, exchanging Gatorade and bags of ice and tidbits of news as they wait patiently, sometimes all day, for an official rumored to be visiting the shelter to finally appear. On the Thursday of our first week here, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen supposedly visited, but this was not confirmed until long after her convoy of vehicles left. The members of the media here know as little about what’s going on as we do.

Last Saturday, we met a mother, Lesvia, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala with her son, Yudem, almost two months ago. She was taken into custody 56 days ago and finally released from the T. Don Hutto immigration detention center in Taylor, Texas, on Thursday. She was driven to Brownsville by representatives of the Austin-based organization Grassroots Leadership, who had advocated for her release, to have a one-hour visit with 10-year-old Yudem, who is being held at Casa El Presidente. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in over a month. She sobbed as she was led away from our tent while CNN’s news cameras surrounded her.

She deserved to leave with him, but the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the Trump administration has created so much red tape for parents trying to get their children back that she left alone. Lesvia was told that although she showed documents proving her relationship to Yudem, she needed to be fingerprinted and submit to a background check, and may not see her son’s release for another 20 days. I hugged her, kissed her forehead and told her “I’m so sorry” and “We love you.” The Grassroots Leadership representatives translated my words, but they were just words. Her tears wouldn’t stop. There is no comfort. There is no consolation.

I’m camping here because I’m a mom of a tender age child. If it were my child being held captive, it would not be OK, so as far as I am concerned, it is not OK for any other mother or any other child.

While the Trump administration is flagrantly ignoring court-imposed deadlines and heartlessly taking its time reuniting children with their parents, each day that passes is agonizing and traumatic for the tender age children at Casa El Presidente.

I’m camping here because I’m a mom of a tender age child. If it were my child being held captive, it would not be OK, so as far as I am concerned, it is not OK for any other mother or any other child.

Every morning, Gabe reminds me that it’s time to walk a few yards over to the guards and ask for a tour. I get tired of hearing “No ma’am, we cannot let you inside” and “No ma’am, we cannot release that information” when I ask an employee about what is happening in the shelter.

But every day we still ask for a tour, and every day we call the PR spokesperson for Southwest Key Programs asking for answers.

And, without fail, each day we do not get a tour and we do not get any answers.

So we wait.

Beside our tent we paint signs that read “Complicit,” “All we’re asking for is a tour,” “Try transparency,” “We will go home when the children are reunited” and “How many separated kids do you have?” My son made a sign, not in the neatest handwriting, that simply says “Free The Kids.”

Gabe doesn’t understand why one sign says “Give Yudem to Lesvia.” Don’t we want all kids reunited? he asks. I explain that sometimes telling the story of just one family can be more powerful. I tell him it can humanize what is happening more than a sign that reads “Reunite Every Child” might.

We spent the first few days here chasing after our signs, until we finally got smart about the Texas wind and bought some twining.

NORMA HERRERA

The author holds a sign reading “Give Yudem To Lesvia.” The photo was taken by Norma Herrera from Grassroots Leadership through her car window as she was driving Lesvia away from Casa El Presidente.

Southwest Key Programs, though nominally a nonprofit, is explicitly benefiting from the separation of children and parents through hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts. The employees, security guards and constables I have met in the last two weeks are not just “doing their job” ― they’re complicit in a national atrocity.

But it’s unclear to me if they know that. One security guard, referring to a sign we’ve made that originally read “14 days is running out” and now reads “14 days is up,” asked me, “Ma’am, what does 14 days mean?”

How could he be standing out here for a 12-hour shift and not know about the now come-and-gone court-imposed deadline that required children ages 5 and under to be reunited with their parents within 14 days?

The Trump administration claimed on Thursday that all children 5 and under would be reunited by that morning “if they are eligible.” But who decides eligibility? The administration has said, rather vaguely, that factors like a criminal record, having already been deported, or being “otherwise unfit” would make parents trying to reunite with their children 5 and under ineligible. It was then decided that only 57 children were eligible for reunification, and 46 were not. When, if ever, will those 46 children under 5 be reunited? And what about the thousands of children over the age of 5 who are currently in shelters? When will they see their families again?

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I want my son to see that when there is injustice and we aren’t given answers, we can literally refuse to leave until we get them — even if it means pitching a tent and preparing to stay as long as it takes.

The U.S. government has created a dehumanizing frenzy surrounding the notion of “illegal immigration,” and convinced the president’s supporters that we need more hostility, more arrests, more detention centers, more Border Patrol agents, more border wall. What we really need now is an army of moms and dads patrolling the border, demanding the reunion of these children with their parents.

Finding myself unexpectedly unemployed several months ago, I had the time, freedom and privilege to personally start this patrol. The idea of taking a 9-to-5 desk job and putting my son in day care all summer while children are in detention at the border and activists and lawyers are clamoring to get them released did not feel right, so I put my job search on hold. I needed to be on the ground, adding what I could to the work being done.

On the drive down, I briefed my son on what is happening at the border, and he talked about how he hoped to make friends with the kids in the shelters. We haven’t been able to get anywhere close to that. But at the very least, I hope he’s learning about the importance and power of direct action. This mother is fighting for other mothers. This mother is demanding answers. I want my son to see that when there is injustice and we aren’t given answers, we can literally refuse to leave until we get them ― even if it means pitching a tent and preparing to stay as long as it takes. When our tent is removed (this happened last week, while it was unattended for an hour), we get a new tent, move it even closer to the entrance and make our signs even bolder. We have it all set up before sunrise.

I also want my son to see that direct action works. When Lesvia arrived for her next one-hour visit with her son this past Thursday, one thing had changed: She had brought a tent with her. She planned to camp out with me and Gabe until Yudem was released, and she made this clear to Southwest Key Programs. Her story had gained press attention, and there were members of the media waiting outside while she visited with her son. Yudem was released to her shortly after 5 p.m. on Thursday, and she never had to pitch her tent.

Seeing Yudem come out of Casa El Presidente and tearfully walk over to our tent as Grassroots Leadership members translated our signs for him was magical. Seeing his face when he saw his name on a sign, as he realized complete strangers had been advocating for his release, was magical. And when Yudem cried as his mother kissed him, it was hard for anyone there ― including the reporters ― not to weep themselves. Still, as beautiful as this moment was, we cannot forget there remain dozens of tender age children just like Yudem inside Casa El Presidente waiting to be released.

