"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
CLARIFICATION:While a number of members of the Round Table signed this letter in a “personal capacity,” the Round Table, as an organization did not take a position on this issue.
Signs like the one in this undated image were displayed at various restaurants and other pubic accommodations under a system known as “Juan Crow” laws.Russell Lee / Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
11-16-23
UPDATE FROM HON. “SIR JEFFREY” CHASE:
Hi all: The Texas state law was passed by both houses of the Texas legislature, and is expected to be signed into law.
The letter from 30 individual members of this group was specifically mentioned yesterday on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper.
Victims of Rwanda’s Genocide Public Realm Three decades ago, Rwanda was the scene of a horrible genocide. Now, UK right wing pols think it’s an ideal place to “orbit” refugees, in violation of international laws!
Supreme court rejects Rishi Sunak’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda
Judges uphold appeal court ruling over risk to deported refugees and deals blow to PM’s ‘stop the boats’ strategy
By Rajeev Syal and Diane Taylor
The Guardian 15 November 2023
UK politics live – latest updates
Rishi Sunak’s key immigration policy has been dealt a blow after the UK’s highest court rejected the government’s plans to deport people seeking asylum to Rwanda.
Five judges at the supreme court unanimously upheld an appeal court ruling that found there was a real risk of deported refugees having their claims in the east African country wrongly assessed or being returned to their country of origin to face persecution.
The ruling undermines one of the prime minister’s key pledges: to “stop the boats”. The government claimed that the £140m Rwanda scheme would be a key deterrent for growing numbers of asylum seekers reaching the UK via small boats travelling across the Channel, a claim that refugee charities have rejected.
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Reading out the judgment, Lord Reed, the president of the supreme court, said the judges agreed unanimously with the court of appeal ruling that there was a real risk of claims being wrongly determined in Rwanda, resulting in asylum seekers being wrongly returned to their country of origin.
He pointed to crucial evidence from the United Nations’ refugee agency, the UNHCR, which highlighted the failure of a similar deportation agreement between Israel and Rwanda.
The ruling came the day after the sacked home secretary, Suella Braverman, released an incendiary letter accusing the prime minister of breaking an agreement to insert clauses into UK law that would have “blocked off” legal challenges under the European convention on human rights (ECHR) and the Human Rights Act.
Braverman said Sunak had no “credible plan B” and added: “If we lose in the supreme court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an act of parliament, only to arrive back at square one.”
. . . .
Reed said the legal test in the case was whether there were substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be at real risk of being sent back to the countries they came from, where they could face ill treatment.
“In the light of the evidence which I have summarised, the court of appeal concluded that there were such grounds. We are unanimously of the view that they were entitled to reach that conclusion. Indeed, having been taken through the evidence ourselves, we agree with their conclusion,” he said.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said it was a victory for men, women and children who simply wanted to be safe.
He said: “The plan goes against who we are as a country that stands up for those less fortunate than us and for the values of compassion, fairness and humanity. The government should be focusing on creating a functioning asylum system that allows people who seek safety in the UK a fair hearing on our soil and provides safe routes so they don’t have to take dangerous journeys.”
Toufique Hossain of Duncan Lewis solicitors, one of the lawyers representing asylum seekers who brought the legal challenge, said: “This is a victory for our brave clients who stood up to an inhumane policy. It is also a victory for the rule of law itself and the separation of powers, despite the noise. It is a timely reminder that governments must operate within the law. We hope that now our clients are able to dream of a better, safer future.”
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Sonya Sceats, the chief executive of Freedom from Torture, said: “This is a victory for reason and compassion. We are delighted that the supreme court has affirmed what caring people already knew: the UK government’s ‘cash for humans’ deal with Rwanda is not only deeply immoral, but it also flies in the face of the laws of this country.
“The stakes of this case could not have been higher. Every day in our therapy rooms we see the terror that this scheme has inflicted on survivors of torture who have come to the UK seeking sanctuary.”
Steve Smith, the chief executive of the refugee charity Care4Calais, a claimant in the initial legal challenge, said the judgment was “a victory for humanity”.
He added: “This grubby, cash-for-people deal was always cruel and immoral but, most importantly, it is unlawful. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on this cruel policy, and the only receipts the government has are the pain and torment inflicted on the thousands of survivors of war, torture and modern slavery they have targeted with it.
“Today’s judgment should bring this shameful mark on the UK’s history to a close. Never again should our government seek to shirk our country’s responsibility to offer sanctuary to those caught up in horrors around the world.”
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Read the full article at the above link.
Here’s what the most recent USDOS Country Report says about human rights in Rwanda:
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings by the government; forced disappearance by the government; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary detention; political prisoners or detainees; politically motivated reprisals against individuals located outside the country, including killings, kidnappings, and violence; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws on the organization, funding, or operation of nongovernmental and civil society organizations; serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation; and serious government restrictions on or harassment of domestic and international human rights organizations.
Sound like a “safe third country” to you? Gimmie a break! The genocide may be in the (not that distant) past, but it’s still a horrible place from a human rights standpoint! Not to mention, that as a tiny, poor country it has virtually no ability to absorb large numbers of refugees, particularly compared with the UK!
Sunak and the other cowardly UK Tory pols who cooked up and continue to defend this ludicrous scheme should go down in history as guilty of “crimes against humanity” — not to mention grotesque violations of common sense and human dignity.
Wanton cruelty, immorality, lies, intellectual dishonesty, scofflaw behavior from right wing politicos! Sound familiar? Always interesting how those who pontificate about “law and order” can’t abide by their own laws!
This article is a collaboration between The Border Chronicle and TomDispatch, a great outlet which has been looking at U.S. foreign policy, the military industrial complex, the “forever wars,” climate change, and many other topics since 2001.
On September 23rd, at about 2:30 a.m., a Border Patrol surveillance camera captured two people crossing the international boundary between Mexico and the United States on the outskirts of Nogales, Arizona. A Border Patrol vehicle arrived quickly, but not before one of them had fled back into Mexico. When an armed agent stepped out, dressed in a forest-green uniform, he found a 16-year-old girl from Mexico softly crying, while holding her month-old baby swaddled in a blanket.
