"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
NYT: TRUMP IS A CHILD ABUSER — Here’s How to Stop Him: Speak, Educate, Donate, Vote!
The NY Times Editorial Board writes:
From his promise of a “beautiful wall” to his false alarms about caravans of alien marauders at the gate, President Trump has exploited immigration as his marquee issue. He is right, there is a crisis: Not of undocumented immigrants or thousands seeking refuge, as the president would have it, but a crisis of American values, a crisis of America’s premier tradition as a welcoming and humane haven. A crisis Mr. Trump has created, even as Congress has fueled it.
That is not to deny that comprehensive immigration reform is urgently needed, as is funding for the overstretched facilities where undocumented immigrants, and most horribly the children of undocumented immigrants, are held.
But, by his divisive, incoherent and barbaric policies, Mr. Trump has only made agreeing on an approach to immigration in the United States far more difficult. He has done so by systematically creating a false narrative of immigrants as job-stealing criminals, by insisting that there is a crisis of illegal immigration where there is none and, most maliciously, by dreaming up schemes to torment these people in the perverse notion that this would deter others from trying to reach the United States.
The most appalling of these has been the separation of children from their parents and detaining them in conditions no child anywhere should suffer, and certainly not children in the care of the American government. At a recent hearing before a federal appeals court in San Francisco, judges were stunned by the administration’s arguments that children sleeping on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, without soap or toothbrushes, were being kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities, as required by law. “You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?” asked one judge.
Mr. Trump’s latest display of cruel bluster was the announcement, and then the delay, of nationwide raids to deport undocumented families. In fact, deporting immigrants who have exhausted their legal claims is not uncommon — President Obama, remember, was often referred to by immigration groups as “deporter in chief” — and the targets of these raids are not random. But Mr. Trump sought to use the operation to strut before his base and extract concessions from Democrats, and spread panic through immigrant communities. His announcement delayed action by Congress and made the operation that much more difficult by warning those targeted for deportation. Then he tweeted that he was delaying the raids for two weeks.
The United States urgently needs an immigration policy that combines border security, justice and humanity. President Trump has promoted policies that undermine all these goals, and Congress has failed to agree on a coherent vision. You can help turn that around. Here’s how:
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Read the complete editorial for the “game plan.”
Amen!
Of course, we should never forget that the “Original National Child Abuser” is Jeff Sessions who developed the original “Family Separation” program for which he has escaped accountability to date.
Four toddlers were so severely ill and neglected at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, that lawyers forced the government to hospitalize them last week.
The children, all under age 3 with teenage mothers or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting and had diarrhea, immigration attorneys told HuffPost on Friday. Some of the toddlers and infants were refusing to eat or drink. One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was “completely unresponsive” and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney.
She described seeing terror in the children’s eyes.
“It’s just a cold, fearful look that you should never see in a child of that age,” Gialluca said. “You look at them and you think, ‘What have you seen?’”
Another mother at the same facility had a premature baby, who was “listless” and wrapped in a dirty towel, as HuffPost previously reported.
The lawyers feared that if they had not shown up at the facility, the sick kids would have received zero medical attention and potentially died. The Trump administration has come under fire for its treatment ― and its alleged neglect ― of migrants who have been crossing the southern border in record numbers. The result is overcrowded facilities, slow medical care and in some instances, deaths.
Immigration authorities say they’re overwhelmed; activists say they’re not trying hard enough.
“It’s intentional disregard for the well-being of children,” Gialluca said. “The guards continue to dehumanize these people and treat them worse than we would treat animals.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The Associated Press reported this week that children in border facilities don’t have adequate access to food, water, soap or showers. On Tuesday, a Justice Department attorney argued in court that the government should not have to provide detained children with soap, toothbrushes or beds.
The AP report is based on interviews a group of lawyers conducted with hundreds of children in three Texas-based Border Patrol stations last week as part of the Flores settlement ― an agreement that outlines conditions for detained children. The lawyers say children are also being held in these facilities for longer than the 72-hour limit the settlement specifies, and in some cases up to three weeks.
Lawyers are particularly concerned about the spread of illness inside Border Patrol facilities, which can sometimes turn fatal. Five children have died in Border Patrol custody since December, some of whom were initially diagnosed with a common cold or the flu. The processing center in McAllen, known as Ursula, recently quarantined three dozen migrants who were sick after a 16-year-old died of the flu at the same facility.
Children and their parents told lawyers that in some cases they didn’t have any access to medical treatment in Border Patrol facilities despite being visibly ill. Gialluca spoke with one 16-year-old mother whose toddler had the flu, but was told by a guard the child “wasn’t sick enough to see a doctor.” She said others also reported being denied medical attention despite having critically sick babies.
Medical experts say that because children have less developed immune and respiratory systems, their symptoms can escalate quickly if they aren’t properly treated.
Dr. Julie Linton, the co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics, previously told HuffPost that children can’t recover from illnesses in Border Patrol facilities. These centers are described as “hieleras” ― Spanish for iceboxes ― because of their freezing temperatures, and migrants describe sleeping on floors under bright lights that shine 24/7, with nothing but Mylar blankets to keep warm.
Gialluca met one 16-year-old mother whose 8-month-old baby was sick with the flu and forced to sleep outside for four days at the McAllen Border Patrol station. The mother said the guards took the clothing off the baby’s back, leaving her in a diaper, and forced them to sleep on concrete without a blanket.
A sick 2-year-old girl was shivering in a T-shirt and had shallow breathing, according to Mike Fassio, a Seattle-based immigration attorney who visited Ursula.
“I was very, very concerned,” he said, adding lawyers spoke with immigrants in a room outside of the facility. “When she left us, I knew she was going back to a place that was cold, crowded and unsanitary.” Fassio noted that guards referred to the children as “bodies.”
Some children were so exhausted they fell asleep during the interviews, said Clara Long, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who spoke with kids at a facility in Clint, Texas. Long met a 3-year-old boy who was dirty with matted hair and was being taken care of by his 11-year-old brother. She said that more than 10 sick children were being quarantined in cells.