COURTESY OF ASHLEY CASALE

Lesvia kisses her son Yudem just moments after he was released from the Casa El Presidente shelter.

I finally spoke with Cindy Casares, a spokeswoman for Southwest Key Programs, after countless calls and a barrage of tweets from my handle, @BorderPatrolMom (and perhaps also after reports from inside Casa El Presidente that two people were camping outside). She wouldn’t confirm that where we’re camping is a tender age facility, although press has already confirmed this. She wouldn’t confirm how many children are inside. She wouldn’t discuss reunification plans.

The evasiveness and secrecy is all supposedly in the name of protecting confidentiality, but I believe this is about covering up the lies of the Trump administration and the brutality of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents. I believe Southwest Key Programs fully realizes that the American people would be outraged to know the truth about the suffering of the children inside, so everything is being kept under wraps. Rather than agitating for swifter reunions, they choose to play innocent and present themselves as a benevolent nonprofit simply complying with government orders. They could do more. They could do better. But it’s a good time to be in the business of immigration detention.

So, with no answers and very little having changed, we prepare for another night outside Casa El Presidente. I wouldn’t want my environmentalist friends back home to know I’m using bug spray with DEET, but we need it to ward off the Texas mosquitoes ― “little hummingbirds,” as my son calls them. We brush our teeth crouched by the front tire of our Prius, spitting toothpaste on the ground. We wash our hair using jugs of water left to heat up in the tent and shampoo ourselves in the middle of the street. It’s not exactly a glamorous life.

But every day, I’m reminded of our privilege. Every day I’m reminded that for my son, this is like a camping trip, an exciting adventure. We’re sleeping in a tent, eating food out of a cooler, tossing around a baseball with our gloves while we wait. He’ll assemble complicated Lego structures while I’m journaling or making phone calls or typing on my laptop: This is not all that different from being home. Every day I’m reminded that though it may be 100 degrees here and I may resort to dumping melted ice from the cooler over my head to cool down a bit, I have my son sitting out here with me, cuddling with me in the tent when the sun sets and waking me up when it rises. These parents and these children deserve the same.

COURTESY OF ASHLEY CASALE

Gabe sitting on our cooler.

Still, there’s more to think about, beyond and after the reunions finally happen. While most discussions about what is taking place at the border have centered on the need to reunite separated children with their parents, we should also be discussing the trauma that has been inflicted upon these tender age children, which includes having a conversation about reparations. Who will pay for the therapy they will need to begin to heal from this terrifying experience? These children are victims of state-sanctioned violence — they are essentially experiencing child abuse — and the organizations claiming to serve children are wholly complicit in this abuse.

My son and I want Southwest Key Programs to reveal the number of children inside Casa El Presidente. We want to know the ages of the children being held here. We want to know how the people running this shelter, and all the other shelters like it, plan to reunite these tender age children with their families. We want to know the timeline for making this happen. In the meantime, you can find us at our campsite, demanding answers and refusing to leave until we get them.

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As Ashley makes clear, the idea that anyone in the Trump Administration is acting for the welfare or in the best interests of these children is beyond preposterous!

Sessions plans to return all brown-skinned refugees to countries where they will be “sitting ducks” for gangs and domestic abusers and the governments will either join in or willfully ignore what’s happening. In other words, he intends to sentence them to lives of abuse or perhaps death without even fairly considering their claims for refuge. He just doesn’t care, because they aren’t white.

We all should be ashamed of what America has become under Trump & Sessions.

PWS

07-16-18

WILL WEISSERT & EMILY SCHMALL @ AP (AUSTIN, TX) EXPOSE HOW DUE PROCESS HAS GONE “BELLY UP” @ EOIR UNDER SESISONS – “Credible Fear Reviews” Are Nothing But “Rubber Stamps” By “Wholly Owned Judges” Working For Openly Xenophobic AG!`

https://www.sfgate.com/news/texas/article/Credible-fear-for-US-asylum-harder-to-prove-13078667.php

Will & Emily report for AP:

LOS FRESNOS, Texas (AP) — Patricia Aragon told the U.S. asylum officer at her recent case assessment that she was fleeing her native Honduras because she had been robbed and raped by a gang member who threatened to kill her and her 9-year-old daughter if she went to the police.

Until recently, the 41-year-old seamstress from San Pedro Sula would have had a good chance of clearing that first hurdle in the asylum process due to a “credible fear” for her safety, but she didn’t. The officer said the Honduran government wasn’t to blame for what happened to Aragon and recommended that she not get asylum, meaning she’ll likely be sent home.

“The U.S. has always been characterized as a humanitarian country,” Aragon said through tears at Port Isabel, a remote immigration detention center tucked among livestock and grapefruit groves near Los Fresnos, a town about 15 miles (25kilometers) from the Mexico border. “My experience has been very difficult.”

As part of the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on immigration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently tightened the restrictions on the types of cases that can qualify someone for asylum, making it harder for Central Americans who say they’re fleeing the threat of gangs, drug smugglers or domestic violence to pass even the first hurdle for securing U.S. protection.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has overturned protections for asylum seekers in a decision that could affect thousands. Sessions ruled that a 2014 Board of Immigration Appeals decision that protected domestic violence victims from Central America was wrongly decided. Under the new ruling, “the applicant must show that the government condoned the private actions or demonstrated an inability to protect the victims,” in order to qualify for asylum protection. Asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems, even all serious problems, that people face every day all over the world. I will be issuing a decision that restores sound principles of asylum and long-standing principles of immigration law.

Immigration lawyers say that’s meant more asylum seekers failing interviews with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to establish credible fear of harm in their home countries. They also say that immigration judges, who work for the Justice Department, are overwhelmingly signing off on those recommendations during appeals, effectively ending what could have been a yearslong asylum process almost before it’s begun.

“This is a direct, manipulated attack on the asylum process,” said Sofia Casini of the Austin nonprofit Grassroots Leadership, which has been working with immigrant women held at the nearby T. Don Hutto detention center who were separated from their kids under a widely condemned policy that President Donald Trump ended on June 20.