The agent commanded her to get in the vehicle. As they then drove to the Nogales Border Patrol station, the girl, he later reported, tried to speak to him in Spanish through the security partition that separated them. Her tiny daughter, she was telling him, was in distress. Cameras showed that the vehicle stopped for all of 10 seconds before continuing. The agent later claimed he couldn’t understand what she was saying and that he wanted to find a fluent Spanish speaker at the station. He didn’t realize, he insisted, that the infant was struggling to breathe, though the child soon died.
This hellish story of suffering at our border is but one of hundreds of similar tales of horror from 2023. They illustrate a fundamental truth about that border: it neither is, nor ever was, an “open” one in the Biden years, nor does the president faintly have an open-border policy, though prepare yourself to hear otherwise — over and over again — in Trumpublican campaign ads next year. They’ll repeat what party officials are already saying all too repetitively: that “President Biden’s radical open borders policies” have created “the worst border crisis in American history.” (While those are the exact words of House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, similar sentiments are already being offered by countless members of the GOP.)
Comer’s claim is, of course, no less predictable than the hardships migrants like that girl are suffering as they try to reach this country. While such border narratives traffic in the unreal, what is real either isn’t effectively reported or gets lost amid all the politically motivated noise. Loud fantasies are expansively covered, while life-and-death stories, like those of that infant and her mother, are seldom reported and, if they are, quickly disappear.
Barely a week before that 16 year old was desperately trying to communicate to the agent in Spanish, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) labeled the U.S.-Mexico border the world’s “deadliest migration land route.” In 2022, a record 853 remains of dead border crossers were recovered (and this is the U.S. Border Patrol’s figure, which is even higher than the IOM’s), dwarfing the record of 568 set the previous year. Such numbers, the IOM stresses, are known to be distinct undercounts, leaving all too many families pining for lost loved ones.
But those border fatalities weren’t the only record breaker. Another was confirmed just a week after medical personnel at the Nogales station rushed to treat that girl’s baby. The number of border contracts issued to private industry also set a new record. Like those deaths, such contracts soared in fiscal year 2023 to $9.96 billion, instantly stripping the previous high, also set last year, of $7.5 billion.
And mind you, those gifts to industry were made from the highest budget ever (including in the Trump years) for border and immigration enforcement: $29.8 billion. So, don’t for a second think that the U.S. has an “open” border. In fact, it’s never been more fortified or — something few even bother to mention — more profitable, if you happen to be part of the border-industrial complex.
. . . .
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Read the full article at the link.
Maybe it’s because the victims are “only migrants, mostly people of color” and therefore not considered to be “real human beings” by some in the media; maybe it’s because getting the real story about the border requires intensive digging, intellectual expertise, and perhaps some danger; maybe it’s because editors are in search of alarmist “sky is falling” myths about the “border apocalypse” to attract readers, viewers, and “online hits;” maybe it’s because of a false belief that truth is “boring” and “doesn’t sell!”
For whatever reason, the non-Fox networks (Fox is a primary purveyor of the “Big Lie” and the “Open Borders Fantasy”) and “mainstream media” do a really poor job on border reporting.
Those with even a passing familiarity with “talking heads” are no-doubt familiar with claims from nativist GOP politicos, righty reporters, and even some Dems about the mythical a “open borders!” None of these folks have recent experience helping asylum seekers trying to exercise their legal rights under domestic laws, international treaties, and ourConstitution in a border system specifically designed to “discourage and deter” them, rather than identify and promptly grant the many legally sufficient claims for protection.
By contrast, when is the last time you saw real experts — folks like Clinical Professor Steve Yale-Loehr, former Deputy UNHCR and Georgetown Law Dean Alex Aleinikoff, CGRS Director Karen Musalo, HRF Refugee Programs Director Eleanor Acer, UC Davis Law Dean Kevin Johnson, NIJC Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy, Immigrant Defenders Executive Director Lindsay Toczylowski, Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) or any of the other huge numbers of highly articulate, well-recognized, “hands on practical experts” on human rights and asylum appear on the “talking heads” to throw some truth and real light on this important, nearly totally misunderstood and intentionally misconstrued, issue that GOP nativists have thrust to the forefront of the 2024 campaign?
Meanwhile, Dems should NOT be “running away” from the realities and essential benefits provided by robust immigration and the cruel wastefulness and immorality of Trumps’s proposed neo-Nazi “crackdown” on all forms of migration (although, disgracefully, some Dems are doing exactly that, thus playing into the hands of GOP nativists for absolutely NO return).
Simon Rosenberg Veteran U.S. Political Analyst Hopium PHOTO: Substack
Here are some ideas from Simon Rosenberg at Hopium on Substack on how Dems can make immigration a centerpiece for success in 2024:
Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.
The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.
Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.
He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.
To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.
To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.
In a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.”
The constellation of Mr. Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.
Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical, financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Mr. Trump is eyeing.
Despite being inhumane and jawdroppingly cruel, this plan is now a major political problem for an already struggling Republican Party for at least three main reasons:
Raids and Mass Deportations Are Deeply Unpopular – We have decades of polling on the forced removal of the 10m+ undocumented immigrants (almost all of whom are employed and pay taxes) in the US, and it is wildly unpopular, perhaps even more so than “abortion bans.” One example – in the 2016 exit polls, in the election that gave Trump the Presidency, the American people choose “offer legal status” to “deported to home country” 70%-25%. Republicans may have a slight advantage on immigration issue right now, but mass deportation is seen as an extreme position by the American people (rightly so). It was so unpopular that the anti-immigration movement dropped mass deportation as a goal, moving to the softer “attrition through enforcement,” or “self-deportation,” political strategy more than a decade ago.
Trump’s plan is another sign of how extremism and extremists have overtaken the party of Lincoln and Reagan.
As I document here, since 2005, when the national Republican Party began adopting a far harder line on immigration (Reagan, W. Bush and McCain were all immigration reformers), the 4 battleground states of the Southwest, AZ/CO/NM/NV, have drifted away from the Republican Party, becoming far bluer. In the last 2 elections we’ve seen the best Democratic performance in that region since the 1940s and 1950s, and a reminder that Biden got within 5 points of Trump in Texas in 2020. In the heavily Mexican-American parts of the country in particular raids and mass deportations are wildly unpopular.
