MORE GOOD NEWS FROM PROFESSOR ALBERTO BENITEZ @ GW LAW: Two More Northern Triangle Lives Saved By Asylum Grants in Arlington – Giving Lie To the Trump Administration/Restrictionist Claim That Northern Triangle Refugees Are “Economic Migrants” — No, The Vast Majority Are “Legitimate Refugees” Being Screwed Over By Our Government’s Skewed, Dishonest, Immoral, & Often Illegal Policies

Friends,

Please join me in congratulating GW Immigration Clinic alum Shira Zeman, ’12, who won an asylum grant for a Central American Mom and her 5 year-old son earlier this week. Please see the attached picture, which I use with permission. Gang members threatened to kill Mom if she did not allow them to use her son in gang activities. These same gang members murdered one of Mom’s neighbors, a police officer, after he refused to allow a family member to join the gang. Mom testified for over an hour, after which the ICE trial attorney told the Immigration Judge she did not oppose asylum. Shira said: “He’s 5 now, but he had just turned 3 when they tried to ‘recruit’ him so he could be used as a drug mule.”

Intense. This installation is a must-see. Being in the ‘hielera,’ and in the ‘desert’ witnessing nighttime arrests by the Border Patrol, was beyond belief. Visitors were in tears and one fell to her knees. I read this Washington Post article prior to my visit but I was unprepared for the experience.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/alejandro-g-inarritus-virtual-reality-voyage-is-dcs-most-intriguing-experience-right-now/2018/04/11/d2714380-3c04-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html?utm_term=.8f8162e02386

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Alberto Manuel Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law
Director, Immigration Clinic
The George Washington University Law School
650 20th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 994-7463
(202) 994-4946 fax
abenitez@law.gwu.edu
THE WORLD IS YOURS…
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Congratulations to Shira Zeman, Esq., of Zeman & Petterson PLLC, Falls Church, VA. I’m awed by the legal accomplishments and lives saved by Shira and her law partner Rachel Petterson! Hard to believe that she’s only six years out of law school!

We hear it all the time from Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, CIS, FAIR, GOP White Nationalist right wingers, right-wing media, and perhaps most disturbingly sometimes officials at EOIR and Immigration Judges. These aren’t “real refugees,” just folks coming here to work.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Make no mistake about it, these are “real refugees” intentionally being given the shaft by our biased and unfair Government and in far too many cases being denied the life-saving protection to which they are entitled under both U.S. and international law!

In my experience, few individuals, particularly women and children, undertake the long, dangerous, and uncertain journey from the Northern Triangle to our Southern Border unless they are forced migrants. Indeed, I found that many of the individuals coming from the Northern Triangle were doing fine economically and would have vastly preferred to stay in their homes, rather than being relegated to sometimes menial “entry-level” jobs even when they are able to be released in the U.S. Successful students sometimes lose credit in U.S. school systems and must “start over again” in lower grades or special programs.

Indeed, perhaps ironically, their success helped make them very visible, distinct, and attractive targets for both persecution by the gangs and sometimes also for extortion and mistreatment by corrupt police and government officials in the Northern Triangle. Others were perceived by the gangs to be actual or potential political leaders in the “anti-gang movement.” Moreover, as gangs increasingly become involved in the political process in the Northern Triangle, opposition to gangs takes on heavy political implications.

No, this case is not an “aberration or an exception.” There are lots of similar or identical “moms and kids” out there from the Northern Triangle fighting every day for their very lives in a system already rigged against them and which Jeff Sessions has pledged to make even more unfair and more “user unfriendly.”

The things that allowed this “mom and child’ to succeed are:

Representation by a great lawyer like Shira;
Freedom from detention;
Adequate time to prepare and document the case;
A fair, knowledgeable Immigration Judge not biased against or dismissive of Northern Triangle asylum seekers;
An experienced DHS Assistant Chief Counsel committed to a fair application of asylum law and unafraid to recognize when further litigation or appeal would be counterproductive for both the individual and the court system.

An Attorney General truly interested in upholding the rule of law and our Constitution would be working to replicate what happened in this case elsewhere and to look for ways in which refugees like this could be recognized without having to go to a final merits hearing before an Immigration Judge. He or she would also be encouraging others in the Administration to focus on addressing the problems in the Northern Triangle causing this humanitarian migration, instead of focusing solely on fruitless attempts to discourage and deter the vulnerable migrants themselves.

But, that would an Attorney General “OTJS” — “Other Than Jeff Sessions.”

PWS

04-23-18

MULTI-TALENTED TAL @ CNN TAKES US TO THE S. BORDER IN PICTURES & WORDS!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/19/politics/secretary-nielsen-dhs-border-fence-wall-immigration/index.html

Snapshots from the US-Mexico border

By Tal Kopan, CNN

Updated 6:55 PM ET, Thu April 19, 2018

Here are Tal’s pictures. For whatever technical reason, you’ll have to go to the original article at the link to get the captions that go with them!

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Wow! As those of you who read “Courtside” on a regular basis know, I’m a HUGE FAN of Tal’s timely, incisive, concise, and highly accessible reporting. I feature it on a regular basis. I’ve also seen her do a great job on TV and video. But, until now, I didn’t know about her skills as a photojournalist. Tal can do it all!

Also, as my colleague Judge and Super-Blogger Jeffrey Chase pointed out in one of his recent comments on this blog, pictures play an essential role in understanding the immigration saga in America.

Been there, done that in my career. Takes me back to the long past days of riding three wheelers, helicopters, Patrol Cars, looking through infrared night scopes, and even accompanying foot patrol during my days in the “Legacy INS General Counsel’s Office.” (Most often on the border south of San Diego.) We actually took the Trial Attorneys and some of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys prosecuting our cases with us to show them what it was really like at the “ground level.”

Actually doesn’t look all that much different decades later. What is painfully clear is that walls, fences, helicopters, detectors, unrealistically harsh and restrictive laws, and more detention centers (the “New American Gulag”) will never, ever “seal” our borders as some immigration hard-liners insist is possible.

At best, we can control, channel, and regulate the flow of migrants, but not halt it entirely. Human migration was taking place long before the U.S. became a nation, and I daresay that it will continue as long as there are humans left on earth. To think that walls, troops, concentration camps, harsh laws, and prisons are going to halt it completely is a mixture of arrogance and ignorance.

So, rather than pouring more money down the drain on the same “strategies” that have been failing for decades, a “smart” border control policy would involve:

More realistic and generous interpretations of our refugee and asylum laws that should include most of those fleeing for their lives from the Northern Triangle;
A much larger and more “market based” legal immigration system for permanent and temporary migrants that would meet the legitimate needs of U.S. employers and our economy while making it attractive for most prospective workers and employers to use the legal visa system rather than the “black market” of undocumented entry;
A larger and more robust refugee processing program for Northern Triangle refugees so most would be screened and documented outside the U.S.;
Cooperation with the UNHCR and other stable countries in the Western Hemisphere to distribute the flow of long-term and temporary refugees in an equitable manner that will help both the refugees and the receiving countries;
Working with and investing in Mexico and Northern Triangle countries to address and correct the conditions that create migration flows to the Southern Border.
Providing lawyers for asylum applicants who present themselves at the Southern Border so that their claims for protection (which actually go beyond asylum and include protection under the Convention Against Torture) can be fairly, correctly, and efficiently determined in an orderly manner in accordance with Due Process.

No, it’s unlikely to happen in my lifetime. But, I hope that future generations, including the members of the “New Due Process Army,” will find themselves in a position to abandon past mistakes, and develop the smart, wise, generous, humane, realistic, and effective immigration and refugee policies that we need to keep our “nation of immigrants” viable and vitalized for centuries to come. Until then, we’re probably going to have to watch folks repeat variations of the same painful mistakes over and over.

PWS

04-19-18

WASHPOST: SEN DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA) HITS A “HOME RUN” WITH OP-ED — NO, RIGHTS OF CHILD ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE NOT “LOOPHOLES” IN OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS! — What’s Happened To Our Common Sense & Humanity?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/protecting-defenseless-children-is-not-an-immigration-loophole/2018/04/13/11bf9012-3e64-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html?utm_term=.8c9ed9210908

Sen. Feinstein writes:

Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, represents California in the U.S. Senate.

I remember watching the nightly television news in the 1990s and seeing a 15-year-old Chinese girl trembling before a U.S. immigration judge. Despite having committed no crime, she was shackled and sobbing. She couldn’t speak English, and it was clear she had no understanding of what the judge was saying or what would happen to her.

Her parents had sent her to the United States in the cargo hold of a container ship because she had been born in violation of China’s rigid family-planning laws — and was therefore denied citizenship, access to health care and education.

By the time the girl appeared before the immigration judge, she had already been detained for eight months. Even more shocking: After she was granted political asylum, she was detained for four more months before she was released.

This situation would not be allowed to occur today because Congress has enacted laws to provide basic humanitarian protections to unaccompanied immigrant children.

The Trump administration recently reignited its attacks on these protections, with the president going so far as to call laws that protect helpless children “loopholes.”

The administration says these laws prevent immigrant children from being removed from the country, when in fact the goal is to ensure that these children are detained for as little time as possible and only in an appropriate setting, they receive adequate food and water, and that they are given the opportunity to apply for asylum.