Casini said that of the roughly 35 separated mothers her group worked with, more than a third failed their credible fear interviews, which she said is about twice the failure rate of before the new restrictions took effect. Nationally, more than 2,000 immigrant children and parents have yet to be reunited, including Aragon and her daughter, who is being held at a New York children’s shelter and whose future is as unclear as her mother’s.

In order to qualify for asylum, seekers must demonstrate that they have a well-founded fear they’ll be persecuted back home based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinions. The interviews with USCIS asylum officers, which typically last 30 to 60 minutes, are sometimes done by phone. Any evidence asylum seekers present to support their claims must be translated into English, and they often don’t have lawyers present.

. . . .

“The asylum officer conducting credible fear (interviews) has been instructed to apply A.B., so when the person says, ‘My boyfriend or my husband beat me’ it’s, ‘So what, you lose,'” said Paul W. Schmidt, a former immigration judge in Arlington, Virginia, who retired in 2016. “It then goes to the immigration judge, who has just been ordered to follow Sessions’ precedent — and most of them want to keep their jobs and they just rubber stamp it, and there’s no meaningful appeal.”

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link.

The now long forgotten “EOIR Vision” developed by our Executive Group in the late 1990s was “To be the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”

Under Sessions, the U.S. Immigration Courts have been converted into kangaroo courts that are a parody of Due Process and fairness. Since the Immigration Courts are one of the foundations upon which the U.S. Justice System rests, that doesn’t bode well for justice or the future of our country as a Constitutional democratic republic.

PWS

07-16-18

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.

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.

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

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

TAL @ CNN: UNDER SESSIONS’S “DUE PROCESS FREE REGIME” ASYLUM APPLICANTS RETURNED TO DANGER IN HOME COUNTRIES WITHOUT FAIR CONSIDERATION OF CLAIMS — US IMMIGRATION JUDGES PARTICIPATE IN “DEPORTATION RAILWAY!”

Impact of Sessions’ asylum move already felt at border

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

Immigrants are already being turned away at the border under Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent reinterpretation of asylum law. And advocates for them fear there may be no end to it anytime soon.

In fact, immigration attorneys fear tens of thousands of migrants could be sent home to life-threatening situations before the courts are able to catch up.

Signs have already popped up across the border that their fears are being realized.

Over just a few days in immigration court early this month near Harlingen, Texas, CNN witnessed multiple judges upholding denials of claims of credible fear of return home, explicitly saying that gang violence and such fears do not qualify.

Immigration Judge Robert Powell at Port Isabel Detention Center, for example, upheld two denials of credible fear for immigrants, one man and one woman, paving the way for their immediate deportation.

Tightly clutching a rosary, the woman, Marcella Martinez, begged the judge to reverse the decision. With tears in her eyes, Martinez asked to provide testimony to the court.

“I can’t go back to Honduras” she said. “I was threatened over the phone, and need to stay here for the opportunity.”

The judge found, nevertheless, that Martinez didn’t enter anything into evidence that would qualify as going beyond the burden of proof required for her initial fear assessment. He informed her that the decision of denial was affirmed.

She exited the courtroom sobbing.

In another courtroom, Immigration Judge Morris Onyewuchi heard the case of Sergio Gavidia Canas, who had an attorney. But the judge said that because of the scope of proceedings, the attorney could not advocate on Canas’ behalf.

Canas, an El Salvador native, said he feared for his life back home, as he had been threatened and beaten by three gang members in front of his currently detained minor daughter.

He said he was a proud owner of a bus company in his native country, and that a gang had come to him demanding the transport of weapons and drugs. When he refused, he was severely beaten in front of his child.

He added that his initial asylum interview took place when he was distraught and worried about his daughter, which is why he didn’t provide this additional information at the time.

The judge indicated that “gang threats don’t fall under the law for asylum” and upheld his denial.

Much more:

http://www.cnn.com/2018/07/14/politics/sessions-asylum-impact-border/index.html

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

Important to remember:

These asylum applicants are being returned, without appeal, under Matter of A-B- which has never been “tested,” let alone upheld, by any real Article III Court;
These unrepresented individuals have no idea what Matter of A-B- says;
Outrageously, and in violation of both common sense and and common courtesy, Sergio Gavidia Canas actually had a lawyer, but Judge Morris Onyewuchi wouldn’t let the lawyer participate in the hearing (by contrast, I never, ever, prevented a lawyer from participating in a credible fear review — in fact, if the person were represented and the lawyer were not present, I continued the hearing so the lawyer could appear, as required by Due Process and fairness);
Even though Matter of A-B– left open the possibility of some valid individual claims involving domestic violence or gang violence, these Immigration Judges appear to be making no such inquiry (the, apparently intentional, misapplication of Matter of A-B- by Asylum Officers and EOIR was mentioned in a previous blog by Judge Jeffrey Chase (https://wp.me/p8eeJm-2Ob));
These Immigration Judges also do not appear to be exploring the possibility of asylum claims based on other grounds;
These Immigration Judges do not appear to be making an inquiry into whether these individuals might also have a reasonable fear of torture;
In other words, this is a system specifically designed and operated to reject, rather than protect under our laws!

PWS

07-16-18

NYT: NO, THIS ISN’T OUT OF A CHARLES DICKENS NOVEL – IT’S ABOUT HOW KIDS ARE TREATED IN JEFF SESSIONS’S “AMERICAN KIDDIE GULAG” – “[T]he environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/migrant-children-shelters.html?emc=edit_nn_20180715&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=7921388620180715&te=1

By Dan Barry, Miriam Jordan, Annie Correal and Manny Fernandez

July 14, 2018

Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.

Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.

“You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.

Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.

The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.

Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.

In response to an international outcry, President Trump recently issued an executive order to end his administration’s practice, first widely put into effect in May, of forcibly removing children from migrant parents who had entered the country illegally. Under that “zero-tolerance” policy for border enforcement, thousands of children were sent to holding facilities, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where their parents were being held for criminal prosecution.

Last week, in trying to comply with a court order, the government returned slightly more than half of the 103 children under the age of 5 to their migrant parents.

But more than 2,800 children — some of them separated from their parents, some of them classified at the border as “unaccompanied minors” — remain in these facilities, where the environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.

Depending on several variables, including happenstance, a child might be sent to a 33-acre youth shelter in Yonkers that features picnic tables, sports fields and even an outdoor pool. “Like summer camp,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat of New York who recently visited the campus.