It Was A Plan Like This That Caused The Big Hispanic Protests Across the US in 2006 – In 2005 the Republican House of Representatives bucked their President, George W. Bush, and passed a bill that called for the rounding up and mass deportation of the 11m undocumented immigrants in the country. It was the moment when the party of the Sun Belt and the West went from pro-immigration to deeply restrictionist. Over the next year huge protests against this bill and mass deportation erupted across the US, and Republicans became so spooked that we were able to pass a “comprehensive immigration reform” bill through a Republican Senate in 2006. That bill, like the 2013 immigration reform bill we passed through the Senate, was never taken up by the Republican House and it died.
But those protests did something important politically – after years of Republican gains with Hispanics under W. Bush, Hispanics ran back into the arms of Democrats in 2006 and they have essentially stayed there ever since. In the 2006 midterms Democrats won 69% of the Hispanic vote, among our best performances in recent decades.
In the four Presidential elections leading up to 2006 Democrats averaged 47% of the vote, and in 2004 we lost AZ/CO/NM/NV. In the four Presidential elections since 2006 Democrats have averaged 51% and in 2020 we won AZ/CO/NM/NV at the Presidential level for the first time since 1940. As the Hispanic population has grown across the US and in these states, our net vote margin with Hispanic voters keeps increasing, even if we lose a few points in vote share. As I show here, in 2004 the net Hispanic vote margin for Democrats was about 700,000 votes nationally, meaning we won 700,000 more Hispanic votes nationally than Republicans. In 2020 that number was at least 4.5m net votes across the US, with this same dynamic playing out in each state with large Hispanic populations (except Florida of course).
My instinct is that whatever advantage Republicans had on immigration, and whatever small gains they had made with Hispanic voters in recent years, is now gone.
This Plan Will Wreck The American Economy – In a time of existing wide scale worker shortages, removing 10-15m workers from the American economy in a short period of time would be national economic suicide, and will be seen that way by the business community in DC and in the battleground states. It’s just totally insane and extremist policy no matter how you look at it, and I think it could become as much of a drag on the GOP brand as abortion is now.
For a party which has lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections, lost the popular vote to Democrats 51%-46% over the past 4, lost the 2018/2019/2020/2022 and 2023 elections, has deep performance issues across the country even in red states since Dobbs, embracing mass deportations seems like a colossal political error.
It is another reason why I think our goal in 2024 should be not just to win, but to really go on offense, get to 55, and make this election an historic repudiation of the worst and most dangerous political party in our history. We can do this people!
Onward/Adelante – Simon
Thank you for reading Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg. This post is public so feel free to share it.
It’s critical to remember that migrants aren’t the ONLY target of Trump’s neo-Nazism — they might not even be the primary ones! You can guarantee that many US citizens and lawfully present non-citizens of color will be caught up in the dragnet and sent off to deportation concentration camps where due process is non-existent.
Others will simply avoid certain public places and activities for fear of being accosted. Still others will be forced underground because of fear of drawing attention to undocumented relatives or neighbors. Some U.S. citizens will fear voting, which indeed is a key part of the GOP plan to cement their “out of the mainstream” minority rule by suppressing suffrage! As those of us who adjudicated asylum claims know, many will fear reporting abuses or asserting rights to police who openly identify with their oppressors. Fear, despair, distrust, and resignation are key pillars of any authoritarian regime!
It’s attack on all people of color in America and those who might speak with an accent or dress differently from the GOP’s “White Christian Nationalist norms.”
How many of us carry around documentation proving that our parents were U.S. citizens? Notably, although occupational status is often menioned on U.S. birth certificates, citizenship status is NOT. It’s not hard to guess who will be “required” to “document” their parents’ citizenship by Trump’s internal security police!
Trump and the GOP are an existential threat to U.S. democracy, human progress, and American leadership on the world stage. Don’t let them destroy OUR country and take away YOUR rights!
Gate at Dachau Creative Commons Trump and his White Nationalist supporters have a grim, dark vision of America’s future! Will this be the end of our democracy?
Christian nationalism is a grave threat to the United States and the American republic. There should be no ambiguity or dullness when it comes to understanding what it is — no matter how benign it may present itself. It is what lurks beyond the veneer that is terrifying. There, the evil is revealed and manifested.
The dogma is a perversion of Christ’s teachings that is antithetical to Christianity. More importantly, Christian nationalism is utterly opposed to democracy. Theocrats despise the United States. God‘s laws are beyond the reach of the American state, and Christianity is but one religion in the beautiful mosaic of American faith. It should always be noted that 600 generations of humans worshipped freely on the North American continent before the first European Christians came and killed them.
The US Constitution is the law of the land in the United States. Within it are the protections that safeguard our liberty. The freedoms of speech, dissent, conscience, worship and expression shall stand untroubled for as long as the great republic endures. We are within one calendar year of its possible end. We have arrived at a moment of grave crisis that cannot be ignored. The abyss that looked distant seven years ago is at hand.
Christian nationalism is incompatible with American democracy and pluralism. When political extremists take power in the name of God there is always death. Always.
I was pleased to participate in “American Theocracy: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” a documentary released in January 2023. Please watch this clip below. I have shared it before, but the fire keeps building.
The separation of church and state and religious freedom are profoundly important foundational achievements of the American republic. The extremists who seek power in God’s name are not benign men and women. They won’t be deterred by setbacks in Ohio and other places. They are on the march, and they are demanding power whether it is handed to them or not.
I want you to read these words from yesterday’s The New York Times that make clear Donald Trump’s plans:
Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.
The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.
Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.
He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.
To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.
Let’s call these giant detention and deportation camps what they are intended to be. These are concentration camps. Specifically, they are to be American concentration camps. Dachau was the Nazis’ first camp in Germany.
What will the first American camp look like? There will no doubt be a first, and it will likely be the first to house the political prisoners rounded up under Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act. He has promised to invoke it at the instant he returns to power.