Under these laws, each child has a right to make their case before a trained asylum officer. If the hearing demonstrates the need for protection by admission to the United States, we’re obligated to provide it. And in cases where a child does not qualify for asylum or other forms of relief, they’re returned safely to their home country.

I know the intent of these laws because I authored two of them. They are not loopholes.

It’s important to understand why Congress acted to thus ensure basic human dignity for children.

The story of the Chinese girl I saw on television was not unique — mistreatment of child immigrants was widespread. Another young girl who fled China was detained in a facility that also held minors who had been convicted of murder and rape. Despite never having violated criminal law or been accused of a crime, she was routinely handcuffed and strip-searched.

A young boy who fled Colombia after being targeted for recruitment by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas was held in the same detention facility for six months.

Children as young as 4 were held in secure prisons, isolated and forced to wear prison uniforms and shackles. Some were even placed in solitary confinement, even though they weren’t accused of any crime.

These stories, which were detailed by Human Rights Watch, illustrate decades of government mistreatment of children, and they were the genesis of laws Congress passed to guarantee minimum requirements for treating children humanely.

A key first step toward reform came in 1997, after years of litigation over treatment of unaccompanied minors, with a settlement called the Flores agreement. Among its provisions were requirements that the government release detained children to an adult as soon as possible, hold children who can’t be released in appropriate facilities and ensure that all facilities meet humane standard

Three years later, I introduced the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act and was able to get portions of the bill included in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

The two laws, combined with the Flores agreement, are intended to ensure children don’t fall through the cracks of a system that processes thousands of them each year.

They require that children under 18 be placed in the least restrictive setting that is in their best interests. Rather than holding children in detention facilities that also hold adults or criminal juvenile offenders, preference is given to releasing them to family members or appropriate sponsors, such as a family friend.

Such placements ensure that children aren’t held in indefinite detention pending resolution of their cases, which can sometimes take years. They also mean that taxpayers aren’t paying for that detention.

These aren’t loopholes, they are basic principles of common human decency. And to demonize and politicize these children is appalling.

Contrary to the picture painted by this administration, current policies don’t guarantee a child will be able to remain in the United States. Nor do these policies mean dangerous individuals are being released onto our streets.

The Trump administration’s efforts to repeal protections for children are based on an ignorance of history. The only effect of repeal would be more children held in unsafe conditions at exorbitant costs to the taxpayer.

I will oppose any efforts to change these laws, and I call upon my colleagues in Congress to join me in resisting efforts to roll back protections for immigrant children.

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Of all the depraved xenophobic, White Nationalist, racist ravings of Trump, Sessions, Homan, Neilsen, Kelly, Miller, Goodlatte, Cotton, and other GOP restrictionists, the war on defenseless children has to be the most totally despicable! Most of these kids are fleeing genuine dangers in their home countries. The real problem is that the US has intentionally, for political reasons, twisted refugee law so as to not recognize their legitimate status as refugees and asylees.

As someone said at an Asylum Conference I recently attended, the BIA must be the only 15 so-called “asylum experts” in the world who don’t recognize that those fleeing gang recruitment in the Northern Triangle fit squarely within the “particular social group” classification for asylum protection.

Even if they weren’t a direct fit, these children qualify for relief under the Convention Against Torture or should be given another type of humanitarian relief such as TPS or Deferred Enforced Departure. Screening them for background and rapidly admitting them into the U.S. in some status would prevent them from becoming part of the current politically created Immigration Court “backlog,” actually caused primarily by gross mismanagement, intentionally skewed anti-asylum legal interpretations, and political manipulation by this and past Administrations.

Of course the US could absorb them all, and prosper by doing so! Indeed, we’ve absorbed approximately 11 million individuals outside the system who have largely been a boon to our economy and our society. The real problem here is the White Nationalists who deny the reality of human migration and the inevitability of changing demographics, not the migrants themselves.

PWS

04-14-18

HUFFPOST: ICE DETAINS NJ TEACHER WHO FACES DEATH SENTENCE IN EGYPT FOR PRO-DEMOCRACY ACTIVISM!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-jersey-teacher-detained-egypt-death-sentence_us_5acfdbbee4b077c89ce6cd4f

Rowaida Abdelaziz reports for HuffPost

Ahmed Abdelbasit, a New Jersey teacher who faces a death sentence in Egypt for his pro-democracy activism, was detained last week outside his Jersey City apartment by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Three days later, a notice came in the mail saying his asylum case had been transferred to an immigration court.

On that Thursday morning, seven plainclothes ICE officers demanded that Abdelbasit get into an unmarked car. Confused, the physics teacher complied, all while frantically texting his friends and co-workers to let them he would not be in class that day at a private Islamic school in Union City.

HuffPost has learned that Abdelbasit, 33, was taken to a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he was forced to turn over his belongings and was given an orange jumpsuit to wear. Abdelbasit has been held there ever since.

ICE confirmed to HuffPost that he is being held at Elizabeth Detention Center on administrative immigration violations. ICE would not elaborate on what those violations were.

It was only after Abdelbasit was detained did his lawyer learn that his asylum case was transferred to immigration court in a notice that arrived three days after Abdelbasit’s arrest, HuffPost has learned, leaving the teacher and his lawyer with more questions than answers.

“It’s not clear why they would feel the need to detain somebody who has no criminal record in the United States, who has been living a very law-abiding life here and has been doing everything correctly,” Anwen Hughes, Abdelbasit’s lawyer and the deputy legal director at Human Rights First, told HuffPost. “It’s very unclear why this happened. What we’re trying to find out at the moment is what the actual basis is for this.”

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Read the complete report at the link.

Based on the information in the report, it’s not obvious why ICE would choose to detain this individual. But, of course, we don’t know all of the facts at this point.

PWS

04-13-18

HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Sessions’s Quotas Attack Fairness, Due Process, Undermine U.S. Immigration Court System!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/4/7/eoir-imposes-completion-quotas-on-ijs

Apr 7 EOIR Imposes Completion Quotas on IJs

Ten years ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided Hashmi v. Att’y Gen. of the U.S.1 The case involved a request to continue a removal proceeding which the Department of Homeland Security did not oppose. The respondent was married to a U.S. citizen; he would become eligible to adjust his status in immigration court once the visa petition she had filed on his behalf was approved by DHS. However, the approval was delayed for reasons beyond the respondent’s control. One of those reasons was that a part of the respondent’s DHS file was needed by both the office in Cherry Hill, NJ adjudicating the visa petition and the DHS attorney in Newark prosecuting the removal case.

The immigration judge decided that he could wait no longer. Noting that the pendency of the case had exceeded the agency’s stated case completion goals, the judge denied the continuance and ordered the respondent deported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, holding that “to reach a decision about whether to grant or deny a motion for a continuance based solely on case-completion goals, with no regard for the circumstances of the case itself, is impermissibly arbitrary.”

In response to Hashmi, the BIA issued a precedent decision stating that unopposed motions of that type should generally be granted.2 In subsequent decisions, the BIA provided further guidance in allowing IJs to make reasonable determinations to continue such cases,3 and to administratively close proceedings where it would further justice (as in Hashmi, where the need for the DHS file to be in two places at once was preventing the case from proceeding).4

In subjecting immigration judges to strict, metrics-based reviews last week, EOIR’s director, James McHenry, may pressure immigration judges into taking the types of actions barred by Hashmi. Under the newly-announced metrics, individual judges may run the risk of disciplinary action for granting reasonable requests for continuance, or for other delays necessary for reaching a fair result. The combined actions of McHenry (who prior to being promoted to the position of agency director had worked for EOIR for approximately 6 months as an administrative law judge with OCAHO, the only component of EOIR that doesn’t deal with immigration law or the immigration courts), and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in recently certifying four BIA decisions to himself, could erase the above positive case law developments of the past decade, and replace them with an incentive for rushed decisions that do not afford adequate safeguards to non-citizens facing deportation.

Allowing reasonable continuances for the parties to obtain counsel, present evidence, and formulate legal theories, or to allow other agencies to adjudicate applications impacting eligibility, is an essential part of affording justice. Judges also need to fully understand the legal arguments presented. When an issue arises in the course of a hearing, it is not uncommon for a judge to ask the parties for briefs, and for the judge to then conduct his or her own legal research before deciding the matter. A detailed decision is also necessary to allow for meaningful review on appeal. However, all of this takes time, and the performance of individual judges will be found to be unsatisfactory or in need of improvement if they complete less than 700 cases per year, complete less than 95 percent of cases at their first merits hearing, or have 15 percent of their cases remanded on appeal.

Some recently reported actions by immigration judges in the name of expediency are troubling. Last Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (for which my colleague Carol King and I served as subject-matter sources) featured a credible-fear review hearing by an immigration judge that lasted one minute and 43 seconds in its entirety (and was probably doubled in length by the need for an interpreter). The judge asked the unrepresented respondent a total of two questions before reaching this decision: “Well, the government of the United States doesn’t afford you protection for this type of reason. I affirm the Asylum Officer’s decision.” It’s not clear how the judge could have been confident in such conclusion. The respondent was detained and had not yet had an opportunity to consult with counsel. Her claim was only sketched in the broadest outline; upon further development by an attorney, it may well have fallen into the “type of reason” for which asylum may be granted. Her credibility was never doubted; in fact, the program reported that she was assaulted at gunpoint by the man she fled after she was deported to her country.