Or that child could wind up at a converted motel along a tired Tucson strip of discount stores, gas stations and budget motels. Recreation takes place in a grassless compound, and the old motel’s damaged swimming pool is covered up.

Image
Migrant children in a recreation area at a shelter in Brownsville, Tex.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters

Still, some elements of these detention centers seem universally shared, whether they are in northern Illinois or South Texas. The multiple rules. The wake-up calls and the lights-out calls. The several hours of schooling every day, which might include a civics class in American history and laws, though not necessarily the ones that led to their incarceration.

Most of all, these facilities are united by a collective sense of aching uncertainty — scores of children gathered under a roof who have no idea when they will see their parents again.

Leticia wrote letters from the shelter in South Texas to her mother, who was being held in Arizona, to tell her how much she missed her. She would quickly write these notes after she had finished her math worksheets, she said, so as not to violate yet another rule: No writing in your dorm room. No mail.

She kept the letters safe in a folder for the day when she and her mother would be reunited, though that still hasn’t happened. “I have a stack of them,” she said.

Another child asked her lawyer to post a letter to her detained mother, since she had not heard from her in the three weeks since they had been separated.

“Mommy, I love you and adore you and miss you so much,” the girl wrote in curvy block letters. And then she implored: “Please, Mom, communicate. Please, Mom. I hope that you’re OK and remember, you are the best thing in my life.”

The complicated matters of immigration reform and border enforcement have vexed American presidents for at least two generations. The Trump administration entered the White House in 2017 with a pledge to end the problems, and for several months, it chose one of the harshest deterrents ever employed by a modern president: the separation of migrant children from their parents.

This is what a few of those children will remember.

No Touching, No Running

Diego Magalhães, a Brazilian boy with a mop of curly brown hair, spent 43 days in a Chicago facility after being separated from his mother, Sirley Paixao, when they crossed the border in late May. He did not cry, just as he had promised her when they parted. He was proud of this. He is 10.

He spent the first night on the floor of a processing center with other children, then boarded an airplane the next day. “I thought they were taking me to see my mother,” he said. He was wrong.

Once in Chicago, he was handed new clothes that he likened to a uniform: shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweatsuit, boxers and some items for hygiene. He was then assigned to a room with three other boys, including Diogo, 9, and Leonardo, 10, both from Brazil.

The three became fast friends, going to class together, playing lots of soccer and earning “big brother” status for being good role models for younger children. They were rewarded the privilege of playing video games.

There were rules. You couldn’t touch others. You couldn’t run. You had to wake up at 6:30 on weekdays, with the staff making banging noises until you got out of bed.

“You had to clean the bathroom,” Diego said. “I scrubbed the bathroom. We had to remove the trash bag full of dirty toilet paper. Everyone had to do it.”

Diego and the 15 other boys in their unit ate together. They had rice and beans, salami, some vegetables, the occasional pizza, and sometimes cake and ice cream. The burritos, he said, were bad.

Apart from worrying about when he would see his mother again, Diego said that he was not afraid, because he always behaved. He knew to watch for a staff member “who was not a good guy.” He had seen what happened to Adonias, a small boy from Guatemala who had fits and threw things around.

“They applied injections because he was very agitated,” Diego said. “He would destroy things.”

A person he described as “the doctor” injected Adonias in the middle of a class, Diego said. “He would fall asleep.”

Diego managed to stay calm, in part because he had promised his mother he would. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Diego be reunited with his family. Before he left, he made time to say goodbye to Leonardo.

“We said ‘Ciao, good luck,” Diego recalled. “Have a good life.”

But because of the rules, the two boys did not hug.

. . . .

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Read the full story at the link.

This is America in the age of Trump & Sessions. A few of these kids might get to stay in the U.S. Most will be returned (with little or no Due Process) to countries will they will be targeted, harassed, brutalized, extorted, impressed, and/or perhaps killed by gangs that operate more or less with impunity from weak and corrupt police and governments. Indeed, contrary to the false blathering of Sessions & co., gangs and cartels are the “de facto government” in some areas of the Norther Triangle. Those kids that survive to adulthood will have these memories of the United States and how we treated them at their time of most need.

PWS

07-15-18

THE HONORABLE JEFFREY CHASE: HOW THE PERNICIOUS INFLUENCE OF JEFF SESSIONS IS STANGLING THE US ASYLUM SYSTEM AND ITS “GO ALONG TO GET ALONG” ADJUDICATORS AND “JUDGES” — “Matter of A-B- Being Misapplied by EOIR, DHS”

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/7/13/matter-of-a-b-being-misapplied-by-eoir-dhs

Jul 13 Matter of A-B- Being Misapplied by EOIR, DHS

One month after Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued his cruel, misguided decision in Matter of A-B-, we are seeing the first signs of how the decision is being implemented by the BIA, USCIS, and ICE.

There is no question that Sessions’ intent was to eliminate domestic violence and gang violence as bases for asylum. How can I be so certain of this? While Matter of A-B- was pending before him, Sessions told a Phoenix radio station in March: “We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence, therefore they are entitled to enter the United States. Well, that’s obviously false but some judges have gone along with that.” (here’s the link: https://ktar.com/story/2054280/ag-jeff-sessions-says-closing-loopholes-can-fight-illegal-immigration/).

However, Sessions chose to attempt to achieve this goal by issuing a precedent decision. A decision is not a fiat. It must be analyzed in the same manner as any other legal decision and applied to the facts accordingly.

Asylum experts and advocacy groups analyzing the decision have reached the following conclusions. The main impact of Sessions’ decision is to vacate the Board’s 2014 precedent decision, Matter of A-R-C-G-, holding that a victim of domestic violence was eligible for asylum as a member of a particular social group. Therefore, asylum applicants can no longer rely on that decision.

However, Sessions’ decision otherwise cobbled together already existing case law (which was taken into consideration in deciding Matter of A-R-C-G-), and added non-binding dicta, i.e. his statement that “generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence…will not qualify for asylum.” (Note the use of the pejorative “aliens” to describe individuals applying for asylum.)