Please understand this: Trump is announcing his intentions. He means it. He is surrounded by scores of “little Eichmanns” ready to help him achieve his aims. He should be taken literally and seriously at all times.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson is second in line to the presidency. He rejects the greatest American idea in history, which is the separation of church and state. The greatest American invention — the peaceful transition of power — is utterly dependent on the separation of church and state in this country.
Johnson denied the 2020 election results, lied about the election results, created the conditions for the insurrection of January 6th, voted to disenfranchise millions of Black votes after the insurrection and continues to insist Trump won the election, despite the claim being a combination of fraud, malice and weapons-grade nuttery. The hostility to democracy is deeply rooted within his religious fanaticism, which is unique amongst the various strains of fanatical faith that have always found a home in America because of our nation’s unique faith protections.
We have churches where people pick up rattlesnakes and kiss them to prove they are protected by God. Proof of sin is a bite to the face and a painful death. Bo and Peep of Heaven’s Gate convinced their followers that they were headed to the Hale-Bopp comet, and Jim Jones took his flock to doom in Guyana. There are cults and fundamentalists all over America, but there is only one strain that wants to control your life by controlling the powers of the state to administer God’s law. They are the American Taliban.
Mike Johnson has invented his own distorted version of history as if the events of the late 1780s-90s occurred 6,000 years ago.
The American Constitution is clear about the founders’ intentions and their descendants’ actions to preserve and expand those intentions. There is no room for theocracy in the American system. It was rejected at hour one. The desire to impose it on all of us by a man who believes people and dinosaurs co-existed at the beginning of time 6,000 years ago is never going to happen…or is it?
The most important thing to understand about theocrats is that they view political power as being mandated by God. In fact, many fanatics across America believe Donald Trump has been sent by him, and his opponents are demonically-inspired.
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We can’t ignore the very real threat that Trump and his GOP followers present to our democracy. Now is NOT the time for Democrats and independents to “go soft” on human rights and immigrants’ rights!
While not highlighted by Steve Schmidt (no relation) the NYT quote above, one of Trump’s initiatives will be to instruct Administration officials to violate the 14th Amendment by denying citizenship to those born in the U.S. based on their parents’ status! USG officials must take an oath to uphold the Constitution, but apparently Trump just plans to summarily fire any public servant who will not submit to his unconstitutional plan!
Those considering abandoning Biden because of his support for Israel should recognize the alternative — a rabidly anti-Muslim authoritarian bigot (who, ironically, has also been soft on those expressing anti-semitism and other purveyors of hate) who would happily try to punish them just for existing! See e.g.,https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-gaza-israel-policy-trump-contrast_n_654eb574e4b0c9f246602f16.
It’s worth remembering that one of the first actions of Hitler’s Third Reich was to strip Jews of their German citizenship, a move that the complicit German judiciary approved and enthusiastically implemented! Who would have thought that nearly 90 years later, we would have a major American political party in thrall to a self-proclaimed fascist demagogue!
An immigrant advocacy center found that when their staff were able to provide legal representation or help to immigrants facing credible fear interviews, the immigrant outcomes improved considerably.
Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, a nonprofit based in El Paso, released a report last week detailing challenges the organization’s staff found and recommendations for change and statistical data on individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. The nonprofit initiated a pilot project over eight weeks in the summer of 2023 in two New Mexico immigration detention facilities: The Torrance County Detention Facility and Otero County Processing Center along with the El Paso Processing Center. The project sought to provide participating asylum seekers legal representation or help in preparation prior to the migrant’s credible fear interview. They found that the participating asylum seekers had a 91.6 percent pass rate at the three facilities.
A credible fear interview is an important part of the immigration process for asylum seekers, advocates have said. Often, asylum seekers are placed into detention facilities where there is documented abuse before they are allowed a credible fear interview with an immigration judge. Advocates who work with asylum seekers have said that asylum seekers are often brought to a room to talk to the immigration judge over the phone. The conversation is not private and the asylum seeker is often not given time to prepare. Sometimes the asylum seeker is not provided a translator and not all asylum seekers speak Spanish or English. If the asylum seeker fails to convince an immigration judge of the danger they left behind, the asylum seeker is most likely to face deportation and are often returned to life threatening situations, advocates have told NM Political Report in the past.
. . . .
One recommendation to help solve the problem is for the creation of scholarship programs for community members with lived experience and building a community accreditation program that would offer community members with free training and job placement.
“This would also provide a cost-effective way of expanding legal services to meet demand, giving organizations like ours a more sustained means of providing quality legal services to a higher number of migrants,” the report states.
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Read Susan’s complete article at the link.
Studies like this reflect a reality that experts have long recognized, but few politicos and media figures are willing to admit:
Many, probably the majority, of those arriving at the border have credible claims for asylum;
They won’t be “deterred” from coming by cruelty, punishment, negative, often racist, rhetoric, and ever more extreme, deadly, yet ultimately ineffective border militarization;
With competent representation and better adjudicators —those with demonstrated, recognized adylum expertise — at both USCIS and EOIR many more asylum claims can and should be granted in a timely manner;
Rather than more expensive, ineffective border militarization, harsh imprisonment (“New American Gulag”), and coming up with new immoral and illegal restrictions on asylum, the Federal Government should be investing in more rational and cost-effective measures such as:
Training and approving more accredited representatives for arriving asylum seekers through programs like VIISTA Villanova;
Assisting localities and NGOs with reception and resettlement services;
Implementing better hiring practices and asylum training at the Asylum Office and EOIR;
Granting more asylum cases in a timely manner at or near to the “initial encounter” level (something that the Administration empowered itself to do, then inexplicably “suspended” the program just when it was MOST needed);
Developing better coordination, skills matching, and job training for those granted asylum;
Investing in English Language Learning, vocational training, social work, and other integration and assimilation services in communities where refugees resettle (notably, this would also create good job opportunities — many at the “professional” level — for existing U.S. workers).
It’s past time to move beyond “open border myths” and come up with humane,productive, legal, and effective programs to deal with the realities of human migration at our border!