In another case arising in the Ninth Circuit, C.J.L.G. v. Sessions,5 an immigration judge told the mother of a child in removal proceedings who was unable to retain counsel that she could represent her son, and proceeded with the child’s asylum hearing. Of course, the mother was not qualified for the task. Although the son had been threatened with death for resisting gang recruitment efforts, he was denied asylum in a hearing in which many critical questions that could have helped develop a nexus between his fear and a legally protected ground for asylum were never asked. This occurred because the judge did not feel that he could grant another continuance to provide the respondent an additional opportunity to retain counsel.

All of the above-described actions by IJs occurred prior to last week’s announcement by the EOIR director. Should judges struggling to meet the benchmarks feel their job security to be at risk, will actions such as those described above become the norm?

As previously mentioned, the Attorney General certified four decisions of the BIA to himself shortly before the director’s announcement of the new metrics. In one of those cases, Matter of E-F-H-L-,6 Sessions vacated a 2014 BIA precedent decision requiring immigration judges to provide asylum applicants a full hearing on their claim. In another, Matter of A-B-,7 Sessions chose a case in which the BIA twice reversed an immigration judge’s denial of asylum to a victim of domestic violence, and on certification has made the case a referendum on whether victims of private criminal activity may constitute a particular social group for asylum purposes.

Should Sessions decide this issue in the negative, the two decisions taken together may allow for the type of quick denials of the “Government…doesn’t afford you protection for this type of reason” variety discussed above. Fair-minded judges who will continue to hold full hearings and consider legal arguments in favor of granting relief may find it more difficult to meet all of the above benchmarks.

Copyright 2018 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

Notes:

531 F.3d 256 (3d Cir. 2008)

Matter of Hashmi, 24 I&N Dec. 785 (BIA 2009).

See Matter of Rajah, 25 I&N Dec. 127 (BIA 2009) (concerning continuances due to pending employment-based visa petitions) ; Matter of C-B-, 25 I&N Dec. 888 (BIA 2012) (requiring reasonable and realistic continuances to obtain counsel); Matter of Montiel, 26 I&N Dec. 555 (BIA 2015) (allowing delaying proceedings for adjudication of criminal appeals).

See Matter of Avetisyan, 25 I&N Dec. 688 (BIA 2012); Matter of W-Y-U-, 27 I&N Dec. 17 (BIA 2017).

No. 16-73801 (9th Cir. Jan. 29, 2018); Pet. for rehearing and rehearing en banc pending.

27 I&N Dec. 226 (A.G. March 5, 2018)

27 I&N Dec. 227 (A.G. March 7, 2018)

JEFF CHASE

BEYOND TRUMP’S LIES & RACISM, THERE’S REAL HUMAN TRAGEDY IN HIS MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN REFUGEES — America’s Election Of Known Unethical Leader Will Haunt Us For Generations To Come!

https://flipboard.com/@flipboard/-most-people-in-the-caravan-are-from-hon/f-808a52c6f5%2Fbuzzfeed.com

Karla Zabludovsky reports for BuzzFeed News:

MEXICO CITY — Two out of three people making their way through Mexico as part of a “caravan” that drew President Donald J. Trump’s ire this week have fled Honduras — part of a recent trend that has seen growing numbers of people escape the country’s exorbitant homicide rates, crippling corruption, increasing political persecution, and a floundering economy.

That is a sharp, recent rise — the number of Hondurans apprehended by US Customs and Border Control increased by 66% from Dec. 2017 to March, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. In February, Mexican authorities detained and deported 4,128 Hondurans, up from 2,780 the previous month. It was the highest number since November 2016.

This exodus comes at a time of extraordinary tensions even for Honduras, a country still reeling from the effects of a coup d’état in 2009. A highly contested presidential election in November drew thousands of demonstrators to the streets, where at least 22 protesters and bystanders were killed, most of them by security forces.

“Honduras is a pressure cooker in every single aspect,” said Bertha Oliva, director of the Committee for Families of the Disappeared and Detainees in Honduras. “We are seeing an unprecedented violation of human rights.”

Repression by the state has continued even months after the election, analysts say. According to Annie Bird, director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, government forces have been intimidating protest leaders — people have reported receiving threatening phone calls and being followed by unmarked cars.

Some in the caravan brought their politics with them, shouting slogans against Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who narrowly won a second term last year and is often referred to by his initials, JOH. He has received support from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and Trump, but Hernández’s popularity at home is suffering: Many in the caravan yelled “Out with JOH!” as they set off.

The large number of Hondurans caught Trump’s attention.

“The big Caravan of People from Honduras, now coming across Mexico and heading to our “Weak Laws” Border, had better be stopped before it gets there,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. In subsequent tweets, Trump renewed calls for his border wall and tougher immigration laws, warning about a “massive inflow of drugs and people” across the border.

Victoria Razo / AFP / Getty Images

A man holds a Honduran national flag as Central Americans -taking part in a caravan called “Migrant Viacrucis”- rest in Matias Romero, Oaxaca state, Mexico on April 2, 2018.

Conditions in Honduras were dire even before the election, with 43.6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, 55% of the workforce underemployed, extortions to small businesses reportedly on the rise, and endemic corruption.

The Central American nation has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and was called the most dangerous country for environmental activists last year. The government’s efforts to clean up the police force were dealt a severe blow earlier this year, after the Associated Press revealed that the head of the national police had helped a cartel leader deliver nearly a ton of cocaine in 2013. And corruption is widespread: the former first lady was arrested in connection to a graft case in February.

Even the anti-corruption mission backed by the Organization of American States, known for its Spanish initials as Maccih, is languishing without a director after Juan Jiménez Mayor resigned in February, citing a lack of support by the head of the OAS.

In the meantime, Hernández has quietly cemented his power, taking control of most of the country’s institutions, including the Supreme Court, which in 2015 struck down a law forbidding presidents from seeking a second term. His administration continues to receive a portion of the $644 million appropriated by the US Congress to assist Central American governments.

Orlando Sierra / AFP / Getty Images

Left, thousands of supporters of the presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla, hold a demonstration in Tegucigalpa on Dec. 3, 2017. Right, riot police officers and army soldiers, use tear gas and a water cannon to disperse supporters of opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla during protests in Tegucigalpa, on Dec. 18, 2017.

Hondurans went to the polls on November 26 in a tense and highly polarized environment. Already distrustful, many voters were incensed after the Honduran electoral commission mysteriously stopped releasing results for 36 hours just as the opposition candidate, Salvador Nasralla, took a 5 point lead over Hernández. When it resumed, Hernández quickly overtook Nasralla.

Violent protests ensued, with people defying a 10-day curfew declared by the government, which deployed the military and police to the streets. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras, at least 23 people were killed and at least 60 were injured during the following weeks.

Two days after the election, the State Department certified that the Honduran government had been combating corruption and supporting human rights, a requirement for the US to continue sending it millions of dollars worth of aid.

But a report by the United Nations’ office said that the use of live bullets by security forces “raise serious concerns about the use of excessive lethal force and may amount to extra-judicial killings.”

“The level of desperation has risen since the election,” said Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “All signs indicate that the situation is only going to worsen politically, economically, on the human rights front.”

It is unclear whether the post-electoral crisis will push more Hondurans than usual to emigrate this spring, when migrants usually undertake the trek. But despite a clampdown on immigration, Honduran migrants’ are increasingly looking to settle in Mexico, rather than continue on to the US. Last year, 4,272 Hondurans requested asylum in Mexico, up from 1,560 in 2015.

In July, about 86,000 Hondurans living in the US could be forced to leave if their Temporary Protected Status is not renewed. (In January, the Trump administration announced it was ending the program for 200,000 Salvadorans in the country.)

Honduras would struggle to absorb the return of thousands of people and the economy would suffer from the decrease in remittances likely to follow — possibly pushing another wave of Honduras toward the US.

“I call it a self-inflicted wound,” said Eric Olson, deputy director of the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

“You could create further instability, which leads to further migration.” ■

We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration.

PWS

04-06-18

HON. BRUCE J. EINHORN IN WASHPOST: SESSIONS’S BLATANT ATTEMPT TO INTIMIDATE U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES TO DEPORT INDIVIDUALS IN VIOLATION OF DUE PROCESS SHOWS A SYSTEM THAT HAS HIT ROCK BOTTOM! — Are There Any “Adults” Out There In Congress Or The Article III Courts With The Guts To Stand Up & Put An End To This Perversion Of American Justice? — “Due process requires judges free of political influence. Assembly-line justice is no justice at all.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessions-wants-to-bribe-judges-to-do-his-bidding/2018/04/05/fd4bdc48-390a-11e8-acd5-35eac230e514_story.html?utm_term=.770822e8f813

My former colleague Judge Bruce J. Einhorn writes in the Washington Post:

Bruce J. Einhorn, an adjunct professor of immigration, asylum and refugee law at Pepperdine University, served as a U.S. immigration judge from 1990 to 2007.

It’s a principle that has been a hallmark of our legal culture: The president shouldn’t be able to tell judges what to do.

No longer. The Trump administration is intent on imposing a quota system on federal immigration judges, tying their evaluations to the number of cases they decide in a year. This is an affront to judicial independence and the due process of law.