While the group of roughly eight lawyers and interpreters at Ursula were supposed to be interviewing children about conditions in the facilities, they also ended up asking guards and government officials to bring kids to the hospital because they were so worried about their state. Gialluca added that she and her colleagues interviewed only a small portion of migrants in the facility, which is the largest processing center in the U.S. and can hold up to 1,000 people. She believes the number of migrants in need of hospitalization is likely much higher.
Government officials have blamed horrific conditions at detention facilities on the fact that Congress has not yet passed an emergency funding package that would include almost $3 billion to help care for unaccompanied migrant children. But Gialluca says border officials shouldn’t need more resources to treat immigrants like human beings.
“Money isn’t keeping guards from allowing people to access toilets,” she said. “Money isn’t causing guards to take clothing and medicine away from children.”
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Nicole Goodkind Political Reporter, Newsweek
Here’s Another report from Nicole Goodkind at Newsweek on the “malicious incompetence” and intentional misallocation of resources by Trump and his DHS sycophants that is willfully endangering kids’ lives as part of a cheap White Nationalist political stunt:
8-YEAR-OLD MIGRANTS BEING FORCED TO CARE FOR TODDLERS IN DETENTION CAMPS
A team of lawyers conducted 60 interviews with migrant children being held in an El Paso, Texas, detention camp and found conditions to be dismal.
Fifteen of those in the holding center had the flu and 10 more are quarantined with illness, according to the lawyers, who first gave the data to the Associated Press. Three infants are being detained alongside their teenage mothers, and many children are under the age of 12.
“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one teenaged girl told the lawyers in an interview. The boy was not wearing a diaper and his shirt was covered in mucus, she said.
Law professor Warren Binford, who aided in the interviews, said she witnessed an 8-year-old girl caring for a 4-year-old child who was very dirty, the girl was unable to get the boy to take a shower. She also described the children she interviewed as sleep-deprived, often falling asleep while speaking with her.
“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, co-director of the University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic, to the AP.
The lawyers were inspecting the facility as part of the Flores agreement, which resulted from a landmark 1985 case that established that facilities where minor migrants are held must be kept “safe and sanitary.”
A representative of the Trump administration, the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian, argued Tuesday that safe and sanitary conditions don’t necessarily have to include toothbrushes, soap or towels for children.
Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS MAJOR ICE RAIDS FOR SUNDAY
U.S. immigration authorities plan to raid Miami, Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles and other cities. They intend to arrest up to 2,000 families, three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans told The Washington Post. The orders reportedly come directly from President Donald Trump.
On Monday, the president tweeted: “Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in.”
Officials told The Washington Post that the Department of Homeland Security agency plans to hold families in hotel rooms until they are deported. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan is allegedly targeting families that have completely dropped out of the court process, but has warned that the operation could lead to further cases of families being separated.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore confirmed the raids on Friday, saying that about 140 families in southern California will be targeted in pre-dawn raids early next week. The chief also made clear that the raids are done on a federal level and that the police department will not be involved.
On Thursday, Carla Provost, chief of the United States Border Patrol argued that the Department of Homeland Security was not receiving enough money to properly care for migrants on the southern border, and that was leading to terrible conditions in detention centers. On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to $4.6 billion in emergency funds for what the Trump administration has referred to as a “border crisis.”
Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro questioned how the agency could afford mass raids while asking for more money Friday. “The Trump Administration says it needs more money (supplemental bill) for the situation at the border yet they may be starting massive immigration raids next week. So how do you have the money for that if you’re running out of money ICE?” he tweeted.
“These potential raids are a disgusting political ploy to stoke fear and rile up Trump’s base for 2020,” wrote Sandra Cordero, Director of Families Belong Together, an immigration advocacy group, in a statement. “Past raids have left children alone and afraid in empty homes, praying they won’t be left to care for younger siblings by themselves, with no idea if they’ll see their parents again. This is yet another flagrant disregard for the welfare of children on behalf of a cruel administration bent on fomenting fear and creating chaos.”
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Come on, Carla, cut the BS and butt covering. The “mix” of arrivals at the Southern Border began to shift to refugee families from the Northern Triangle back in the summer of 2014. So, CBP and DHS have had five years to prepare for this “change” which is actually “old news.”
More “old news” is the increased flow of asylum seekers with kids which began back before Thanksgiving. Plenty of time for CBP and DHS to bring back retired asylum officers and adjudicators and reassign other adjudicative personnel to the border to insure prompt, orderly, safe, and efficient processing of asylum applicants at ports of entry, thus eliminating the incentive (or necessity) for folks to turn themselves in after crossing the border between ports.
Also, plenty of time to work with NGOs, pro bono groups, states, and communities to insure representation and proper placement of family groups in various locations throughout the country without panic or “dumping.”
Another bogus claim spread by Trump, Provost, and the rest of the sycophants: that the prevalence of kids among new asylum arrivals is somehow totally a response to the Flores settlement (which actually has been in effect for decades).
Undoubtedly, with the Trump Administration’s active assistance, unscrupulous smugglers and coyotes are encouraging some folks to bring children as the only way to have a shot at fair processing under the tilted U.S. asylum system promoted by Trump. Indeed, as I have observed before, the Trump Administrations has consistently been a “best friend” to gangs, smugglers, traffickers, cartels, and druggies seeking to “jack up” profits by further exploiting the human misery caused by the Trump Administration’s “maliciously incompetent “ approach to immigration, effective law enforcement, and humanity generally. https://apple.news/AFQw_eqcHSZCYxUznmP0wpQ
Undoubtedly, some of these unscrupulous individuals are telling families to travel with kids. But, the truth is that according to the UNHCR, over one-half of today’s refugees are children. https://www.unhcr.org/children-49c3646c1e8.html.