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever, and great appreciation to all our veterans, past, present, and future!🙏👍
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Official White House Photo Public Realm
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of 39 new Immigration Judges to EOIR. In somewhat of a “return to the past,” attorneys with primarily government backgrounds and judges from non-immigration systems predominated.
My “quick and dirty” analysis came up with the following groupings:
NGOs = 4
Immigration Private Practice = 9
Retired IJs = 2
DHS/EOIR = 10
Other Gov. = 8
Other Judicial = 5
Other Private Practice = 1
Among the names that stand out for me personally:
Judge Florence Chamberlain, San Francisco Immigration Court — Previously Managing Director, Northern Division, Ciudad Juarez, Kids In Need of Defense (“KIND”)
Judge Kevin Chapman, Atlanta Immigration Court — Previously Retired Immigration Judge, Orlando Immigration Court, previously Acting General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel EOIR
Judge Allison Daw, Sacramento Immigration Court — Previously Retired Immigration Judge Los Angeles & San Francisco Immigration Courts and former Member of the Round Table
Judge Enrique Holguin, El Paso Immigration Court — Previously Managing Attorney, Diocesan Immigrant & Refugee Services of El Paso
Judge June K. Lee, Hyattsville Immigration Court — Previously Director, Immigrants’ Rights Legal Services Project at Legal Aid D.C.
Judge Dianna Michelle Martinez Soler, New York (Broadway) Immigration Court — Previously Legal Director at Central American Legal Assistance (“CALA”), Brooklyn, NY
Judge Elizabeth Kohler Maya, Baltimore Immigration Court — Previously Managing Partner, Bromberg, Kohler Maya & Petre LLC, who appeared before me at the “Legacy” Arlington Immigration Court
Judge Anam Rahman Petit, Annandale Immigration Court — Previously Partner, Calderon Seguin PLC, Fairfax, VA, who appeared before me at the “Legacy” Arlington Immigration Court
Judge Tyler “Tiger” Wood, Denver Immigration Court — Previously Assistant Chief Counsel for ICE in Denver and Arlington where he appeared extensively in my court
Bios of these and all of the other newly appointed judges are here:
We are happy to announce that we will be doing occasional guest op-eds here at The Border Chronicle, and today is our first. You probably remember Brian Elmore, the emergency-medicine resident physician who did a Q&A with Melissa last month. In this op-ed he vividly describes what border deterrence does to a person’s flesh, and he makes an eloquent call for its end. After 30 years of this strategy, which has proved both deadly and harmful for people crossing the border, it is our honor to publish this reckoning and call for action, especially since we are entering an election year (it is now November, after all).
Brian is also the cofounder of Clínica Hope, a free clinic for migrants in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which he runs with the nonprofit Hope Border Institute.
And lastly, !Feliz Día de Muertos! Todd
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The Political Pathology of Border Deterrence: An Up-Close View of How This Policy Looks in the Emergency Room
“Deterrence won’t solve migration—it will only maim and mangle more men, women, and children. It will send more people to my emergency room. Some it will send to the morgue.”
. . . .
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Read Dr. Elmore’s complete op-ed at the link.
So, exactly what makes “selling out” the legal, civil, and human rights of other persons a viable “strategy option” for Dem politicos, who certainly know better? See, e.g., https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/02/biden-ukraine-aid-deal-00125125. Sounds “pretty GOP” to me — selling rights that aren’t yours in the first place! See, e.g., Women’s Right to Choose & the “Forced Birth Movement!”
Dems shouldn’t believe that by abandoning asylum seekers and trashing both civil and human rights at the border they will gain any credit from the GOP or leverage from their xenophobic voters. They will just leave a trail of dead bodies and sow the seeds for the destruction of our democracy.
If Pima County can effectively handle a migrant surge, why is it so hard for Congress?
Opinion: If Congress weren’t so dysfunctional, it would see where and how many resources are needed to effectively manage immigrants and the border.
Gregory Chen opinion contributor
It’s hard to imagine any American having faith in government — or its ability to solve a complex problem like immigration — when Congress can barely pass a temporary spending bill without getting mired in controversial issues like border security and coming dangerously close to shutting down the government.
Fortunately, dysfunction is not the story in every part of the country.
While Congress is pointing fingers on immigration, small towns and cities throughout the country are doing the hard work of managing migrants arriving at the U.S. southern border.
I recently visited Arizona with a delegation of immigration attorneys and policy experts and saw the work by government officials, social workers and health care professionals up close.
Every day, federal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents take recent arrivals to a church-affiliated shelter in Tucson, which does COVID-19 and other health screenings, provides a hot meal, and finds short-term local shelter, busing or other transportation in a matter of days or hours.
Remarkably, even with increased numbers of people coming into Pima County, the coalition of county administrators and nonprofits has found temporary housing and transport for everyone and avoided having people end up on the streets.
The local collaboration, supported by federal emergency funding, is a model for how migration at the border can be managed effectively.
. . . .
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Read Greg’s complete article at the link. It’s largely what I’ve been saying all along. Although far from perfect (what is perfect these days?), the current law could be made to work if there were the political will to do so.
The GOP’s unrelenting racism, xenophobia, dehumanization, and “doubling down” on failed deterrence and punishment “strategies” are guaranteed to make things worse. Dems need to stand tall for solving the humanitarian issues at Southern Border in a humane, legal, and practical manner, using the tools available under current law!
It can be done! We just need the political will (and political pressure) to make it happen. It’s not rocket science!🚀
Ithaca, NY – As Congress considers border security issues in upcoming appropriations debates, four immigration scholars at Cornell Law School suggest opportunities for constructive, achievable, and sustainable immigration reforms. In a recent white paper they offer three sets of interlocking proposals structured to maximize bipartisan support: (1) strengthening border security; (2) adding work visas; and (3) offering deportation protection to DREAMers.
The Cornell scholars will assess the political landscape, describe their proposals, and outline why they believe the proposed reforms should—and could—be enacted.
WHEN: Thursday, November 9, 2023 at 12:00 PM Eastern
WHO:
Stephen Yale-Loehr, Professor of Immigration Practice and Director, Immigration Law and Policy Program, Cornell Law School
Hon. Cecelia M.Espenoza Former Appellate Immigration Judge, BIA; Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges Source: Denverdemocrats.orgHon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
“Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports:
Hi all: The bipartisan Children’s Immigration Court bill that we endorsed was introduced today.