I served as a U.S. immigration judge in Los Angeles for 17 years, presiding over cases brought against foreign-born noncitizens who Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers believed were in this country illegally and should thus be removed. My responsibility included hearing both ICE’s claims and the claims from respondents for relief from removal, which sometimes included asylum from persecution and torture.

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As a judge, I swore to follow the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees that “no person” (not “no citizen”) is deprived of due process of law. Accordingly, I was obliged to conduct hearings that guaranteed respondents a full and reasonable opportunity on all issues raised against them.

My decisions and the manner in which I conducted hearings were subject to review before the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals and U.S. courts of appeals. At no time was my judicial behavior subject to evaluation based on how quickly I completed hearings and decided cases. Although my colleagues on the bench and I valued efficiency, the most critical considerations were fairness, thoroughness and adherence to the Fifth Amendment. If our nativist president and his lapdog of an attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have their way, those most critical considerations will become a relic of justice.

Under the Trump-Sessions plan, each immigration judge, regardless of the nature and scope of proceedings assigned to him or her, will be required to complete 700 cases in a year to qualify for a “satisfactory” performance rating. It follows that only judges who complete more, perhaps many more, than 700 cases per year will qualify for a higher performance rating and, with it, a possible raise in pay.

Essentially, the administration’s plan is to bribe judges to hear and complete more cases regardless of their substance and complexity, with the corollary that judges who defy the quota imposed on them will be regarded as substandard and subject to penalties. The plan should be seen for what it is: an attempt to undermine judicial independence and compel immigration judges to look over their shoulders to make sure that the administration is smiling at them.

This is a genuine threat to the independence of the immigration bench. While Article III of the Constitution guarantees the complete independence of the federal district courts and courts of appeal, immigration judges are part of the executive branch. Notwithstanding the right of immigration judges to hear and decide cases as they believe they should under immigration law, they are unprotected from financial extortion and not-so-veiled political intimidation under the U.S. Administrative Procedure Actor any regulations.

Moreover, federal laws do not guarantee respondents in removal hearings a right to counsel, and a majority of those in such hearings are compelled to represent themselves before immigration judges, regardless of the complexity of their cases. Those who lack representation in removal hearings typically cannot afford it, and the funds to help legal aid organizations fill in for private attorneys are nowhere to be found.

Hearings in which respondents proceed pro se, or unrepresented, are often the most challenging and time-consuming for immigration judges, who must take care to assure that the procedural rights of those facing possible removal are protected and to guarantee that inarticulate relief claims are fully considered.

The Trump administration’s intention is clear: to intimidate supposedly independent judges to expedite cases, even if it undermines fairness — as will certainly be the case for pro se respondents. Every immigration judge knows that in general, it takes longer to consider and rule in favor of relief for a respondent than it does to agree with ICE and order deportation. The administration wants to use quotas to make immigration judges more an arm of ICE than independent adjudicators.

In my many years on the immigration bench, I learned that repressive nations had one thing in common: a lack of an independent judiciary. Due process requires judges free of political influence. Assembly-line justice is no justice at all.

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Thanks, Bruce for speaking out so forcefully, articulately, and truthfully!

Jeff Sessions is a grotesque affront to the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, American values, and human decency. Every day that he remains in office is a threat to our democracy. There could be no better evidence of why we need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court!

Due Process Forever! Jeff Sessions Never! Join the New Due Process Army Now! The fight must go on until Sessions and his toxic “21st Century Jim Crows” are defeated, and the U.S. Immigration Courts finally are forced to deliver on the betrayed promise of “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all!

PWS

04-05-18

HEIDI BOAS @ WILKES LEGAL: Following A Colossal 14-Year Battle, The U.S. Asylum System Saved Rodi Alvarado’s Life – Can Jeff Sessions Undo This Critically Needed, Life-Saving Protection For Thousands Of Women & Children Like Rodi With A Single Stroke Of His Pen?

Issue Spotlight:

Will America Shut Its Doors to Immigrant Survivors of Domestic Violence?

by Heidi Boas, Immigration Attorney

Wilkes Legal, LLC

April 5, 2018

Will the U.S. continue to offer asylum to

immigrant survivors of domestic violence

like Rodi Alvarado Peña?

In January 2018, Wilkes Legal won asylum for an immigrant mother and her children who escaped over a decade of extreme physical, psychological, and sexual abuse that sent our client to the hospital and left one of her children with a permanent physical impairment. Because our client’s domestic partner was a high-ranking military officer in their home country, her pleas for help from government authorities fell on deaf ears, causing her to flee the country for her safety. In recent years, the United States has offered asylum protection to domestic violence survivors like this client. A recent move by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, however, could soon limit or end the ability of domestic violence survivors to receive asylum protection in the United States.

Domestic violence has long been a contentious issue in asylum law. More than two decades ago, advocates began a 14-year legal battle to win asylum for Rodi Alvarado Peña, a Guatemalan woman who suffered a decade of brutal violence at the hands of her husband. Even though Ms. Alvarado repeatedly sought help from the Guatemalan police and courts, the Guatemalan authorities refused to intervene and protect her. When Ms. Alvarado tried to escape from her husband, he tracked her down and beat her unconscious. Ms. Alvarado ultimately fled to the United States and became the subject of a controversial, high profile immigration court case, as multiple administrations considered whether to grant asylum to women whose countries fail to protect them from domestic violence. Ms. Alvarado ultimately received asylum in 2009, but her case did not establish legal precedent that could help other asylum-seekers fleeing domestic violence.

In 2014, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) finally issued a precedential decision recognizing domestic violence as a basis for asylum. In Matter of A-R-C-G-, the BIA granted asylum to a Guatemalan woman whose husband broke her nose, repeatedly raped her, and burned her with paint thinner. The BIA recognized “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” as a group that can qualify for asylum. This landmark case opened the doors to protection for other immigrant survivors of domestic violence whose countries fail to protect them from abuse.

While the United States has made great strides in offering protection to immigrant survivors of domestic violence, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently took a step that could potentially undo decades of forward progress. As attorney general, Sessions has the authority to refer immigration court cases to himself, overturn decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals, and set precedent. Last month, Sessions referred an immigration case to himself involving a survivor of domestic violence from El Salvador. If Sessions rules against this woman, he would begin reshaping asylum law for abuse survivors and could potentially shut the doors to countless victims seeking protection in the United States.

In the case under Sessions’ review, a Salvadoran women referred to as A.B. suffered years of domestic violence at the hands of her ex-husband in El Salvador. Even though A.B. separated from her husband and eventually divorced him, her ex-husband returned three years after their separation and raped her. A.B. also testified to receiving threats from her ex-husband’s brother, who is a police officer, and his friend, who told the woman that her ex-husband would kill her and he would help dispose of her body. Although an Immigration Judge denied A.B.’s asylum case, the Board of Immigrant Appeals disagreed with the judge’s ruling and sent the case back to the judge to reconsider his decision. The Immigration Judge again refused to grant asylum to A.B., however, despite the BIA’s precedent decision in Matter of A-R-C-G-, due to other more recent decisions in his jurisdiction.

Now that Sessions has stepped in to review A.B.’s case, he has the authority to determine whether she should be granted asylum. If Sessions denies her asylum case, his decision could have a far-reaching impact, setting precedent that would make it more difficult for other immigrant survivors of domestic violence to qualify for asylum in the future. If Session limits asylum eligibility for these survivors, he will roll back decades of progress in asylum law and close the doors to immigrant victims of abuse who have nowhere else to turn.

Wilkes Legal stands with immigrant survivors of domestic violence and urges Sessions to uphold the BIA’s current precedent, keeping America’s doors open to victims of domestic abuse whose governments fail to protect them.

Visit our website, follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or call our office at (301) 576-0491 to learn more about Wilkes Legal, LLC.

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From his actions to date, Sessions appears to be up to no good. But, by now the “A-R-C-G-/R-A- principles” are deeply ingrained in U.S. protection law as interpreted by the Article III Federal Courts.

I predict that an attempt by Sessions to undo A-R-C-G- protections will be heavy-handed, blatantly biased, and thinly reasoned as have been all of his transparently biased reversals of established legal positions to date.

It’s therefore likely to suffer a fate of emphatic rejection by the Article IIIs much like what happened when Attorney General Michael Mukasey tried to undo years of established legal precedent about proof of crimes involving moral turpitude in Matter of Silva-Trevino, 24 I&N Dec. 687 (A.G. 2008), rev’d & remanded, Matter of Silva-Trevino, 26 I&N Dec. 550 (A.G. 2015).

I’m hardly a “Charter Member of the Mike Mukasey Fan Club.” His poor stewardship over the U.S. Immigration Court system is at least partially responsible for today’s inexcusable mess in our Immigration Courts.

Nevertheless, before becoming Attorney General, Mukasey was a well-respected U.S. District Judge. He’s 10X the lawyer as Sessions! Sessions’s lack of any discernible legal skills, integrity, humanity, and judgement probably bodes well for the “Good Guys” in the long run.

But, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be unnecessary and unconscionable suffering. Sessions is a bully at heart who relies on the fact that the majority of individuals in the U.S. Immigration Court system are unrepresented and therefore unable to defend themselves against his racist/xenophobic policies.