Furthermore, most of the items covered by Sessions involved questions of fact (which are specifically dependent on the evidence in the individual case, and which the BIA and AG have very limited ability to reverse on appeal) as opposed to questions of law, which can be considered de novo on appeal and have more general applicability. The questions of fact raised by Sessions include whether the persecutor was aware of the existence of the group and was motivated to harm the victim on account of such membership; whether the society in question recognizes the social group with sufficient distinction; whether the authorities in the home country are unable or unwilling to protect the victim, and whether the victim could reasonably relocate to another part of the country to avoid the feared harm.

So in summary, Sessions felt that the Board’s decision in Matter of A-R-C-G- did not provide a sufficiently detailed legal analysis, therefore vacated it, and laid out all of the legal analysis that future decisions must address. Domestic violence and gang violence claims still remain very much grantable, provided that all of the requirements laid out by the Attorney General are satisfied. Hearings on these cases may now take much longer, as testimony will need to be more detailed, additional social groups will need to be proposed and ruled on, more experts must be called, and more documents considered. But nothing in A-B- prevents these cases from continuing to be granted.

Therefore, how discouraging that the first decision of the BIA to apply this criteria failed to do what is now required of them. A single Board Member’s unpublished decision issued shortly after A-B-’s publication did not engage in the detailed legal analysis that is now warranted in domestic violence cases. Instead, the decision noted that the case involved a social group “akin to the group defined in Matter of A-R-C-G-.” The Board then found that the AG’s decision in A-B- “has foreclosed the respondent’s arguments,” because “the Attorney General overruled Matter of A-R-C-G- and held that it was wrongly decided.”

What is particularly dispiriting is that the decision was authored by Board Member Linda Wendtland. A former OIL attorney whose views are more conservative than my own, I have always respected her scholarly approach and her intellectual honesty. At the BIA, staff attorneys draft the decisions which the Board Members then edit. Judge Wendtland always took the time to write her edits as academic lessons from which I always learned something. She recently authored the lone dissenting opinion in a case involving a determination of whether a women was barred from relief for having provided material support to terrorists; Judge Wendtland correctly determined that the cooking and cleaning that the woman was forced to perform after having been kidnapped by rebels did not constitute “material support.” It is therefore perplexing why she would sign the post-A-B- decision that so sorely lacked her usual degree of analysis.

In addition to the BIA, on July 11, both USCIS and ICE issued guidance on applying A-B- to asylum adjudications. Much like the BIA decision, the USCIS guidelines to its asylum officers, which serve as guidance not only in adjudicating asylum applications, but also for making credible fear determinations, seem to apply the personal opinion of Sessions rather than the actual legal holdings of his decision. USCIS decided to print in boldface Sessions’ nonbinding dicta that such cases will generally not establish eligibility for asylum, refugee status, or credible or reasonable fear of persecution.

Credible fear interviews are conducted right after an asylum seeker arrives in this country, while they are detained, scared, often unrepresented by counsel, before having a chance to understand the law or gather documents or witnesses. The interviewer is supposed to find credible fear if there is a significant possibility that the applicant will be able to establish eligibility for relief at a future hearing before an immigration judge. It is likely that, at such future hearing, the applicant will have an attorney who will make the proper legal arguments, call expert witnesses, formulate the particular social group according to the requirements of case law, submit other supporting evidence, etc. But now asylum officers are being instructed to ignore all of that and deny individuals the chance to even have the opportunity to apply for asylum before an immigration judge essentially because Jeff Sessions doesn’t believe these are worthy cases.

ICE (through its Office of the Public Legal Advisor) has issued guidance that, while probably reflecting internal conflict within the bureau, is nevertheless somewhat more reasonable than the interpretations of either USCIS or the Board. The ICE guidance does ask its attorneys to hold asylum applicants to some exacting legal standards, to look for flaws in supporting evidence, and to question asylum applicants in great detail. It also asks its attorneys not to opine on whether gender alone may constitute a PSG until further guidance is offered (again, probably reflecting internal conflict within the bureau on the issue). But the guidance does not simply conclude that all domestic violence and gang violence cases should be denied. It even encourages attorneys to employ a “collaborative approach” by pointing out flawed social groups offered by pro se applicants in the hope that the IJ might help the applicant remedy the situation early on.

However, let’s remember that ICE stipulated to grants of asylum for victims of domestic violence in both Matter of R-A- (during the Bush administration, and to the consternation of then Attorney General John Ashcroft), and in Matter of A-R-C-G-. ICE argued in its brief to Sessions in Matter of A-B- that Matter of A-R-C-G- was good law and should not be vacated. So then shouldn’t ICE be applying these same principles to its guidance to attorneys?

It should also be noted that ICE and USCIS could see a way to granting worthy cases in spite of Sessions’ decision. In the early 1990s, then INS General Counsel Grover Joseph Rees III took exception with the BIA’s precedent decision holding that forcible abortions and sterilization under China’s family planning policies did not constitute persecution on account of a protected ground. Rees instructed his attorneys to seek to remand cases involving such claim to the INS Asylum Office, where per his instructions, such claims were granted affirmatively by asylum officers. There is no reason that a similar practice could not be employed now, particularly as both ICE and USCIS are not part of the Department of Justice and therefore are not controlled by Sessions. The only thing lacking is the political will to take such a stand. In the early 1990s, Rees’s stance involving abortion played to the Bush Administration’s political base. Today, ICE and USCIS would have to take action contrary to the wishes of that same base because doing so is the just and humane thing to do. Unfortunately, based on the tone of their recent advisals, doing the right thing is not enough of a motive in the present political climate.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

JEFF CHASE

EUGENE ROBINSON @WASHPOST ASKS THE QUESTION ALL DECENT AMERICANS SHOULD BE ASKING: WhyAren’t Child Abuser/Kidnapper Jeff Sessions & His Equally Vile & Dishonest Cohorts In Jail? — “Kidnapping children. Failing even to account for them. Sending families home to be killed. Give us your huddled masses, this administration seems to say, and let us kick them in their little faces.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-kidnapped-children-someone-should-go-to-jail/2018/07/12/2128c51c-8605-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html?utm_term=.d64b5c997413

The Trump administration kidnapped children. Someone should go to jail.

by Eugene Robinson

The Trump administration’s kidnapping — that’s the proper word — of the children of would-be migrants should be seen as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. Somebody ought to go to jail.