The press release of Sen. Michael Bennet included this quote from Cecelia!
“The most vulnerable people in immigration proceedings are unaccompanied children. The Immigration Court Efficiency and Children’s Court Act of 2023 not only improves the process for children, it also provides necessary support and guidance to the overburdened immigration court system to address the needs of these children,” said Cecelia M. Espenoza, Former Appellate Immigration Judge.
Thanks to Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.), Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI), and Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR)! This is long, long overdue! A great bipartisan idea! 😎
Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) Credit: Ike Hayman SOURCE: Wikipedia
Rep. Hillary Scholten, the only former EOIR attorney in Congress, and an indefatigable advocate for good government, due process, common sense, and the well-being of children had this to say:
“Let’s be clear about one thing–infants and children should not be in a situation where they have to stand trial in immigration court,” said Scholten. “We have a deeply broken immigration system in this country. But as we continue the long and complicated work for repairing it, of fighting for justice in a political climate that has grown callous to the suffering of children, the next best option is creating a court that works to accommodate their unique needs. As a mom, I’ll never stop fighting for these vulnerable kids.”
On August 30, 2023, Judge Leo A. Finston of the Newark Immigration Court granted asylum to a Cravath pro bono client persecuted by gang members in El Salvador.
Cravath’s client overheard the murder of his neighbors by a Salvadoran gang and, fearing retaliation from the gang, subsequently refused to provide police with information. Even so, he was repeatedly attacked and continued to receive threats to “cooperate with the gang.” He fled El Salvador and arrived at the Texas border in December 2017, turning himself in to United States immigration officials and requesting asylum. He was detained, and Human Rights First represented him before the Immigration Court in Newark, New Jersey.
In September 2018, Judge Finston denied the application for asylum, finding that, while the man was credible and had suffered PTSD from the events in El Salvador, “complaining witnesses against major Salvadoran gangs” were not a “particular social group” for purposes of asylum, and there was not sufficient probability that he would be tortured upon his return to El Salvador. In March 2019, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) dismissed the initial appeal. Cravath became involved at this stage, briefing and arguing the appeal before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
On April 17, 2020, the Third Circuit issued a precedential opinion (see related news item here) granting the client’s petition for review, vacating the BIA’s removal order and remanding the case to the BIA for further proceedings. The Court held that “persons who publicly provide assistance against major Salvadoran gangs do constitute a particular social group” for purposes of asylum, and that the BIA erred in denying relief under the Convention Against Torture, finding that “it is clear to us, viewing the record as a whole, that [he] suffered torture”. The Court remanded the case to the BIA, and in December 2021, the BIA remanded the matter to the Newark Immigration Court for further proceedings.
By that time, Cravath’s client was living in hiding in El Salvador, and the Cravath team spent the next year and a half trying to secure his return for a new merits hearing, consistent with the Third Circuit’s opinion.
On July 20, 2023, at a Master Calendar Hearing before Judge Finston, the Cravath team argued the man had a meritorious case and constitutional due process and statutory rights to be present at his merits hearing, but the Department of Homeland Security took the position that it had no obligation to allow him to return. On August 30, 2023, the Cravath team appeared on the client’s behalf at a second Master Calendar Hearing, where Judge Finston found that, in light of the Third Circuit’s opinion and based on the record before him, it was clear the man qualified for asylum and no further proceedings were necessary.
The Cravath team was led by partner Wes Earnhardt and included associates Brian P. Golger and Ana C. Sewell.
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Many congrats to Cravath!
I told the BIA that witnesses were a PSG more than a decade ago! They wouldn’t listen, but the Fourth Circuit did! See Crespin-Valladares v. Holder, 632 F. 3d 171 (4th Cir. 2011). When will they ever learn?
With proper guidance from a competent BIA, this case should have been a “slam dunk grant” five years ago. This also illustrates the absurdity of those who disingenuously claim that asylum applicants can receive due process without competent representation! It also shows the legal and moral bankruptcy of “expedited docket gimmicks” that attempt to rush cases to denial and deportation without a realistic chance to get representation and prepare!
The U.S. asylum system would work much more fairly and efficiently with a BIA of recognized asylum experts! They are out here! Why hasn’t Garland reformed and reconstituted the BIA to get the job done?
Lives and the future of American law are at stake here!
It’s a huge deal! Dems must “lose” the arrogant “it’s only immigration” attitude that has prevented Dem Administrations from doing the correct, courageous (and smart) thing on immigration, human rights, social justice, and civil rights! Migrants’ rights are human rights are civil rights are everyone’s rights!
Judge Finston did the right thing on remand from the Circuit. I’d like to believe that with better guidance from the BIA he would have done it five years ago. The human impact of the abject failure of the BIA to provide positive leadership on GRANTING asylum in recurring situations is an incomprehensible drag on our justice system at many levels.
Better judges for a better America! And, it starts at the “retail level” with EOIR!
Some Republican lawmakers are flagging Hamas’ attack on Israel as an example of why more security is needed at the southern U.S. border. Hamas militants breached a border fence and attacked Israeli villages bordering the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.
“Potential terrorists are attempting to cross our southern border. In September alone, 18 illegal immigrants on the terror watchlist were caught at the border,” U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., posted Oct. 21 on X. “The attack on Israel should serve as a warning as to why we must secure the border.”
The next day, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also mentioned the terrorist watchlist on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
“We just caught 18 people, just last month, on the FBI terrorist watchlist, coming across our border,” McCarthy said. “More than 160 have done it this year, a record breaking.”
U.S. immigration officials have encountered rising numbers of people on the watchlist. But not everyone on the list is a terrorist, and not everyone encountered is allowed to enter the country.
Terrorism and immigration experts say that the threat of attacks in the U.S. and Israel are incomparable.
“They both involve borders, but the comparison ends there,” David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, previously told us. “People aren’t crossing the border to conduct terrorist attacks or take over parts of the United States. A very small percentage may come to commit ordinary crimes, like selling drugs, but overwhelmingly, they are coming for economic opportunity and freedom.”