So, the prevalence of children among new arrivals should properly been seen as part of a sad worldwide trend that Trump and his cronies disgustingly have done everything possible to encourage, exploit, and aggravate. It most certainly is not primarily caused by the Flores settlement or by giving soap, toothbrushes, blankets, or medical care to children being abused in the “DHS Gulag” administered in part by disingenuous folks like Provost.
Any honest observer of what’s going on knows that the majority of the asylum applications that passed credible fear probably could have been granted (or given protection under the Convention Against Torture — “CAT”) by the Asylum Office without even going to Immigration Court under the proper generous interpretation of our asylum laws, an honest interpretation of CAT that reflects the true conditions in the Northern Triangle, and a very “doable” change in procedures.
Only dishonest fools in the Trump Administration (and a few from the Obama Administration) would maintain that gender isn’t a social group subject to widespread persecution in the Northern Triangle, deny that gangs have assumed the role of quasi-governmental entities thus making most of the harm they inflict on resisters “political persecution,” and make the beyond ludicrous claim that the corrupt failed states of the Northern Triangle have either the ability or much real interest in protecting those subject to persecution.
And, Carla, why aren’t you out there today registering a public protest of the waste of time and funds in ICE going after families with ridiculously inappropriate “raids” when everyresource could and should be focused instead on providing humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers arriving at the Southern Border?
This racist-inspired “Sunday Morning Reign of Terror” directed at U.S. ethnic communities is specifically designed to return helpless families to the very dangerous countries from which they originally fled! Thus, Trump and his phony DHS are intentionally feeding “fresh meat” to gangs and cartels and insuring that the cycle of northward migration, no matter how dangerous, will continue until everyone who needs to leave its either gone or dead (the latter apparently the “solution” favored by Provost, Trump, Morgan, McAleenan, Miller, and others).
Provost, McAleenan, Morgan, and their co-conspirators are all participants in a cynical scheme to intentionally “crash” the asylum system, rather than competently administering it. They are intentionally endangering the lives of children and other vulnerable asylum seekers, many entitled to legal protections, to promote, along with GOP restrictionists, totally bogus, dishonest, and completely unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions of the precious, life-saving right of refugees to seek asylum in the U.S.
It’s an unbelievably dishonest and cowardly scheme, and a complete breach of both oaths of office and public trust. It might be that those who long ago abandoned American values will lap up this insult to human values and human dignity.
But, there are plenty of us out here who know and understand exactly what you are doing. We will not only resist it, but will be historical witnesses to your cruel, inhuman, and unlawful schemes and gimmicks to “abuse and kill the innocent.” And, we’ll be keeping count.
Kirk Semple Reporter, NY TimesPaulina Villegas Reporter, NY Times
By Kirk Semple and Paulina Villegas
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican authorities are investigating the death of a teenage migrant from El Salvador who was shot and killed after the truck she was in ran a government checkpoint.
Witnesses have told investigators in the state of Veracruz, where the shooting happened last Friday, that a truck carrying the 19-year-old woman and other migrants bound for the United States border passed through a government checkpoint and that people wearing police uniforms gave chase in a police car and shot at the truck, said Jorge Winckler Ortiz, the attorney general of Veracruz.
Two other migrants in the truck were wounded in the shooting, officials said.
The incident occurred amid a Mexican government deployment of security forces to assert greater control of migration toward the United States, part of a dealthat President Andrés Manuel López Obrador struck with President Trump earlier this month to fend off a threat of tariffs.
The possibility that the Mexican police may have killed the teenager has reaffirmed the fears of migrants’ advocates and human rights experts, who worry that the security forces, being rushed into migration control, are ill-prepared for the task.
Nicole Narea Reporter, Law360Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase BlogProfessor Karen Musalo Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings Law
Nicole Narea reports for Law360:
. . . .
Trump tweeted Monday night that Guatemala is “getting ready to sign” a socalled safe third country agreement with the U.S., and he lauded Mexico for “using their strong immigration laws” to stop migrants well before they reach the southern U.S. border. Mexico said Friday it would also weigh a safe third country agreement with the U.S. if its efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement as part of a trade deal do not succeed within 45 days.
The announcements came as the Trump administration moved to reduce its obligations to asylum seekers by expanding its “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, by which migrants are sent back to Mexico while they await hearings in U.S. immigration court.
As for Guatemala, experts have protested that Mexico’s southern neighbor cannot offer asylum seekers the kind of security intended by a safe third country agreement.
But the Trump administration is not proposing such an agreement with Guatemala because it believes the country to be safe, said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and ex senior legal adviser to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Rather, the White House believes the accord will stop asylum seekers from countries farther south from entering the U.S., Chase said.
Migrants from El Salvador and Honduras have to travel through Guatemala en route to the U.S., and if Guatemala were subject to such an agreement, the Trump administration would have an “excuse to turn away those fleeing violence in those countries,” he said.
Karen Musalo, the founding director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said that to call Guatemala safe is absurd.
“I don’t think that anyone familiar with the human rights situation in Guatemala — with its extremely high levels of homicides, femicides, gender violence, gang and organized crime violence, corruptions, etc. — could say with a straight face that asylum seekers would be safe there,” she said.
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Those with access to Law360 can read Nicole’s complete article at the above link.
It isn’t just that Trump (supported by some equally dishonest and nasty GOP legislators and flunkies like Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli, and Kevin McAleenan) is blatantly lying about asylum seekers and Guatemala being “safe.” What he essentially proposes is the U.S.-sanctioned murder of innocent asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle.
Why is this outrage against the law and humanity “below the radar screen?” Seems like it’s actually the most clear “impeachable offense” that Trump has committed to date. And, it’s right out in plain view for all to see, with irrefutable proof that Guatemala is NOT a safe country for anyone, let alone asylum seekers. That’s exactly why folks are fleeing Guatemala for their lives every day.
Trump admin considers temporary courts along the southern border
5:44 PM EDT June 17, 2019
Washington
The Trump administration is considering building temporary courts along the southern border as part of an effort to expand its policy of returning some asylum seekers to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings, according to two administration officials.