Under a federal court order, all 103 children under the age of 5 who were taken from their families at the border were supposed to be returned by Tuesday. The government missed that deadline, and I wish U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who issued the order, had held somebody in contempt. One candidate would be Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who on Tuesday had the gall to describe the administration’s treatment of immigrant children as “one of the great acts of American generosity and charity.”

On Thursday, officials announced with fanfare that 57 of the kids — some still in diapers — had been returned to their parents. But 46 others were deemed “ineligible,” meaning they remain in government custody.

The reasons for failing to comply fully with Sabraw’s order sound reasonable, unless you take into account the bad faith with which the administration has conducted this whole sordid exercise. In 22 cases, officials had “safety concerns posed by the adults in question,” presumably the parents; in 12 cases, parents have already been deported; in 11 cases, parents are in federal or state custody; and in one case, an adult believed to be the child’s parent cannot be found.

In a joint statement, Azar, along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, took credit for working “tirelessly” to reunite the children with their families — which is rich, given that the Trump administration deliberately and cynically created this crisis in the first place.

“Our message has been clear all along: Do not risk your own life or the life of your child by attempting to enter the United States illegally,” the statement said. Translation: Don’t come to the border seeking asylum because, when others did, we took away their kids.

Given that the intention from the beginning was clearly to frighten and intimidate would-be migrants from Central America, why should anyone believe that the administration is acting or speaking in good faith now? Why should we accept at face value that exactly 103 children under 5 were seized? How can we be sure there is only one case in which officials can’t find or identify the parents? Given that it has taken weeks to return just 57 children, what is the likelihood the government kept adequate records?

This is an administration, after all, that conducts immigration court proceedings, or travesties, in which children too young to know their ABCs are expected to represent themselves without the benefit of legal counsel. Imagine your 3-year-old child or grandchild in that situation. Now tell me how adopting child abuse as a policy is supposed to Make America Great Again.

And what about the children older than 5 who were taken from their families? Sabraw ordered that they be returned to their parents by July 26, but don’t hold your breath. We don’t even know how many there are, because the government doesn’t seem to know. Officials first gave the number as about 2,300, but the latest estimate is nearly 3,000. Why can’t they settle on a precise figure? What reason could there be for such vagueness, other than ignorance?

I don’t think they know how many kids they ripped away from their families, and I believe it is inevitable some children will never again see their parents. The fact that my government would commit such a crime weighs on my conscience as an American. President Trump and his accomplices, from all appearances, couldn’t be prouder.

“Judges run the system and illegals and traffickers know how it works. They are just using children!” Trump tweeted Wednesday. As usual, he was ascribing his own base motives to others: He is the one who is “just using children.”

Remember what this is really about. The main flow of undocumented migrants consists of Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans seeking to escape rampant, deadly gang violence that their home governments cannot or will not check. The Trump administration issued new instructions on Wednesday to officers who interview asylum seekers at the border, telling them that fear of gang violence, no matter how well-founded, is no longer grounds for asylum. The same new guidance applies to immigration judges, who take their orders from Sessions.

Kidnapping children. Failing even to account for them. Sending families home to be killed. Give us your huddled masses, this administration seems to say, and let us kick them in their little faces.

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

Yup. Sessions and his group of fellow racists know very well that their actions violate the Constitution and the laws of our country governing both conditions for detention and reasons for detention. Yet, they walk free and smugly give press conferences at which they continue to lie about their actions. Their victims, on the other hand, largely languish in substandard prisons or are being removed to the dangerous situations they fled in their home countries without any pretense of Due Process or fundamental fairness.

PWS

07-14-18

GONZO’S WORLD: INSIDE JEFF SESSIONS’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – WHERE INHUMANE CONDITIONS, ABUSE OF DETAINEES, HARM TO PREGNANT WOMEN, OVERWHELMED STAFF, LACK OF PROFESSIONALISM, & EVEN DETAINEE DEATHS ARE THE NORM — “We’re putting out fires, just like we were doing before,” said a worker who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. “But it’s gone from bad to worse to worst. We cannot take care of these inmates.”

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=2cd55c1f-5d26-489c-b14e-711440e36812

Paloma Esquivel reports for the LA Times:

By Paloma Esquivel

VICTORVILLE — Immigration detainees who were sent to a federal prison here last month were kept in their cells for prolonged periods with little access to the outside and were unable to change their clothing for weeks, according to workers at the facility and visitors who have spoken with detainees.

Staffers at the prison also say they have not been given the proper resources or direction to handle the influx of detainees, putting those in custody as well as workers in danger.

“We’re putting out fires, just like we were doing before,” said a worker who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. “But it’s gone from bad to worse to worst. We cannot take care of these inmates.”

The Victorville Federal Correctional Complex is a sprawling federal prison in San Bernardino County that houses thousands of inmates who have been convicted of crimes in federal courts.

By contrast, the immigrants who have been sent there are considered “civil” rather than criminal detainees, meaning they are being held pending the outcome of their immigration cases. Some are asylum seekers; some are fathers who were separated from their children in recent months.

They were sent to the prison in June as part of the Trump administration’s policy of increasingly detaining asylum seekers and immigrants who are in the country illegally until their cases are decided. Federal officials have said using prisons to hold the detainees is a stopgap measure while officials find more holding space.

Officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons say the facility had beds available because of a decline in the inmate population in recent years, and that it has managed the new population using existing staff, some of whom were reassigned from other facilities.

But workers and people who have been able to visit the detainees say the prison was seriously unprepared for its new role.

The prison, which workers have long complained was short-staffed, is now scrambling to care for hundreds of new detainees from around the world with language, medical and care needs that are very different from those of typical federal prisoners, workers say.

The situation has raised concern among Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

In late June, Rep. Paul Cook (R-Yucca Valley) wrote a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Prisons urging officials to increase staffing levels at Victorville to match the increase in population.

“Furthermore, I urge ICE to support and train [prison] staff so they are properly equipped to implement policies and procedures that may be unfamiliar to them when dealing with immigration detainees,” Cook wrote.

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside), who visited the facility July 2, said he saw numerous signs that the prison was struggling to meet detainees’ needs.

“Every detainee group that we met said they had not had a change in clothes since they arrived on June 8. Their bedding had not been switched. They were wearing the same underwear,” Takano said.

Thirteen of the detainees who spoke with Takano and his staff were fathers who had been separated from their children. The men said they had been unable to speak with their children since arriving at the facility.