McCarthy’s office did not respond to our query for more information. A Blackburn spokesperson pointed us to a Fox News reporter’s post on X. Customs and Border Protection did not confirm whether 18 people were stopped in September.
Here’s what we know about who is on the terrorist watchlist, and what the data can and can’t tell us.
. . . .
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Read Maria’s complete article which includes comments from real experts like Professor Stephen Yale Loehr, Professor Denise Gilman, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, and others in addition to David Bier. They stand in sharp and long overdue contrast with the GOP’s alarmist, out of context, claims.
It’s little wonder that a party of anti-democracy activists, insurrectionists, and election deniers would want to deflect attention from themselves onto folks who are overwhelmingly coming to save their lives and to work hard and contribute to our economic growth!
I have previously “called out” Kristen Welker and NBC’s Meet the Press for giving McCarthy an unnecessary public forum for his alarmist narrative. See, e.g.,https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/10/23/🚩politics-gops-bakuninist-clown-show-sows-american-chaos🤮☠️/. Worse yet, there was no effective “pushback” from Welker on McCarthy’s attempt to blame vulnerable asylum seekers for the political disorder and threats to our democracy that he and his righty GOP buddies helped sow!
Many thanks to Maria for setting the record straight and to the experts who were interviewed from her article!You actually did the “due diligence” that Welker and others often brush off when “doing immigration.”
Of course border security is important! A significant, achievable improvement would be to establish a fair, timely, functional asylum screening and adjudication system at ports of entry so that those seeking asylum will be motivated to use it (rather than attempting to “punish” and “deter” those who can’t use the current dysfunctional DHS/EOIR “system.”) That would give CBP a chance to concentrate on the real law enforcement challenge: identifying and stopping those who seek to harm the U.S. That’s going to take even better intelligence and more sophisticated efforts.
I also wouldn’t minimize that, as pointed out by the experts, CBP has been able to identify and deny entry to individuals on their list. That’s a sign of success, not failure!
To state the obvious, further cutting or restricting asylum (as many in the GOP disingenuously advocate) would only force even more of those seeking refuge into the hands of smugglers and push them into the dangerous lands between ports of entry. Misdirecting enforcement resources to fruitlessly and improperly trying to “deter” and “apprehend” those legitimately seeking refuge will only further dilute the attention that CBP can pay to any real dangers lurking at the border!
Rep. Mike Johnson, the newly elected House speaker, has repeatedly flirted with what’s known as the “great replacement theory,” the idea that Democrats are scheming to supplant American voters with immigrants. The Louisiana Republican’s views show how fringe conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the Republican Party at the highest levels of power.
“This is the plan of our friends on this side — to turn all the illegals into voters,” Johnson said at a congressional hearing in May 2022, gesturing at Democrats. “That’s why the border’s open.”
The “open borders” trope is a lie, and while a few municipalities allow voting for noncitizens in local elections, in no sense do national Democrats have any such “plan” for “all the illegals.” As far as I can determine, no House speaker in recent memory has been quite as reckless and incendiary with this kind of language.
Johnson employs it regularly. He reiterated the claim in an interview this year with the right-wing outlet Newsmax, accusing President Biden of “intentionally” encouraging undocumented migration to “turn all these illegals into voters for their side.” On numerous other occasions, he has made similar charges, even declaring that Democrats’ express goal is the “destruction of our country at the expense of our own people.”
On immigration, as well as on abortion and gay rights, Johnson’s elevation is a triumph for the far right. It has been widely noted that Johnson doesn’t come across as a MAGA bomb-thrower, despite his extreme views. That’s true on immigration, too: He voices high-minded platitudes about how providing asylum to the persecuted is a noble ideal, but he’s a big booster of the wildly radical House GOP border bill that would functionally gut asylum entirely.
The pro-immigrant group America’s Voice, which tracks lawmakers’ positions on the issue, has not documented any comparable rhetoric in Johnson’s predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy. “Johnson has gone farther than most of his Republican colleagues in elevating alarmist and dangerous rhetoric,” says Vanessa Cardenas, the group’s executive director.
Other predecessors, such as John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan, were supporters — nominally, at least — of reforms that would legalize large numbers of undocumented immigrants, though they ultimately failed to deliver. Not even Newt Gingrich, the most extreme House speaker of the modern era, went as far as Johnson, says Nicole Hemmer, author of a history of conservatism in the 1990s.
“Even at his most anti-immigrant, he spoke largely in fiscal and law-and-order terms,” Hemmer told me, while eschewing the “eliminationist rhetoric” at the core of great replacement theory.
Yet little by little, those more extreme ideas have penetrated GOP leadership circles. In 2021, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a top House Republican, charged Democrats with scheming to replace conservative voters with Democratic-leaning immigrants.
. . . .
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Greg Sargent Opinion Writer Washington Post
Read Greg’s full column at the link.
Bigot, racist, theocrat, misogynist, liar, election denier, anti-democracy zealot — “MagaMike” is the disgraceful embodiment of today’s extremist GOP. Just when we think that the GOP can’t sink any lower, they surprise us!
They live in a rusty shack with no running water, hiding from the violence just outside their door, haunted by a question that won’t go away: Should they have listened to President Biden?
A year ago, Dayry Alexandra Cuauro and her 6-year-old daughter, Sarah, fled a crumbling Venezuela, setting off for the United States, carrying almost nothing. But they quickly lost each other, separated in a treacherous jungle known as the Darién Gap.
For three terrifying days, Ms. Cuauro heaved herself over muddy hills and plowed through rivers that rose to her chest, panicked that her child had drowned, been kidnapped or fallen to her death.
Many of the migrants traveling alongside the Cuauros — like hundreds of thousands of others — simply ignored the president’s warning, dismissing it as a ploy to keep them at bay. They kept marching, crossed the border and quickly started building new lives in the United States, with jobs that pay in dollars and children in American schools.
Ms. Cuauro listened and dropped off the migrant trail. But nearly a year later, all she has gotten is an auto-reply: Her applications to enter the United States legally have been submitted. She refreshes the website constantly, obsessively, and every day it says the same thing: “Case received.” Only the numbers shift: 57 days. 197 days. 341 days.