The US recently struck an agreement with Mexico that included expanding the policy, which, the administration argues, serves as a deterrent since it keeps migrants waiting in Mexico, instead of within the US.
Site assessments have been completed for almost all the ports of entry to determine where such temporary immigration courts, described by sources as “soft-sided,” would be needed, according to an administration official.
The facilities could be used to conduct hearings via video teleconference, which has previously been used by immigration courts elsewhere in the country, the official said.
The deal to expand the “Remain in Mexico” program across the border earlier this month came amid threats to impose tariffs on Mexico if it didn’t bolster enforcement.
Mexico, the joint declaration said, would authorize the entrance of asylum seekers, and offer jobs, health care and education to those individuals. In return, the US must expedite the asylum adjudication process. Consideration to erect immigration courts, which are overseen by the Justice Department, appears to be a step in that direction.
Migrants who are sent to Mexico to await their court hearings return to the US through a port of entry along the southern border to then be transported to their hearing. The temporary courts would allow migrants to have their hearings near or at the port, rather than being bussed miles away, said the official.
It also would likely help alleviate the caseload at San Diego and El Paso immigration courts, which have been taking these cases.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review referred questions about the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols program to the Department of Homeland Security. A DHS official confirmed that the temporary structures are being considered, adding that the crisis has strained the immigration courts along the border. The administration has repeatedly requested additional immigration judges to chip away at a massive backlog that’s led to cases being scheduled years down the road.
The “Remain in Mexico” policy began in January and immediately received pushback back from immigrant advocates and lawyers who argue that it puts migrants who are predominantly from Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador and seeking asylum in the US in harm’s way.
As of May, the US had returned around 6,000 people to Mexico to await their court hearings. The number of migrants falling under the policy appears to be doubling over time, but it is unclear how many additional people have been added to the program since the agreement with Mexico was struck.
One of the locations actively working toward implementing the program is the Rio Grande Valley region in Texas, the busiest sector for arrests of people illegally crossing the border, a senior Border Patrol official told CNN.
Before the program can get underway in the region, officials need to first have the infrastructure in place, including logistics for court hearings. The US also needs to engage with Mexico and ensure its government is willing to receive migrants across the border, said the official.
Like other administration immigration policies, returning migrants to Mexico has also been challenged in court.
In May, a federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to continue returning some asylum seekers to Mexico for the time being. A panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, while split on some issues, listed a number of factors that went into the decision, including risk of injury in Mexico and negotiations between the US and Mexico.
Not surprisingly, no mention of guaranteeing attorney access, effective notice, or reasonable access to legal resources for those retuned to Mexico. Trump is emboldened by a dysfunctional Congress under Mitch McConnell and complicit Article III Courts like the 9th Circuit, unwilling to put an end to this grotesque perversion of our statutory laws, our Constitution, and human rights. It’s also a recipe for more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and bigger backlogs in Immigration Courts. But undoubtedly, Trump will blame others for the problems he has created.
Sophia Menchu Reporter, ReutersEleanor Acer Senior Director for Refugee Protection, Human Rights First
Sophia Menchu reports for Reuters:
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – A U.S. plan to make asylum seekers from Honduras and El Salvador seek refuge in Guatemala instead of the United States would endanger, not protect, refugees, a prominent rights group said on Friday as U.S. negotiators met Guatemalan officials.
U.S. rights group Human Rights First said it was “simply ludicrous” for the United States to assert that Guatemala was capable of protecting refugees, when its own citizens are fleeing violence.
“The Trump administration is doubling down on its efforts to block, bar and punish refugees for attempting to seek asylum in the United States,” said Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First.
“These policies put the lives of refugees in great danger.”
Guatemala, like its neighbors Honduras and El Salvador, suffers high levels of violence, driven largely by transnational street gangs including MS-13, which operate across borders in all three countries. Many asylum seekers cite gang threats as the reason they come to the United States for refuge.
Tens of thousands of people have left Guatemala to seek U.S. asylum this year. Nearly 150,000 undocumented Guatemalan families have reached the U.S. border since October, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, many of them citing fear of violence in their home country for seeking asylum.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said this week the two nations had a deal under which Guatemala would take asylum seekers from neighbors. “They ought to be willing to apply for asylum in the first safe country in which they arrive,” he said.
Details of the plan have not been made public, and Guatemala has not publicly confirmed talks that the U.S. State Department said were taking place in Guatemala on Friday.
The talks were about a range of initiatives aimed at reducing illegal immigration, including “improved asylum processing,” a State Department spokeswoman said on Friday in response to a Reuters question about the Guatemala asylum plan.
The emerging plans flow from a U.S.-Mexican deal struck to avert tariffs threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump to push Mexico to do more to stem immigration through its territory.
That deal included sending 6,000 members of Mexico’s National Guard to the border and expanding a separate asylum program under which U.S. asylum seekers are sent back to Mexico to await U.S. court hearings.
If those measures fail, Mexico has agreed to consider becoming a “safe third country” where all asylum seekers passing through the country would have to apply for refuge, instead of the United States
Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said other countries should share the load, including Guatemala.
Guatemala, one of the poorest countries in the Americas, has little experience receiving large numbers of asylum seekers and a large wave of refugees would strain limited resources. Just 262 people applied for refugee status in Guatemala between January and November 2018, according to data from the U.N. rights agency UNHCR.
By comparison, nearly 155,000 families from El Salvador and Honduras have been apprehended at the U.S. border since October, with many of them requesting asylum.
Guatemala holds presidential elections on Sunday, after a campaign that has highlighted the lack of rule of law in the country, including the influence of drug traffickers on politics in the country.
Trade and immigration between Mexico and the United States – tmsnrt.rs/2Khd82D
As pointed out in the article, Guatemala is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for its own citizens. It doesn’t even have a functioning asylum system. So, how could it provide access to a “full and fair” asylum adjudications to non-citizens as required by our law. The answer is simple – it can’t, by any stretch of the imagination. After all, living long enough to apply, even if there were a functional asylum adjudication system, would be a prerequisite to a legitimate “Safe Third Country” process.