Detainees also complained of not getting enough food, of being “locked up for long periods of time in their cells” and having very limited access to the outdoors, Takano said.

Prison officials showed Takano a recreation area that he said was nicely equipped. But when he asked one group of detainees whether they were able to use that room, they told him they had been there only once, he said.

“That’s an indicator to me that the prison was not ramped up to be able to accommodate this incursion of detainees. They were understaffed before the detainees arrived, and the arrival of 1,000 detainees I think has fully stressed the staff’s ability to be able to safely oversee their health and safety,” Takano said.

Nearly 1,000 immigration detainees were initially transferred to the prison. As of this week, 656 remained, said ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley.

The complex includes a high-security prison, two medium-security prisons and a minimum-security camp. The detainees are being housed in one of the medium-security prisons. Visits to the facility are tightly controlled.

Workers say one of their biggest concerns is the lack of staff and resources to adequately handle detainees’ medical needs.

There have been three cases of chickenpox and about 40 scabies cases since the detainees arrived.

One worker who spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation said medical workers are stretched so thin they can address only detainees’ most urgent needs.

“We’re not finding illness because we are so rushed,” the worker said. “As patients, they’re not getting the care they need.”

After Takano’s visit, the worker said, detainees were given a change of clothing — but for many of them it was paper gowns normally reserved for inmates with specific medical needs.

Eva Bitran, an attorney for the ACLU who has met with two detainees at the facility, said both men told her they had struggled to get medical care.

One man told her about a button that detainees could push for emergency medical care. When that button was pushed, they were asked: “Are you being raped or are you dying?” When the answer was no, no help would come, the man told her.

One detainee who has since left the facility told The Times that he and others in his unit were locked in their cells for most of the day for the two weeks he was at the prison, with food passed through a small opening in the door.

The man said he was not given a change of clothes during the 14 days he was at the facility and was not able to bathe for the first four days.

In late June, the ACLU sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Prisons on behalf of detainees, saying they had been held “incommunicado,” asking the court to order the prison to allow lawyer visits and phone calls.

U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II sided with the ACLU and granted a temporary restraining order June 21 requiring the prison to allow detainees to communicate with immigration attorneys and attend “know your rights” workshops.

Haley, the ICE spokeswoman, referred questions about conditions at the prison to the Bureau of Prisons and said ICE was deferring to that agency’s standards on questions of things such as access to time outside of cells and outdoors time.

In an email response to questions from The Times, Bureau of Prisons officials said, “[D]etainees have regular inside and outside recreational opportunities.”

Officials also said that since the detainees’ arrival, 25 medical staff members had been temporarily assigned to help with intake screenings, physical exams and general care.

Regarding the chickenpox and scabies cases, officials said the facility was “taking the necessary precautionary measures to protect staff, inmates and detainees, and the community, from the possibility of being exposed.”

John Kostelnik, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3969, which represents workers at the prison, said that although some medical staffers were briefly assigned to help with the detainees, it was far from enough to meet the need.

He said many problems stem from a lack of direction from officials about how to reconcile standards that are common to federal prisons but aren’t necessarily appropriate for immigration detainees.

“We’re still day by day, making things up as we go,” he said.

As the facility has received increasing scrutiny from political leaders, legal groups and others following the transfer of detainees, Kostelnik said, some things appear to be improving — such as more uniforms.

But the staff is still overtaxed, said Kostelnik, who worries about what might happen if bigger changes don’t come fast enough.

“You have this group of detainees that are starting to get upset,” he said. “You get a large group of individuals that are upset, you have the potential for anything.”

paloma.esquivel@latimes.com

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/12/us/georgia-ice-detainee-dies/index.html

Catherine E. Shoichet reports for CNN:

(CNN)Authorities are investigating after an ICE detainee facing possible deportation apparently killed himself.

Efrain De La Rosa, 40, was found unresponsive in a cell at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, on Tuesday night and was later pronounced dead at a hospital, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

The apparent cause of death was self-inflicted strangulation, the agency said Thursday, adding that the case is under investigation.

De La Rosa, a Mexican national, was in removal proceedings at the time of his death, ICE said.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating the death at the request of the local sheriff. There is no indication of foul play, GBI Special Agent in Charge Danny Jackson said.

A preliminary investigation revealed De La Rosa was alone in an isolation cell at the detention center when officials there found him, Jackson said.

It was not immediately clear why De La Rosa had been placed in isolation.

ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said he could not provide additional comment because an agency review of the death is ongoing.

Amanda Gilchrist, a spokeswoman for CoreCivic, which owns and operates the facility, said the company is fully cooperating with investigators but declined to comment further because of the active investigation.

De La Rosa is the eighth detainee to die in ICE custody in the 2018 fiscal year, the agency said.

De La Rosa’s death comes less than six months after the death of another ICE detainee who had been in custody at Stewart.

Yulio Castro Garrido, a 33-year-old Cuban national, was diagnosed with pneumonia at Stewart and was hospitalized as his condition worsened. He died in January at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.

And in May 2017, Jean Jimenez-Joseph, a 27-year-old Panamanian national, killed himself in solitary confinement at Stewart.

Immigrant rights groups swiftly criticized the facility as word of De La Rosa’s death spread.

“The deaths and systematic abuse at Stewart are not only tragic, but infuriating,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director at Project South.

ICE said it is conducting an agency-wide review of De La Rosa’s death and “is firmly committed to the health and welfare of all those in its custody.”

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https://www.buzzfeed.com/emaoconnor/senators-call-for-an-investigation-of-alleged-mistreatment?utm_term=.aiNXKQ2kL#.haqmEklKB

Ema O’Connor reports for BuzzFeed News:

Four Democratic senators are calling for an investigation into the treatment of pregnant women detained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, following a BuzzFeed News report on several women who said they were mistreated while in immigration detention.

The letter to the Department of Homeland Security Acting Inspector General John Kelly, sent Friday, cites BuzzFeed News’ reporting on the conditions pregnant women in ICE and Customs and Border Patrol custody have faced under the Trump administration, particularly following a new policy issued in December allowing pregnant women to be detained. Under the Obama administration, ICE was ordered to release pregnant women past their first trimester from custody.