I’m proud to be one of the “Gang of Five” Appellate Immigration Judges (“Board Members” ) who dissented from the BIA’s original outrageously incorrect decision in Matter of R-A-, 22 I&N Dec. 908 (BIA 1999), vacated, Matter of R-A-, 22 I&N Dec. 908 (A.G. 2001) that reversed a clearly correct grant of asylum to Rodi Alvarado. The other dissenters were Judges John Guendelsberger (who wrote the dissent), Lory Diana Rosenberg, Gustavo D. Villageliu, and Anthony C. Moscato.

Not coincidentally, all of us except for Judge Moscato were removed and “exiled” from the BIA during the “Ashcroft Purge of 2003” for the transgression of doing our jobs conscientiously and standing up for a correct interpretation of the asylum law. So much for the “facade of quasi-judicial independence at the BIA.” (Credit to Peter Levinson). And, that’s before the current “descent into the abyss” brought about by Sessions!

We need an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court now!

PWS

04-05-18

OUR FEAR-MONGERING LEADERS WANT YOU TO BE SCARED OF REFUGEES ARRIVING AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER – DON’T BE! – Here’s What The Overhyped “Caravan” Actually Looks Like! — “Who wants to leave their country, the comfort of their home, their families?” she asked. “It’s a very difficult thing.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/world/americas/mexico-trump-caravan.html

Kirk Semple reports for the NY Times:

Inside an Immigrant Caravan: Women and Children, Fleeing Violence

By KIRK SEMPLE APRIL 4, 2018

Photo

Central American migrants, members of a group making its way through Mexico, waited in line on Wednesday to review their visa status at a temporary camp in Matías Romero.
CreditBrett Gundlock for The New York Times

MATÍAS ROMERO, Mexico — With a sarcastic half-smile, Nikolle Contreras, 27, surveyed her fellow members of the Central American caravan, which President Trump has called dangerous and has used as a justification to send troops to the border.

More than 1,000 people, mostly women and children, waited patiently on Wednesday in the shade of trees and makeshift shelters in a rundown sports complex in this Mexican town, about 600 miles south of the border. They were tired, having slept and eaten poorly for more than a week. All were facing an uncertain future.

“Imagine that!” said Ms. Contreras, a Honduran factory worker hoping to apply for asylum in the United States. “So many problems he has to solve and he gets involved with this caravan!”

The migrants, most of them Hondurans, left the southern Mexican border city of Tapachula on March 25 and for days traveled north en masse — by foot, hitchhiking and on the tops of trains — as they fled violence and poverty in their homelands and sought a better life elsewhere.

This sort of collective migration has become something of an annual event around Easter week, and a way for advocates to draw more attention to the plight of migrants.

But this particular caravan caught the attention of Mr. Trump, apparently after he heard about it on Fox News. In a Twitter tirade that began Sunday, he conjured up hordes of dangerous migrants surging toward the border. He demanded that Mexican officials halt the group, suggesting that otherwise he would make them pay dearly in trade negotiations or aid cuts.

Mr. Trump even boasted that his threat had forced Mexico’s government to halt and disperse the caravan participants. But there was no evidence of that on Wednesday.

. . . .

Irineo Mujica, Mexico director of People Without Borders, an advocacy group that is coordinating the caravan, called Mr. Trump’s Twitter attacks and promise of a militarized border “campaign craziness.”

“There are 300 kids and 400 women,” he said. “Babies with bibs and milk bottles, not armaments. How much of a threat can they be?”

. . . .

The group, organizers and advocates said, represented a regional humanitarian problem, not a security crisis for the United States, as Mr. Trump has suggested.

“What he’s attacking is a supremely vulnerable population,” said Gina Garibo, projects coordinator in Mexico for People Without Borders.

In response to Mr. Trump’s tweets and his plans to militarize the border, the Mexican Senate unanimously passed a nonbinding statement on Wednesday urging President Enrique Peña Nieto to suspend cooperation with the United States on immigration and security matters — “as long as President Donald Trump does not conduct himself with the civility and respect that the Mexican people deserve.”

Caravan organizers also said their intent was never to storm the border, especially not with a caravan of this size. While the original plan included the possibility of escorting the caravan to the northern border of Mexico, organizers had expected the group to mostly dissolve by the time it had reached Mexico City.

. . . .

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Read the complete article along with more pictures of ordinary folks forced to make an extraordinary journey at the link.

There has never been any doubt that folks like Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen have nothing but contempt for the truth, laws, and human life. But, they also think that the American people are pretty stupid to fall for the “fantasyland claptrap” that they throw out to drum up support for their racist restrictionist ambitions.

Although you’ll never hear it from the disingenuous Trumpsters, individuals arriving at our borders have a legal right to apply for asylum guaranteed by both U.S. and international law. Most of the “law-breaking” involves the actions of the Trump DHS. By refusing to properly process asylum applicants at legal ports of entry, the Administration actually encourages illegal entry and the use of smugglers.

The only real “crisis” at the Southern border is a humanitarian one that this and past Administrations have had key roles in creating through failed immigration and foreign policies. Without better, smarter government, we’re bound to deep repeating the same mistakes.

Don’t fall for it!

PWS

04-05-18

TAL @ CNN: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICIES LIKELY TO FAIL AND ACTUALLY AGGRAVATE FORCES DRIVING UNDOCUMENTED MIGRATION!

How Trump’s policies could worsen the migration issue he says he wants to solve

By Tal Kopan, CNN

President Donald Trump in recent days has decried “weak” US border laws that he says leave the US vulnerable to unfettered immigration — but some of his policies could have the effect of worsening a Central American migrant crisis.

Even as the Department of Homeland Security says the southern border “is more difficult to illegally cross today than ever before,” Trump has stepped up his hardline immigration rhetoric, calling on the US military to guard the US-Mexico border until his long-promised wall is complete. He’s hammered Mexico and other countries for policies that he says are disadvantageous to the US and that send unsavory individuals into the country.

But experts say the President has been pursuing other policies that could substantially harm Central America — and in doing so, he risks creating conditions that generate the exact kind of mass exodus north that he talks about wanting to solve.

Immigration is driven by what are called push and pull factors. The US has been seeking aggressive immigration powers to cut down on what they say are pull factors — the perception that immigrants can live illegally with impunity in the US. But those very policies could affect push factors — the conditions of poverty and violence that drive immigrants elsewhere out of desperation.

“The US sort of talks out of both sides of its mouth,” said Eric Olson, a Latin America expert at the nonpartisan Wilson Center.

“If you’re investing in the region to address the drivers of migration and at the same time pursuing a policy of large-scale deportation, or at least potentially large-scale deportation, and you’re creating more obstacles for people leaving the region for reasons like violence and so on, you’re really creating more instability, not less instability.”

(Much) more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/04/politics/trump-migration-central-america/index.html

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As Tal says, there’s much, much more to her report on the total stupidity and counter-productivity (not to mention inhumanity) of the Trump Administration’s “Gonzo” enforcement policy. Go on over to CNN at the link to get the full picture.

I’ve been saying for some time now that Trump is pursuing facially “hard-line” policies that are proven failures. Indeed, that forced migration from Central America is a phenomenon that spans four decades and six different Administrations with varying degrees of “same old, same old” would suggest to rational leadership that a different approach is required.

Contrary to Trump’s oft-made bogus claim, his is not the first Administration to try a “close the border, detain and deter” policy. Beginning with Reagan, every Administration has tried largely the same thing (although perhaps without some of the inflammatory and outright racist rhetoric favored by the Trumpsters) and all have failed. I know because I’ve been involved in some aspect of trying to implement those failed policies in at least four of those Administrations, two GOP and two Democrat.

That’s why the trend of migration from the Northern Triangle continues and will continue and fester until we get some enlightened leadership that 1) correctly applies our refugee and protection laws in the generous humanitarian spirit they were intended; and 2) recognizes and starts to deal effectively with the “push” issues in the sending countries.

Contrary to the false narrative spread by current Administration, most Central American refugees that I encountered personally during my career would have preferred to remain in their home countries, if political and country conditions had permitted it. Indeed, many were forced by targeted violence to give up promising careers, studies, or businesses to flee for their lives to the U.S. Here, they often had to perform “entry-level” work to support themselves unless and until they achieved some type of legal status (often TPS , asylum, withholding of removal, CAT relief, Special Immigrant Juvenile (“SIJ”) status, or a green card under NACARA).

Of course, many were denied protection despite having very credible, well-documented fears of harm because they didn’t fit the intentionally restrictive asylum criteria engineered by the BIA over several Administrations largely as a result of political pressure on the system to be “unwelcoming” to Central American migrants. Some of those who returned were killed or disappeared; others were tortured or attacked again and forced to flee second or third times, now bearing the scars or injuries to prove their cases — only as “prior deportees” they were no longer eligible for asylum but had to accept withholding of removal or CAT deferral.

Nobody in this Administration, and sadly relatively few in Congress and among the public, are willing to deal honestly with the phenomenon of Central American migration and the “push factors” that will never, ever be controlled by more restrictive laws, more violations of statutory, Constitutional, and international rights, inhumane and life-threatening detention , and racist rhetoric. Nor will it be stopped by any bogus “Wall.”

As I’ve said before, “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration!” If only someone would listen!