Seems like clear abuses of authority like this by Trump and Pence that should be enough to remove both of them from office forthwith in a functioning democracy. But, that’s not going to happen before 2021, if then.
In the meantime, Dems should make a note that when responsible Government returns at some point in the future, the law should be amended to require at least Senate ratification of any future “Safe Third Country Agreement” to prevent future Executive abuses like this. Indeed, the failure of this Congress to revoke Trump’s authority to enter into these clearly bogus and ill-intended “Safe Third Country” agreements is an indelible stain upon its reputation.
“Safe Third Country” was intended to be about refugee burden sharing among countries with substantially comparable due process systems for adjudicating claims under the Refugee Convention. It was never intended to allow the U.S. to “outsource” asylum adjudication to dangerous, major human rights violators with dysfunctional asylum adjudication systems. What Trump and Pence are proposing is little more than outright murder and human rights abuses inflicted on asylum seekers in violation of both international and U.S. laws.
Kate Morrissey reports for the San Diego Union-Tribune and LA Times:
Judge orders U.S. to hold asylum seeker
Doubtful about his mental state, jurist prevents migrant from being sent to Mexico.
By Kate Morrissey
SAN DIEGO — An immigration judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to keep a Honduran asylum seeker in the United States while he waits for his court proceedings, instead of returning him to Mexico again under a Trump administration program.
Judge Scott Simpson said that after evaluating the man’s mental competence in a special hearing on Friday, he found that the man would need safeguards in his case to ensure due process. He ordered one put in place immediately: to remove the man from a program known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols and more widely as “Remain in Mexico.”
“I find that he lacks a rational and factual understanding of the nature of the proceedings,” Simpson said in issuing his order.
This is the first time that a judge has made such a ruling since the program was implemented in January, according to advocates who have been monitoring immigration court proceedings.
The program requires certain asylum seekers from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to wait in Mexico while their cases progress in immigration court. The man has been waiting in Tijuana as part of the program for several months.
A Customs and Border Protection guide for officials implementing the program says that migrants with known physical or mental health issues should not be included.
“It’s a big deal that a judge recognized that there was a predatory nature to having put this person in the ‘Migrant Persecution Protocols,’ ” said Ian Philabaum of Innovation Law Lab, calling the program a name used by some immigrant rights advocates. “He wasn’t going to have a chance, and now he gets a chance.”
At the man’s first hearing in March, Simpson quickly became concerned that the man might have a mental competency issue that would make him ineligible for the program or require other protections. He ordered DHS to evaluate the man’s mental state.
Simpson asked government attorneys at each hearing after that whether the man’s mental state had been evaluated and whether the government believed he should continue to be included in the program.
Each time, the government attorney responded that the man should continue in MPP.
Still skeptical, Simpson told Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney Dan Hua to be prepared to give details Friday about DHS’s evaluation of the man before he was returned to Mexico. When the judge came into court Friday morning, Hua was not able to answer that question.
“The government’s inability to provide that information is simply not excusable,” Simpson said. He gave Hua 30 minutes to find out answers.
Hua said immigration officials at the port of entry had evaluated the man each time he’d come to court, meaning that as of Friday, he’d been evaluated four times.
The attorney could not produce evidence showing what the evaluation observed or what standard it used when the judge pressed for more details.
Philabaum said that fact was significant.
“That assessment of the mental competency was performed on four different occasions, and on four different occasions, according to the U.S. government attorney, their assessment was he was perfectly competent to proceed with his immigration case representing himself,” Philabaum said. But in the man’s “first hearing, it took the immigration judge approximately two minutes to realize there was an issue of competency here.
“Whatever type of standard that CBP has instituted to assess the competency of an individual to be eligible, according to the immigration judge today, it has failed.”
DHS officials, CBP officials and Department of Justice officials did respond to a request for comment.
Simpson decided to do his own evaluation of the man’s mental state under an immigration court precedent known as the Matter of MAM.
He listed the rights that the man has, such as the right to present evidence and the right to question witnesses. He asked if the man understood his rights.
“Um, yes. I need more,” said the man through a Spanish interpreter. “I need more because here I only have some letters, some birth certificates. They’re not translated into English yet.”
“Sir, I’m the immigration judge in your case. It’s my job to decide whether you can stay in the United States,” Simpson said. “In your own words, tell me who am I and what’s my job.”
“I cannot understand you,” the man responded.
In the end, the man was only able to appropriately respond to simple questions such as the date and what city he was in. He told the judge he had not had much schooling and couldn’t read or write.
ICE later confirmed the man is pending transfer to the agency’s custody. He could be taken to an immigration detention facility or released “on parole” into the U.S. to a sponsor while he waits for his next hearing.
Simpson said that depending which option the government chooses, other safeguards may be necessary, including providing an attorney for him if he’s detained.
Morrissey writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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Every day the human carnage mounts as the 9th Circuit continues to “sponsor” Trump’s illegal, deadly, and unconstitutional “Remain in Mexico Program.” Interesting how a few non-life-tenured Immigration Judges in San Diego and one courageous U.S. District Judge in the Southern District of California seem to be the only Federal officials interested in either the rule of law or the Due Process Clause of our Constitution. Go figure!
Congrats to Judge Scott Simpson for standing up for the rule of law and the rights of the most vulnerable in the face of massive dereliction of duty by those higher up the line.
Sadly, unlike the 9th Circuit, Judge Simpson lacks authority to enjoin further violations of the law and human rights by the Trump Administration. How many more human beings will suffer, be wronged, and perhaps die as a result of the 9th Circuit’s complicity in scofflaw behavior having little or nothing to do with protecting our borders or any other legitimate policy end and everything to do with punishing and dehumanizing those who seek justice under our laws.?
PANEL: GREGORY, Chief Judge, and DIAZ and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.