Online, she is bombarded by jubilant posts from Venezuelans who have made it to the United States — pictures of them in Times Square, wearing new clothes, eating big meals, going to school. Even the friend who guided her daughter safely through the jungle kept going and made it to Pennsylvania, where he now makes $140 a day as a mechanic.
. . . .
Sarah had become a literal poster child for the Darién. She and her mother had done what Mr. Biden had asked of them. They had a first-class support team of eager American sponsors. Yet no one could figure out how to get their cases through the U.S. immigration system.
. . . .
Recently, a member of the Cuauro committee, the woman in North Carolina, reached out with an urgent request. A Venezuelan man who had contacted her asking for help was about to take the Darién route. The woman asked Ms. Cuauro to talk to him — to try to convince him to apply for the legal route instead.
“I did it,” Ms. Cuauro said, “but he didn’t want to listen, and he left.”
The man got to the American border and, within days, crossed into the United States.
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Read Julie’s article at the link.
As Courtside readers know, I love writing headlines. So, here’s one for the story that Julie might have written had the Administration been quicker on the uptake:
🇺🇸🗽⚖️😊 VENEZUELAN MOM, DAUGHTER FIND SPONSOR, SAFETY IN U.S. UNDER BIDEN PROGRAM AFTER HARROWING DARIEN ORDEAL — “The Legal Path Was Quick, Safe, &Saved Our Lives,” Says Ms. Cuauro, “Others Should Use It!”
Despite often using language peppered with terms that might once have appeared in business textbooks, the USG does not follow a “business model.” Nowhere is that more true than in the largely dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy. Businesses that ran like ICE, USCIS, and EOIR would have gone bankrupt long ago.
Nevertheless, it would be prudent for the Administration to employ some “better business practices” on immigration, which does have a dynamic, potentially even more positive, effect on the U.S. economy.
In the case of the Southern Border, the USG is “competing” with professional smugglers and human traffickers who DO view it in business terms. The “smugglers’ heyday” of a bias-driven Trump Administration that operated in direct contravention of common sense, the rule of law, the laws of supply and demand, and the realities of worldwide forced migration is gone, for now — although, undoubtedly to the delight of criminals and cartels, GOP politicos would dearly love to re-establish it and thereby enhance profits for the “bad guys.”
But, there are plenty of glitches in the Biden Administration’s approach. As this article illustrates, they are unable and unwilling to do what’s necessary to “out-compete” smugglers by making the legal channels they tout robust, timely, generous, and user friendly!
In the meantime, the GOP is marshaling its White Nationalist forces to make the system for legal entry even more restrictive, irrational, and less usable. That will make smugglers essentially “the only game in town” and cede much more of immigration control to self-interested criminals.
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr Cornell LawMuzaffar Chishti Senior Fellow Migration Policy Institute PHOTO: MPI
The Migrant Surge: What’s Different About It This Time?
Please join us on November 7, 2023, from 12:15 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. in Myron Taylor Hall G85 of Cornell Law School for a lunchtime seminar given by our guest Muzaffar Chishti and moderated by Stephen Yale-Loehr.
Join Mr. Chishti and Professor Yale-Loehr as they discuss the history of recent migrant flows to the U.S. border, the current migrant surge at the border, the impact on cities and states beyond the border, and possible impacts on federal immigration policy.
Muzaffar Chishti is a Senior Fellow at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and Director of MPI’s office at New York University School of Law. He received his LLM from Cornell Law School in 1975.
Steve Yale-Loehr teaches immigration and asylum law at Cornell Law School as Professor of Immigration Practice and is of counsel at Miller Mayer in Ithaca, New York.
Can’t make it to our event in-person? You can attend virtually!
The Title 42 farce instituted by Trump, under false pretenses, to unjustly suspend asylum laws has expired. But, the Biden Administration has come up with its own scofflaw regulations and policies intended to “meter” the flow of legal asylum seekers at ports of entry and to improperly “punish” those who exercise their legal rights by entering and turning themselves in to CBP. Biden’s BIA continues to churn out unrealistic hyper-technical asylum precedents (that actually fly in the face of precedents like Cardoza-Fonseca and Mogharrabi) and wrong, anti-asylum decisions intended to “deter and discourage” asylum seekers from applying and to make it unnecessarily difficult, frustrating, and time consuming for pro bono lawyers to represent them!
Contrary to the nativist myths, the U.S. does NOT bear the brunt of increased forced migration! Even in the Western Hemisphere, Colombia has many times more displaced Venezuelans than the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. experience, no matter how much it’s hyped or distorted by nativists and shallow media alarmists, is only a relatively modest slice of the pie. Over three quarters of the world’s forced migrants end up in low and middle income countries outside the U.S. https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/global-trends-report-2022.pdf. Yet, you would never know that from listening to the apocalyptic narrative of GOP nativists and their Dem “fellow travelers!”
Years of cruelty, dehumanization, fortification, imprisonment, prosecution, endangerment, harsh laws, family separations, racist rhetoric, illegal turn backs, and summary deportations of asylum seekers in the U.S. and at the border have demonstrably, and quite predictably, failed to stop or materially deter forced migration stemming from causes outside of U.S. legal policies. Yet, most of our “dialogue” about the U.S. border and immigration start with the bogus assumption that closing the border and unilaterally suspending due process and domestic and international legal obligations will effectively create “Fortress America” where no migrant will dare to tread!
A real discussion of the border and migration must reject nativist myths, racist tropes, and media alarmism by starting with the truth. That is:
Human migration is a real and inevitable worldwide phenominon;
No one nation-state can unilaterally stop or prevent human migration;
Because of climate change and political instability in the world, forced migration is likely to increase in the foreseeable future;
Seeking asylum is a basic legal and human right;
The U.S. will have to accept more migrants, whether legally (preferable)or extralegally (the alternative).
Only by “ditching” and getting beyond nativist myths can we develop solutions that will deal realistically and humanely with human migration. I’m hoping that these two knowledgeable migration and legal experts can get us beyond the myths and to a discussion of practical, achievable actions!
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MAGA Mike