PWS

04-04-18

MATTER OF A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 247 (AG 2018) (“A-B- II”) – Session’s Latest Abuse of Certification Process Illustrates Judge Chase’s Point On Why This Unethical & Unfair Procedure Must End!

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1047666/download

Cite as 27 I&N Dec. 247 (A.G. 2018) Interim Decision #3922

Matter of A-B-, Respondent

Decided by Attorney General March 30, 2018

U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General

The Attorney General denied the request of the Department of Homeland Security that the Attorney General suspend the briefing schedules and clarify the question presented, and he granted, in part, both parties’ request for an extension of the deadline for submitting briefs in this case.

BEFORE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

On March 7, 2018, pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(h)(1)(i) (2017), I directed the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board”) to refer its decision in this case to me for review. To assist in my review, I invited the parties to submit briefs not exceeding 15,000 words in length and interested amici to submit briefs not exceeding 9,000 words in length. I directed that the parties file briefs on or before April 6, 2018, that amici file briefs on or before April 13, 2018, and that the parties file any reply briefs on or before April 20, 2018.

On March 14, 2018, the respondent filed a request for an extension of the deadline for submitting briefs from April 6, 2018, to May 18, 2018. On March 16, 2018, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) submitted a motion containing three requests: (1) that I suspend the briefing schedules to permit the Board to rule on the Immigration Judge’s August 18, 2017, certification order; (2) that I clarify the question presented in this case; and (3) that I extend the deadline for submitting opening briefs to May 18, 2018. The respondent subsequently filed a response requesting that I grant the same relief.

This Order addresses all pending requests from the parties.
I. DHS’s Request To Suspend the Briefing Schedules

DHS’s request to suspend the briefing schedules until the Board acts on the Immigration Judge’s certification request is denied. DHS suggests that this case “does not appear to be in the best posture for the Attorney General’s review,” because the Board has not yet acted on the Immigration Judge’s attempt, on remand from the Board, to certify the case back to the Board. See DHS’s Mot. on Cert. to the Att’y Gen. at 2 (citing United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U.S. 260 (1954)).

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The certification from the Immigration Judge pending before the Board does not require the suspension of briefing because the case is not properly pending before the Board. The Immigration Judge did not act within his authority, as delineated by the controlling regulations, when he purported to certify the matter. The Immigration Judge noted in his order that an “Immigration Judge may certify to the [Board] any case arising from a decision rendered in removal proceedings.” Order of Certification at 4, (Aug. 18, 2017) (emphasis added) (citing 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(b)(3), (c)). The regulations also provide that an “Immigration Judge or Service officer may certify a case only after an initial decision has been made and before an appeal has been taken.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.7 (2017).

Here, the Immigration Judge did not issue any “decision” on remand that he could certify to the Board. The Board’s December 2016 decision sustained the respondent’s appeal of the Immigration Judge’s initial decision and remanded the case to the Immigration Judge “for the purpose of allowing [DHS] the opportunity to complete or update identity, law enforcement, or security investigations or examinations, and further proceedings, if necessary, and for the entry of an order as provided by 8 C.F.R. § 1003.47(h).” Matter of A-B- at 4 (BIA Dec. 8, 2016). Under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.47(h) (2017), the Immigration Judge on remand was directed to “enter an order granting or denying the immigration relief sought” after considering the “results of the identity, law enforcement, or security investigations.” “If new information is presented, the immigration judge may hold a further hearing if necessary to consider any legal or factual issues . . . .” Id.

In this matter, DHS informed the Immigration Judge that the respondent’s background checks were clear. See Order of Certification at 1. Given the scope of the Board’s remand and the requirements of the regulations, the Immigration Judge was obliged to issue a decision granting or denying the relief sought. If the Immigration Judge thought intervening changes in the law directed a different outcome, he may have had the authority to hold a hearing, consider those legal issues, and make a decision on those issues. Cf. 8 C.F.R. § 1003.47(h). Instead, the Immigration Judge sought to “certify” the Board’s decision back to the Board, essentially requesting that the Board reconsider its legal and factual findings. That procedural maneuver does not fall within the scope of the Immigration Judge’s authority upon remand. Nor does it fall within the regulations’ requirements that cases may be certified when they arise from “[d]ecisions of Immigration Judges in removal proceedings,” id. § 1003.1(b)(3); see also id. § 1003.1(c), and that an Immigration Judge “may certify a case only after an initial decision has been made and before an appeal has been taken,” id. § 1003.7. Because the Immigration Judge failed to issue a decision on remand, the Immigration Judge’s attempt to certify the case back to the Board was procedurally

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defective and therefore does not affect my consideration of the December 16, 2016, Board decision.

Furthermore, the present case is distinguishable from Accardi, because, here, the Board rendered a decision on the merits, consistent with the applicable regulations. It is that December 8, 2016, decision that I directed the Board to refer to me for my review. See Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 227, 227 (A.G. 2018) (directing the Board “to refer this case to me for review of its decision” (emphasis added)). The Board issued that decision “exercis[ing] its own judgment” and free from any perception of interference from the Attorney General. Accardi, 347 U.S. at 266. My certification of that decision for review complies with all applicable regulations. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(h)(1)(i) (“The Board shall refer to the Attorney General for review of its decision all cases that . . . [t]he Attorney General directs Board to refer to him.” (emphasis added)). It is therefore unnecessary to suspend the briefing schedule pending a new decision of the Board.

II. DHS’s Request To Clarify the Question Presented

I deny DHS’s request to clarify the question presented. In my March 7, 2018, order, I requested briefing on “[w]hether, and under what circumstances, being a victim of private criminal activity constitutes a cognizable ‘particular social group’ for purposes of an application for asylum or withholding of removal.” Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. at 227. Although “there is no entitlement to briefing when a matter is certified for Attorney General review,” Matter of Silva-Trevino, A.G. Order No. 3034-2009 (Jan. 15, 2009), I nevertheless invited the parties and interested amici “to submit briefs on points relevant to the disposition of this case” to assist my review. Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. at 227. As the Immigration Judge observed in his effort to certify the case, several Federal Article III courts have recently questioned whether victims of private violence may qualify for asylum under section 208(b)(1)(B)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(B)(i) (2012), based on their claim that they were persecuted because of their membership in a particular social group. If being a victim of private criminal activity qualifies a petitioner as a member of a cognizable “particular social group,” under the statute, the briefs should identify such situations. If such situations do not exist, the briefs should explain why not.

DHS requests clarification on the ground that “this question has already been answered, at least in part, by the Board and its prior precedent.” Board precedent, however, does not bind my ultimate decision in this matter. See section 103(a)(1) of the Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(1) (2012) (providing that “determination and ruling by the Attorney General with respect to all

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questions of law shall be controlling”). The parties and interested amici may brief any relevant issues in this case—including the interplay between any relevant Board precedent and the question presented—but I encourage them to answer the legal question presented.

III. The Parties’ Requests for an Extension of the Deadline for Submitting Briefs

I grant, in part, both parties’ request for an extension of the deadline for submitting briefs in this case. The parties’ briefs shall be filed on or before April 20, 2018. Briefs from interested amici shall be filed on or before April 27, 2018. Reply briefs from the parties shall be filed on or before May 4, 2018. No further requests for extensions of the deadlines from the parties or interested amici shall be granted.

In support of respondent’s request for an extension, she asserted that “an extension of the briefing deadline is warranted because [r]espondent intends to submit additional evidence with her brief in support of her claim,” including the possibility that she might obtain new evidence from El Salvador. Resp’t Request for Extension of Briefing Deadline at 4 (Mar. 14, 2018). Although I retain “full decision-making authority under the immigration statutes,” Matter of A-H-, 23 I&N Dec. 774, 779 n.4 (A.G. 2005), I requested briefing on a purely legal question to assist my review of this case, and I encourage the parties to focus their briefing on that question. Further factual development may be appropriate in the event the case is remanded, but the opportunity to gather additional factual evidence is not a basis for my decision to extend the briefing deadline.

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Back in law school, we were taught that court jurisdiction existed to decide “cases or controversies.” Not so in the US Immigration Court in the “Age of Sessions.”

The latest outrageous “certified” decision by Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalyoto” Sessions shows that he has abused his power by intervening in a case where neither party sought his intervention and where both parties essentially consider the law to be settled by prior BIA precedents. Indeed, the DHS is basically asking Sessions not to intervene in a case that it lost before the BIA and instead let the BIA deal with the issue. Remarkably, though, Sessions treats DHS with the same arrogant and biased dismissiveness that he treats migrants and private lawyers.

Even the DHS (to its credit) appears to be appalled by Sessions’s unwarranted and unneeded interference in the quasi-judicial process before the US Immigration Courts. Apparently, the DHS understands (as Gonzo apparently does not or will not) that the destruction of the credibility and integrity of the Immigration Courts will also hurt their enforcement efforts by making US Courts of Appeals more skeptical of the validity of final orders of removal entered by the BIA! Indeed, it was similar concerns by enforcement officials in the “Legacy INS” during the Reagan Administration that led to the removal of the Immigration Judges from the INS and creation of EOIR as a separate, non-enforcement, agency within the DOJ in the first place.

Although Sessions in his latest decision in Matter of A-B– basically concedes that the Immigration Judge should have followed the BIA’s instructions and granted the respondent’s asylum application, he nevertheless is misusing the case as a “vehicle” for a reexamination of fundamental, well-established principles of asylum law that neither party requested. Talk about abuse of authority!