OPINION BY: PAMELA HARRIS, Circuit Judge
KEY QUOTE:
Sindy Marilu Alvarez Lagos testified credibly that she and her then-seven-year-old daughter, natives and citizens of Honduras, were threatened with gang rape, genital mutilation, and death if they did not comply with the extortionate demands of a Barrio 18 gang member. Unable to meet those demands and fearing for their lives, Alvarez Lagos and her daughter fled to the United States, where they sought asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture.
Now, almost five years later, an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals have issued a total of three separate decisions denying Alvarez Lagos’s claims. The government defends none of those decisions, including the most recent, which came after we agreed, at the government’s request, to remand the case for reconsideration. Instead, the government admits that errors remain, but argues that we should leave them unaddressed and simply remand once again so that the agency may have a fourth opportunity to analyze Alvarez Lagos’s claims correctly.
We decline that request. A remand is required here on certain questions that have yet to be answered, or answered fully, by the agency. But we take this opportunity to review the agency’s disposition of other elements of Alvarez Lagos’s claims. For the reasons given below, we reverse the agency’s determination with respect to the “nexus” requirement for asylum and withholding of removal. And so that they will not recur on remand, we identify additional errors in the agency’s analysis of the “protected ground” requirement for the same forms of relief, and in the agency’s treatment of Alvarez Lagos’s claim under the Convention Against Torture.
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It’s partially on the Article IIIs. Great decision in many ways. But, this type of injustice occurs daily in our unconstitutional U.S. Immigration Courts. How many Central American asylum applicants get this type of representation—Steve Shulman of Akin Gump for a pro bono lawyer, Tom Boerman as an expert? Not very many.
How many can be this persistent, particularly if detained or sent to Mexico to wait? Almost none! I think that if these respondents were in “Return to Mexico” they would have long ago been forced to give up and accept “Death Upon Return.”
This case should have been a “no brainer grant” five years ago. Could have been done at an Asylum Office (under a more rational system) or by DHS stipulation. THIS abuse of the legal system and gross waste of public resources by DHS and DOJ is the reason why we have unmanageable Immigration Court backlogs, not because asylum applicants and their representatives assert their legal rights.
The Office of Immigration Litigation (“OIL”) didn’t even bother to defend any of the EOIR actions here! So, after five years why is it “Due Process” for the Fourth Circuit to give the BIA yet another opportunity to come up with bogus reasons to deny asylum.
An Article III Court fulfilling its oath to uphold the laws and Constitution could have ordered this case to be granted and either exercised contempt authority against those at DOJ responsible for this mess or ordered an independent investigation into the judicial incompetence and bias evident here. At the least, the court should have removed any judge having had a role in this abomination from any future proceedings involving these respondents.
Cases such good as this also illustrate the continuing dereliction of duty by Article III Courts who continue to “go along top get along” with the absurdly unconstitutional position that unrepresented asylum applicants can receive “Due Process” in today’s overtly unfair and biased Immigration Courts. The Due Process clause applies to all persons in the U.S., and the right to a fair asylum hearing exceeds the rights at stake in 98% of the civil litigation and most of the criminal litigation in the Federal Courts. If the Article III Courts actually viewed asylum applicants as “persons,” that is “fellow human beings,” rather than dehumanized “aliens,” this farce would have ended decades ago! Folks represented by Steve Schulman and Akin Gump can’t get a “fair shake” from EOIR; what chance does any unrepresented applicant have?
You reap what you sow, and what goes around comes around! If Article III Courts want to be taken seriously and respected, they must step up to the plate and stop the systematic bias against asylum applicants (particularly women and children from Central America) and the abuses like this occurring every day in our unconstitutional U.S. Immigration Courts!
History is watching and making a record, even if those wronged by the Article IIIs all too often don’t survive or aren’t in a position to confront them with their dereliction of legal duties and the obligations human beings owe to each other.
(Reuters) – Over two hours on June 1, a Honduran teenager named Tania pleaded with a U.S. official not to be returned to Mexico.
Immigration authorities had allowed her mother and younger sisters into the United States two months earlier to pursue claims for asylum in U.S. immigration court. But they sent Tania back to Tijuana on her own, with no money and no place to stay.
The 18-year-old said she told the U.S. official she had seen people on the streets of Tijuana linked to the Honduran gang that had terrorized her family. She explained that she did not feel safe there.
After the interview, meant to assess her fear of return to Mexico, she hoped to be reunited with her family in California, she said. Instead, she was sent back to Mexico under a Trump administration policy called the “Migrant Protection Protocols”(MPP), which has forced more than 11,000 asylum seekers to wait on the Mexican side of the border for their U.S. court cases to be completed. That process can take months.
Tania’s is not an unusual case. Once asylum seekers are ordered to wait in Mexico, their chances of getting that decision reversed on safety grounds – allowing them to wait out their proceedings in the United States – are exceedingly small, a Reuters analysis of U.S. immigration court data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) shows.
. . . .
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Read the full description of the Trump Administration’s judicially enabled all out assault on the legal, Constitutional, and human rights of vulnerable asylum seekers at the above link.
It’s worth noting that almost every “ameliorating exception” described in the first paragraph of the panel’s opinion is demonstrably untrue — children and those clearly in danger are being returned and the “discretionary parole” is largely a fraud that seldom is granted — according to the Government’s own data (which likely is also falsified or manipulated to some extent to mask or distort abuses). In other words, a “three-reporter panel” of Reuters is more interested and capable of getting to truth than a panel of life-tenured judges.
Oh, that it could be these judges’ kids or grandkids separated from family and sent to live on the mean streets of Tijuana while pursuing their legal rights under US law. Really, how do these child abusers and human rights scofflaws hiding in judicial robes sleep at night?
Guess the can’t hear the screams and moans of those whose rights they are failing to protect and whose human dignity they reject. I’ve heard eyewitness accounts and seen video evidence from the pro bono lawyers courageously (and sometimes at the risk of their own health and safety) trying to protect the lives and rights of asylum seekers at the Southern Border from these abuses of human rights that are enabled by “Remain in Mexico” (a/k/a the disingenuously named “Migrant Protection Protocols”). The truth is no secret for those who actually seek it rather than to ignore it.