“Recent reports cite the inadequate care that pregnant women receive while in ICE custody, pregnant women’s lack of access to medical care, and their heightened vulnerability to sexual assault,” the letter reads. “Given the multiple findings of harmful and substandard conditions of detention for this particularly vulnerable population, we ask that you open an investigation into the treatment and care of pregnant women in ICE detention facilities.”

The letter was organized by Sen. Kamala Harris and signed by fellow Democratic Sens. Patty Murray, Maggie Hassan, and Tom Carper. A spokesperson for Harris’s office told BuzzFeed News that Harris was working “with a group of senators on legislative options to address this as well.”

In a story published Monday, BuzzFeed News related the stories of three women who had miscarriages while in the custody of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol and said they did not receive adequate medical care while pregnant or miscarrying. One woman told BuzzFeed News she was physically abused by CBP officials. All three said they bled for days without medical care and all said they were shackled while pregnant at some point during their detention. Shackling pregnant women is prohibited by ICE’s and CBP’s most recent standards-of-care policies, as well as by a congressional directive.

The report also included interviews with 11 legal, medical, and advocacy workers who work with pregnant detainees in or near detention centers, as well as two affidavits signed under “penalty of perjury” in which a fourth woman described being given clothes so small for her pregnant belly they gave her welts and “pain in [her] uterus.” A fifth woman said she underwent repeated X-rays, despite this being against the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendations and against CBP’s(but not ICE’s) policies for pregnant women.

“Pregnant women have repeatedly described the fear, uncertainty, and exhaustion they experience as a result of being detained,” the senators wrote in Friday’s letter. “Detained pregnant women have stated they experience routine mistreatment, including malnutrition, inadequate bedding, insufficient access to basic medical care, lack of privacy regarding their medical history, and even shackling during transportation for medical care.”

The senators’ letter said there was a 35% increase in the number of pregnant women detained by ICE in the fiscal year of 2017 compared to the year before, under the Obama administration. During that year, ICE detained nearly 68,000 women, 525 of whom were pregnant, the letter stated, and an additional 590 between December 2017, when the policy change was issued, and April 2018.

In June, Harris toured Otay Mesa Detention center, where the three women BuzzFeed News spoke with were held while miscarrying. There, Harris met with mothers who had been separated from their children as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which has triggered national outrage, court cases, and an executive order from President Trump.

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These human beings aren’t “inmates”
They “civil detainees”
Their only “crime” is seeking asylum under U.S. and international law
Their only mistake: believing that the United States is a nation of laws and human decency, not just another “Banana Republic” as it has become under Trump & Sessions
The solution: regime change
Another thought: The problems in civil immigration detention were well-known and well-documented before Sessions and his cronies established the “New American Gulag” to punish, duress, and deter asylum seekers:
- Shouldn’t that result in eventual successful suits against Sessions for ethical violations and for civil damages for intentionally violating the Due Process rights of asylum seekers?

PWS

07-14-18

ICE OFFICE OF PRINCIPAL LEGAL ADVISER (“OPLA”) HAS A MORE NUANCED TAKE ON SESSIONS/USCIS/ASYLUM OFFICE “SHOOT REFUGEES ON SIGHT” POLICY!

Here’s the OPLA analysis of “asylum law after Matter of A-B-:”

OPLA 7-11-18

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At least at first reading, the OPLA memo seems like a more neutral legal analysis than the USCIS “Sessions told us to shoot ’em all on sight” memo:
On its face it also seems like a much less biased analysis than the anti-asylum, anti-woman, anti-Hispanic screed that Sessions spewed forth in Matter of A-B-;
OPLA appears to be emphasizing that each claim must be individually evaluated and examined, rather than the idea promoted by Sessions and USCIS that all women from Central America and all Central Americans fleeing gang violence or domestic violence should be presumptively denied with only a few exceptions;
Does this mean that there is an internal split within DHS?
Interestingly, the OPLA memo specifically reserves judgement on “gender as a particular group” claims;
Of course, if Sessions and Cissna have their way nobody will ever get to Immigration Court to claim asylum, because nobody will get out of the now-gamed “credible fear” process, so perhaps OPLA’s views won’t have much effect.
How bad and biased are Sessions and Cissna? That ICE’s OPLA, the head of all the ICE prosecutors, sounds more reasonable should tell you all you need to know!
It’s also worth remembering that OPLA and the DHS General Counsel actually led the years-long effort to provide protection for victims of domestic violence that Sessions, without any reasonable explanation, reversed in Matter of A-B-.
Stay tuned!

THE HILL: NOLAN POINTS OUT THAT REFUGEES HAVE MANDATORY RIGHTS BEYOND THE ASYLUM PROCESS THAT TRUMP & SESSIONS DON’T HAVE DISCRETION TO ELIMINATE!

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/396611-can-trump-refuse-asylum-to-aliens-who-make-illegal-entries

Nolan writes:

. . . .

The United States is a signatory to the UN’s Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

According to UNHCR, the U.S. cannot return or expel “a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

The United States is meeting this condition with the withholding of deportation provision in the INA. It provides that, “the Attorney General may not remove an alien to a country if the Attorney General decides that the alien’s life or freedom would be threatened in that country because of the alien’s race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The burden of proof is higher for withholding than it is for asylum. Asylum just requires the applicant to establish a well-founded fear of persecution. Withholding requires the applicant to establish that it is more likely than not that he would be persecuted.

And withholding grants fewer benefits.

A grant of withholding does not convey legal immigration status to the alien. It just prohibits sending him to a country where he would face persecution. He can be removed to another country where he will not be persecuted.

Moreover, it is not derivative. A grant of withholding does not apply to the members of the alien’s family.

The United States also is a signatory to the UN’s Convention against Torture (CAT), which prohibits the U.S. from expelling, returning or extraditing “a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Relief under CAT does not confer lawful immigration status on the alien. It just prohibits his deportation to the country where he would be tortured. He can be deported to a country where he will not be tortured.

. . . .

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

To fully understand the differences between asylum and withholding under the Refugee Convention and the CAT, read Nolan’s complete article over on The Hill!

Nolan makes a good point that although asylum is by statute discretionary, these other forms of relief are mandatory. Moreover, the current Federal case law limits discretionary denials of asylum to “egregious” adverse factors.

PWS

07-13-18

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