Sessions has been on the wrong side of legal history on an astounding range of legal issues throughout his sorry career. Yet, having been rebuffed on most of his extremist views by his colleagues of both parties in the Senate and by the courts, he is now using his “captive court system” — the U.S. Immigration Courts — to interfere with the fair administration of justice and to impose his self-styled, White Nationalist inspired rules that no party has requested. Seldom has there been such a clear abuse of the American legal system. Yet, to date he is getting away with it!

This is precisely the type of improper use of the arcane “certification authority” that my colleague Judge Jeffrey Chase discussed in his article reprinted in the previous post. When and where will this mockery of justice end?

PWS

03-30-18

BIA IN FANTASYLAND: Evidence Continues To Mount That BIA’s Deference To Border Statements In Matter of J-C-H-F- Was a Flight of Fantasy That No Reasonable Fact Finder Would Have Reached – How You Can Fight Back Against This Blatant Perversion Of Justice!

http://immigrationimpact.com/2018/03/26/uscis-records-abusing-asylum-seekers/

AARON REICHLIN-MELNICK writes in Immigration Impact:

As thousands of Central American families arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border asking for asylum in 2014, human rights organizations raised alarms about asylum seekers’ treatment by Customs and Border Protection officials. But these organizations were not the only ones expressing concern—asylum officers within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also raised alarms about CBP misbehavior.

A new Freedom of Information Act lawsuit hopes to reveal how asylum officials’ repeated concerns about CBP officer misconduct were left unaddressed. The lawsuit, filed by Human Rights Watch and Nixon Peabody LLP, seeks information about such misbehavior, including hundreds of reports that CBP failed to properly screen asylum seekers.

This lawsuit comes after Human Rights Watch, along with the American Immigration Council, filed a FOIA request asking for records of complaints made by officers in USCIS’s Asylum Division. The lawsuit asks USCIS to turn over all records of complaints about CBP misconduct from 2006 to 2015, arguing that the agency violated FOIA by failing to provide requested key documents following the original request. These documents included a spreadsheet where asylum officers purportedly documented hundreds of instances of “problematic Border Patrol practices.”

CBP officers at ports of entry and along the U.S. border are generally the first to encounter newly arriving asylum seekers. When asylum seekers express a fear of returning to their home country to a CBP officer, the officer is required to refer them to an asylum officer with USCIS for an interview. The asylum officer decides whether the asylum seeker has a “credible fear” of persecution, a determination which allows the asylum seeker to pursue an asylum case in immigration court.

Because these credible fear interviews occur after an asylum seeker has already been processed by CBP officers at the border or ports of entry, asylum officers are able to ask about any encounters with CBP. The limited records USCIS offered in response to the FOIA show that asylum officers often had serious concerns about the behavior of its sister agency.

The documents produced to date demonstrate how grave the problem is:

One email from an asylum officer to a supervisor expresses a belief that there are “significant issues in how some Border Patrol officers are screening individuals.”

A second email discusses an incident where “CBP mocked a transgender woman for hours and refused to record her fear” of returning to her home country. These internal reports of CBP abuse match the reports of many asylum seekers who encountered abuse at the hands of CBP officers during the same time period.

A third email from an asylum officer expressed concerns that an asylum seeker was coerced into withdrawing his request for asylum, with the officer writing that: “What is especially disturbing about this is that … the record indicates that [the asylum seeker] has been subjected to harassment, intimidation, and physical mistreatment by CBP upon his recent entry into the United States, and this mistreatment. . . affected his decision to dissolve his case.”

Records of CBP’s mistreatment of asylum seekers is especially important as the numbers of asylum-seekers at the border continue to rise. Last year, groups sued CBP, alleging a pattern or practice of unlawfully turning away asylum seekers who arrived at ports of entry and requested asylum. In light of CBP’s own inadequate complaint system, this new lawsuit could substantiate the many reports of the agency’s misconduct.

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Both Judge Jeffrey Chase and I have “roasted” in prior blogs the BIA’s disingenuous and “clearly erroneous greenlighting” of Border Patrol statements in Matter of J-C-H-F, 27 I&N Dec. 211 (BIA 2018). Quite contrary to the BIA’s unjustified “head in the sand” presumption of regularity given these flawed statements, there is clear public evidence, compiled over more than a decade, that such statements should be considered “presumptively unreliable.”

In addition to addressing the elements of the bogus “test” enunciated by the BIA in J-C-H-F- what should advocates do to fight this type of clearly biased, largely “fact free,” unwarranted pro-DHS decision-making by the BIA?

First, as Jeffrey and I have pointed out, get the publicly available reports of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (“USCIRF”) which show that glaring errors in accuracy and reliability raised as long ago as 2006 remained unaddressed as of 2016.
Second, use the additional materials cited in the above article to show how DHS has suppressed its own internal documents establishing the unreliability of the Border Patrol statements.
Third, get in touch with Human Rights Watch and the American Immigration Council to see if any additional FOIA materials have been made available which establish unreliability.
Fourth, ask someone from Human Rights Watch about a database I have heard they are establishing to provide “hard evidence” to challenge the reliability of Border Patrol statements.

In the “Age of Sessions,” I wouldn’t hold my breath for the “captive” BIA to recede from its travesty in J-C-H-F-. That’s why it’s critically important for advocates to do a great job of “setting the record straight” in the Courts of Appeals.

But, to do that, evidence challenging the Border Patrol statements must be offered at the trial stage before the Immigration Judge. Documenting and exposing the BIA’s disingenuous decision-making will also undermine the BIA’s overall credibility before the Courts of Appeals and perhaps eventually lead to a reversal of the unjustified “Chevron deference” the Board currently receives.

Today’s Board masquerades as a deliberative “expert tribunal” that neither publicly deliberates nor possesses any obvious expertise — a situation aggravated because nobody who works for the biased White Nationalist xenophobe Jeff Sessions can legitimately be considered “unbiased” or “impartial” when it comes to adjudication of migrants rights. Don’t forget, even if the BIA rules in the respondent’s favor, something that happens less and less these days, each an every BIA decision is subject to an inappropriate “certification and reversal” process by Sessions that he has shown little hesitation in invoking recently.

How can a respondent receive a “fair hearing” from a “court” where the Government’s leading enforcement figure holds all the cards? Obviously, he or she can’t! You can help make a record that eventually should force the “Article III’s” to shut down this “caricature of American justice.”

Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-28-17

ANOTHER WASHPOST LEAD EDITORIAL RIPS CRUEL, INHUMANE, ADMINISTRATION POLICIES ON SEPARATING CHILDREN – In Plain Terms, Our Government Is Engaging in Child Abuse!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dhs-keeps-separating-kids-from-their-parents–but-officials-wont-say-why-or-how-often/2018/03/20/0c7b3452-2bb4-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html?utm_term=.8fe0d0d7b420

DHS keeps separating kids from their parents — but officials won’t say why or how often

Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

By Editorial Board March 20 at 7:31 PM

LAST FRIDAY night, a 7-year-old Congolese girl was reunited with her mother in Chicago, four months after immigration agents of the Department of Homeland Security separated them for no defensible reason. When the little girl, known in court filings as S.S., was delivered by a case worker to her mom, the two collapsed to the floor, clutching each other and sobbing. According to the mother’s lawyer, who was in the room, S.S., overwhelmed, cried for the longest time.

That sounds like a happy ending to a horrific story. In fact, according to immigrant advocates, such separations are happening with increasingly frequency — with no credible justification.

In the case of S.S. and her mother, known in court filings as Ms. L., the trauma visited on a little girl — wrenched from her mother, who was detained in San Diego, and flown nearly 2,000 miles to Chicago — was gratuitous. A U.S. official who interviewed Ms. L. after she crossed the border into California determined she had a reasonable asylum claim based on fear for her life in her native Congo. Despite that, mother and daughter were torn apart on the say-so of an immigration agent, and without explanation.

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A DHS spokesman, Tyler Houlton , says separating children from their parents is justified when paternity or maternity is in doubt, or when it is in a child’s best interest. However, in court filings, officials present no cause for doubt about Ms. L.’s maternity, nor evidence that it was in S.S.’s “best interest” to be taken from her mother last November, when she was 6 years old.

Rather, in court filings, an official from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS agency, lists some documentary discrepancies on Ms. L.’s part, in which officials in Angola, Panama and Colombia recorded different versions of her name. Never mind the translation problems she may have encountered in Latin America as a speaker of Lingala, a language spoken only in central Africa.

Even if Ms. L. fudged her identity, how would that justify taking away her child? And if there were doubts about Ms. L.’s maternity, why didn’t ICE request a DNA test at the outset, before sundering mother and child? When a DNA test was finally done — four months later — it immediately established Ms. L.’s maternity.

Immigrant advocates say DHS has separated children from immigrant parents scores of times in recent months, perhaps to deter other asylum seekers by trying to convince them the United States is even more cruel than their native countries. Officials at DHS have floated that idea publicly in the past year. They insist it is not their policy. However, they also have declined to provide statistics showing the frequency of separations.

Responding to a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of parents separated from their children, ICE insists it has done nothing so outrageous that it “shocks the conscience” — a Supreme Court standard for measuring the denial of due-process rights.