Complicit Article III Judges and Government lawyers are keys to Trump’s “dehumanization” program. History must hold them accountable for their abuses of humanity.
WASHINGTON, DC – The immigration court system has failed to fulfill the constitutional and statutory promise of fair and impartial case-by-case review, according to a new report released today by Innovation Law Lab and the Southern Poverty Law Center, entitled The Attorney General’s Judges: How the U.S. Immigration Courts Became a Deportation Tool.Download the press release here.The report, based on over two years of research and focus group interviews with attorneys and former immigration judges from around the country, links the current crisis of accountability to the Attorney General’s absolute control over the immigration court system.In conjunction with the report, the groups also announced the launch of an Immigration Court Watch app, which enables court observers to record and upload information on immigration judge conduct to create greater judicial accountability.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the attorney general is required to create an immigration court system in which independent judges decide cases by applying law to the evidence on the record following a full and fair hearing. According to the report, however, today’s immigration courts are plagued by systemic bias and neglect.
“Despite the life-and-death stakes of many immigration cases within the current system, case outcomes have less to do with the rule of law than with the luck of the draw,” said Melissa Crow, Southern Poverty Law Center senior supervising attorney. “Under the Trump administration, the attorneys general have gone even further by actively weaponizing the immigration court system against asylum-seekers.”
The report explains how the Office of Attorney General has created an immigration court system that is biased, inconsistent and driven by political whims. It also examines the conflict that arises when immigration judges, who are expected to be neutral arbiters, are supervised by the United States’ chief law enforcement officer who prioritizes deterrence and deportation of immigrants, instead of an impartial review process.
The report recommends removing the immigration courts from the attorney general’s control and recreating them as Article I courts. To ensure that immigration judges are insulated from political pressures, they must be selected based on merit, receive tenure and be removed only for good cause. The immigration courts must also include more effective mechanisms of internal and appellate accountability.
“One of the key factors driving the immigration court crisis is the failure of judicial accountability,” said Stephen Manning, executive director of Innovation Law Lab. “The new Immigration Court Watch app addresses that lack of accountability, ensures greater transparency and will be a valuable resource for collecting and storing usable data on the pervasive abuses in the immigration court system.”
The new tool will allow data on immigration judge conduct to be gathered and stored in both individual and aggregate forms. This will provide advocates with valuable information to fight systemic patterns of bias and other unlawful court practices. This data can be used to bolster policy recommendations, advocacy and legal strategies.
Advocates, attorneys and other court watchers are encouraged to access the app available here.
“By establishing a presence in immigration courts within their communities and sharing their observations and information, advocates can help us leverage the power of technology, collaboration and strategic alignment to create the first interconnected information system which captures data about due process issues in U.S. immigration courts in real-time,” Manning said.
Marion Steinfels marionsteinfels@gmail.com / 202-557-0430
Ramon Valdez ramon@innovationlawlab.org / 971-238-1804
The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Washington, DC, is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, visit www.splcenter.org.
Innovation Law Lab is a nonprofit organization dedicated to upholding the rights of immigrants and refugees. By bringing technology to the fight for justice, Law Lab builds power for lawyers, human rights advocates, and immigrants in hostile immigration court jurisdictions, remote immigration detention facilities, and along the U.S.-Mexico border. For more information, visit www.innovationlawlab.org.
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Maybe the “Article III Enablers In Robes” need to start envisioning their kids and grandkids in cages, their daughters and granddaughters being gang raped, and their close relatives and best friends unnecessarily suffering and dying from intentionally life threatening conditions in prison where they are sentenced to indefinite confinement without rights and without being convicted of a crime.
No, American institutions aren’t “standing up” to Trump. From the Supremes legally wrong , immoral, and unconstitutional decision in Jennings, to their licensing of blatant racial and religious bias in Travel Ban 3.0, to the Ninth Circuit’s complicity in the mocking of legal, statutory, and Constitutional rights under the fraudulent and illegal “Remain in Mexico,” which they now “own” lock stock, and barrel, to the Eleventh Circuit’s refusal to stop the “law, asylum, justice, and human dignity free zone” in the Atlanta Immigration Courts, Article III Judges are ignoring their oaths of office and turning blind eyes to immigration outrages that are transparent on the records they review and have been building in plain sight for years.
Those in positions of power who fail to fulfill their Constitutional duty to prevent abuse of the most vulnerable among us deserve to be condemned by public opinion and by history. And that goes for Article III Judges, as well as legislators, politicos, and bureaucrats.
Alexandria, VA, June 9, 2019.After a week of petulance, threats, and self-created drama, Trump produced a resounding trade and immigration dud. Faced with advisors telling him that he was endangering the economy, the only thing propping up his sagging popularity, a potential rebellion among GOP legislators, and an unexpectedly tough and resolute Mexico, Trump backed off of his insane and blatantly illegal plan to ignore U.S. asylum obligations and thereby rocket the U.S. to the upper echelons of international scofflaws and human rights violators.
The latter scheme, known as “safe third country,” would have mis-designated Mexico and, incredibly, Guatemala, two clearly “unsafe” countries to do the U.S.’s job by processing tens of thousands of asylum applications from those fleeing the Northern Triangle. Neither of the two countries has a viable, fair, and effective asylum adjudication system and both have major safety and human rights issues.
Instead, Trump accepted a vague compact by which Mexico and the U.S. basically agreed to do what they had already been doing without taking any decisive or effective action to address the actual humanitarian crisis in the Northern Triangle that Trump and his flunkies have consistently mischaracterized as a “law enforcement emergency.” Indeed, the New York Times reported that most of Mexico’s “unprecedented steps” had already been worked out in secret with deposed DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen months ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/us/politics/trump-mexico-deal-tariffs.html. Those interested can read the summary of the agreement prepared by Trump’s own State Department here. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-us-mexico-tariffs-declaration-20190607-story.html.