Here’s a question for Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: If it does not “shock the conscience” to traumatize a little girl by removing her from her mother for four months in a land where she knows no one and speaks no English, what does “shock the conscience”?

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Stop the Trump Administration’s program of turning America into a reviled human rights abuser! What about “Gonzo Apocalyto’s” policies of turning our Immigration Courts into “enforcement deterrents” rather than protectors of fairness and Due Process?

Join the New Due Process Army now! Resist in the “real’ courts. Vote Trump, his abusers, and his enablers out of office!

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all of us. Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-21-18

VIEWS YOU CAN USE: SOPHIA GENOVESE SETS FORTH A BLUEPRINT FOR LEGAL RESISTANCE TO WHITE NATIONALIST XENOPHOBIA & SESSIONS’S ASSAULT ON HUMAN RIGHTS & THE RULE OF LAW FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS!

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/immigration-law-blog/archive/2018/03/20/sessions-likely-to-end-asylum-eligibility-for-victims-of-domestic-violence-how-courts-can-resist.aspx?Redirected=true

Sophia writes at LexisNexis Immigration Communities:

“Violence against women is the most pervasive and underreported human rights violation in the world. Whether you live on the Upper East Side or in Gugulethu, South Africa, you likely know a woman or girl who has been the victim of sexual or gender-based violence. Maybe you are that woman or girl.[i]

International asylum frameworks have long grappled with how to address this gender-based persecution. After years of debating whether victims of domestic violence have a legitimate claim to asylum, the US Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) finally recognized in 2014 that married women who are unable to leave their relationships may constitute a cognizable particular social group for the purposes of seeking asylum. Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 388 (BIA 2014); see also Matter of D-M-R- (BIA June 9, 2015) (clarifying that a victim of domestic violence need not be married to her abuser). Although some advocates argue the decision does not go far enough, the protections and opportunities that Matter of A-R-C-G– have provided to thousands of women cannot be understated. Despite these advancements, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has questioned whether such claims to asylum are legitimate by referring to himself a BIA case, Matter of A-B- (BIA Dec. 8, 2016), where the Board found that a victim of domestic violence was indeed eligible for asylum. Pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(h)(1)(i) (2017), Sessions may refer a case to himself for review, and has asked each party to submit briefs on “[w]hether, and under what circumstances, being a victim of private criminal activity constitutes a cognizable ‘particular social group’ for purposes of an application for asylum or withholding of removal.” Matter of A-B-, I&N Dec. 227 (A.G. 2018).

As brief background, in order to be granted asylum, the applicant must show that they have suffered past persecution or have a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and that he or she is unable or unwilling to return to, or avail himself or herself of the protection of, their country of origin owing to such persecution. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.13(b)(1) & (2). To be granted asylum based on one’s membership in a particular social group, the applicant must show that the group is “(1) composed of members who share a common immutable characteristic, (2) defined with particularity, and (3) socially distinct within the society in question.” Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I. & N. at 392. As set forth in Matter of Acosta, 19 I&N Dec. 211, 212 (BIA 1985), a “common immutable characteristic” is defined as “a characteristic that either is beyond the power of the individual members of the group to change or is so fundamental to their identities or consciences that it ought not be required to be changed.” Under Matter of W-G-R-, 26 I&N Dec. 208 (BIA 2014) and clarified in Matter of M-E-V-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 227 (BIA 2014), the social group must be defined with “particularity,” or be defined by boundaries of who is actually a member of the group. Finally, as explained in Matter of W-G-R-, “social distinction” is defined as the ‘recognition’ or ‘perception’ of the particular social group in society. 26 I&N Dec. at 216. The applicant must also show that her persecution was on account of her membership in the social group, and that the government in her country of origin is unable or unwilling to afford her protection from such persecution.

In Matter of A-R-C-G-, the Board found that the lead respondent had met her burden in establishing eligibility for asylum, and held that “[d]epending on the facts and evidence in an individual case, ‘married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship’ can constitute a cognizable particular social group that forms the basis of a claim for asylum or withholding of removal.” 36 I&N Dec. at 388. In this case, the lead respondent was married to a man who regularly beat her, raped her, and on one occasion, burned her. She had contacted local authorities several times to escape her abuser, but was told that the police would not interfere with domestic matters. The respondent had even moved out, but her husband found her and threatened to kill her if she did return. Fearing for her life, and knowing that she could not be safe if she stayed in Guatemala, the respondent fled to the United States.

The Immigration Judge in Matter of A-R-C-G- found that the respondent’s abuse was the result of “criminal acts, not persecution,” and further found that the respondent was not eligible for asylum. On appeal, the BIA found that “married women in Guatemala who are unable to leave their relationship” is indeed a cognizable social group. First, the BIA asserted that the immutable characteristic in this matter was “gender,” and also found the marital status would satisfy the requirement where the woman is unable to leave the relationship. Second, the BIA found that the particular social group had been defined with particularity, where “married,” “women,” “who are unable to leave their relationship” have commonly accepted definitions in Guatemala, stating that it was particularly significant that the respondent had sought protection from the police but was denied protection due to her social group. Finally, the BIA found that the group was socially distinct in society, where Guatemala has a culture of “machismo and family violence,” where the respondent’s social group is easily perceived and recognized in Guatemalan society, and where Guatemala has created laws to protect the respondent’s social group, but has failed to successfully implement them. The BIA cautioned in their decision that particular social group analyses in cases that involve victims of domestic violence will depend heavily on the facts, including country conditions.

. . . .

Despite the BIA’s findings, and decades of tireless efforts by advocates, Attorney General Sessions now refers the case to himself and has asked parties to submit briefs on “whether, and under what circumstances, being a victim of private criminal activity constitutes a cognizable ‘particular social group’ for purposes of an application for asylum or withholding of removal.” Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 227 (A.G. 2018). There may have been bad faith on the part of the Immigration Judge below who held up A-B-’s case on remand, then sent it back to the BIA eight months later by raising a “facially bogus legal issue,” only to have AG Sessions refer the case to himself and stripping the BIA of jurisdiction.

Sessions has made clear his animus against immigrants, especially those fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in the United States, along with their ‘dirty’ immigration lawyers. The referral of the A-B- case to himself is yet another instance of such xenophobia on full display, where he seeks to deny protection to some of the most vulnerable populations in the world. While we hope this is not the case, Sessions will likely reverse the BIA’s findings on the Matter of A-B- case and declare that victims of domestic violence are no longer eligible for asylum in the United States, thus uprooting Matter of A-R-C-G- and particular social group claims based on domestic violence. Indeed, attempting to reverse the ability of a victim of domestic violence to seek asylum goes beyond being anti-immigrant. It is a full-frontal attack on human rights and undermines international obligations to provide protection to people fleeing persecution. The respondent in Matter of A-B- will thus need to appeal to a federal appellate court to overrule Sessions.

One can hope that if successful on appeal, Matter of A-B- has the potential to broaden asylum eligibility for victims of domestic violence by returning to the Acosta definition of particular social group, and clarify what Matter of A-R-C-G- left untouched, such as the nexus requirement and the inability or unwillingness of governments to provide victims protection from their abuses.

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Go on over to LexisNexis at the above link for Sophia’s much longer full article.

More and more individuals are publicly “outing” the clear bias, White Nationalism, lifelong xenophobia, and disingenuous misstatements of facts, manipulation of the process, and disrespect for the true rule of law and our Constitutional guarantees of Due Process for all, which should have disqualified Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions from ever becoming the Attorney General and assuming control over the US. Immigration Courts. But, as Sophia cogently points out, by winning cases in the Article III Courts, the “NDPA” can actually turn the tables on Sessions and his restrictionist cronies by putting important principles of immigration law and fairness beyond their biased grasp.

Harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all of us! Go New Due Process Army! Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-21-18

Michelle Brané in WASHPOST: “Separating refugee children from their parents is cruel”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/separating-refugee-children-from-their-parents-is-cruel/2018/03/18/d3e6b286-293f-11e8-a227-fd2b009466bc_story.html

March 18

I was glad to see the March 12 editorial “Torn asunder seeking asylum,” which called attention to the horrific practice of separating families seeking asylum. I can offer broader context to the issue of family separation. The Women’s Refugee Commission’s Migrant Rights and Justice Program has been monitoring this issue for many years.Primarily, the mother and child in the editorial should never have been separated. The increasingly common practice of separating asylum-seeker children from their parents is often done for no reason other than to deter the family from seeking protection. The Department of Homeland Security has publicly stated deterrence as the intended outcome, and its suggestion now that it is doing so to protect children is misleading and shameful.This is outrageous, as well as cruel, costly and illegal. What’s more, this practice is increasing. My organization is aware of hundreds of similar cases. We hope that Homeland Security’s decision to release the mother, and reunite her with her child, represents a move away from this practice and back toward respect for parents’ and children’s right to seek asylum.

Michelle Brané, Washington

The writer is director of the
Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission

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Well said, Michelle!

Compare the intelligence, humanity, and comprehensive knowledge of a “True American Hero” like Michelle with some of the ignorant, biased, immoral, and mean-spirited rantings of those who pass for “leaders” of our country these days. We have put the wrong people in power; but, there’s still time to correct the mistake before it’s too late!

PWS

03-21-18

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