To be sure, desperate and vulnerable asylum seekers, particularly women and children, will continue to abused, raped, beaten, extorted, obscenely tortured, and killed with impunity and little if any recourse as a result of this week’s actions. But, at least for now, the U.S. and Mexico are maintaining much of the basic framework of domestic and international protection laws.
Contrary to the lies and false narratives spread by Trump and his DHS cronies, U.S. law is not filled with “loopholes.” Rather, it is a fairly straightforward implementation of the international protection regime and treaties that have been in effect since World War II to prevent another holocaust from occurring on our watch.
If anything, since the enactment of the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.S. has watered down its asylum commitment somewhat by adding a legally tenuous “credible fear” process to “pre-screen” arriving asylum applicants in mass migration situations. However, to date, the DHS under Trump has been too incompetent, misdirected, and frankly downright stupid to utilize this streamlined screening process fairly and efficiently.
By treating a somewhat predictable humanitarian refugee flow as a bogus “law enforcement problem” and mindlessly shoving cases into a “captive” court system that they already had abused, mismanaged, and destroyed, the Administration lost effective control. In panic, they have tried to blame the refugees, Democrats, Mexico, Obama, judges, the media, and even the truly hapless failed states of the Northern Triangle for their largely self-created human and operational disaster.
The first of the “unprecedented steps,” involves Mexico sending approximately 6,000 National Guard troops to the Guatemalan border to control illegal crossings. Never mind that the Mexican National Guard is a recent creation that exists largely on paper. Also, forget that Mexico has a questionable record of controlling corruption and systematic human rights abuses among its existing police and military forces.
The U.S., a much larger, better organized, and more prosperous country than Mexico, has resorted to militarizing the border, mass incarceration, family concentration camps, kids in cages, malicious criminal prosecutions, family separations, walls, fences, overt political interference in the asylum adjudication system, and violating international protection norms. These “gonzo” enforcement efforts not only failed to stem the tide, but have actually aided smugglers and traffickers and increased the flow of migrants.
Will newly minted, untrained Mexican troops succeed where the might of the U.S. has failed miserably? Don’t count on it.
Also, the last time I checked, it appeared that most of the Mexican coast and some parts of the U.S. are reasonably accessible by boat from the Northern Triangle. So, assuming that the Mexicans could “shut down” their land border with Guatemala, why wouldn’t smugglers “take to the sea?” How’s that Mexican Navy?
The second “unprecedented step,” is a continuation and expansion of the existing “Remain in Mexico Program.” This toxic gimmick punishes those who have been legally determined to have a “credible fear” of persecution by making them remain in some of the most dangerous locations in the world where they are intentionally and illegally impeded in many ways from pursuing their U.S. asylum claims from Mexico. To date, this program has only been implemented in a few locations, like San Diego where it has been an unmitigated failure according to a report from Kate Morrissey of the San Diego Union-Tribune. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/06/06/cruel-yet-really-stupid-trumps-remain-in-mexico-policy-denies-due-process-while-creating-court-chaos-enfeebled-judges-fume-as-aimless-docket-reshufflin/.
The results of this ill-advised effort by Trump to circumvent U.S. asylum laws reads like a “legal toxicology report:” “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” mass confusion, lack of information, insufficient and deficient hearing notices, massive violations of the statutory right to be represented by counsel, no opportunity to fairly prepare, document, and present asylum claims, interference with the attorney-client relationship by DHS, and few actual case completions to name just a few of the many abuses. And, how will an already dysfunctional EOIR deal with yet another round of “new priorities” and more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling?”
A Federal District Judge actually enjoined this circus before it could get rolling. But, a “tone-deaf panel” of the Ninth Circuit allowed Trump’s assault on the rule of law to go forward, at least for now.
Nevertheless, the case remains pending with the Ninth Circuit. As EOIR’s rushed and sloppy work product starts to accumulate on their docket and the bodies and horror stories start to pile up in Mexico, more responsible Circuit Judges might actually force the Administration to comply with the law and the Constitution, not to mention simple human decency.
Mexico has pledged to “accept and protect” those sentenced to remain there. But, the Mexican border locations to which individuals are forced to return are dangerous for a reason. Presumably, if Mexican can’t maintain safety and order for its own citizens, it won’t do any better for vulnerable asylum seekers.
Finally, in third “unprecedented step,” Mexico and the U.S. agreed to promote the “Comprehensive Development Plan launched by the government of Mexico in concert with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras” to create “prosperity, good governance and security in Central America.” This part of the agreement makes the most sense. But “promoting” in this case appears limited to using development funds that were “already in the pipeline” in both countries. In other words, nothing really new here.
This was a golden opportunity for the U.S. to show real leadership by dramatically increasing its investment in bringing stability and prosperity to Mexico and Central America. Additionally, we could have created incentives (rather than threats) and benchmarks for Mexico to improve its asylum adjudication system and human rights performance. Partnering with non-governmental-organizations and legal assistance groups on both sides of the border also would bring much needed expertise in resolving asylum issues to the table.
But, that would have taken a President with vision, empathy, compassion, courage, competency, intelligence, and creative problem solving ability. Trump is the exact antithesis of all of these qualities.
Consequently, sooner or later we can expect Trump’s “latest egg” to fail, like all of his other gimmicks and maliciously incompetent schemes on immigration. Our “child president” will undoubtedly then embark on a new barrage of lies, false narratives, idiotic tweets, idle threats, blame shifting, insults, racist dog whistles, and general nonsense aimed at diverting attention from his own failures as a leader and more critically, as a human being.
Innocent people will be harmed and die, America and Mexico will be embarrassed and diminished, and the world will be a worse place. But, until America figures out how to use its democratic institutions to remove the kakistocracy, the disaster will continue. That it could have been worse, is only small consolation.
Why not strive to bethe “best that we can be,” rather than just “not as bad as we might have been?”
WASHINGTON, DC – The immigration court system has failed to fulfill the constitutional and statutory promise of fair and impartial case-by-case review, according to a new report released today by Innovation Law Lab and the Southern Poverty Law Center, entitled