WHEN ARTICLE III COURTS FAIL: U.S. “Orbits” Refugee Families To Dangerous Chaos In Guatemala Under Clearly Fraudulent “Safe Third Country” Arrangements As Feckless U.S. Courts Fail To Enforce Constitutional Due Process & U.S. Asylum Laws In Face Of Trump Regime’s Contemptuous Scofflaw Conduct!

yhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-us-is-putting-asylum-seekers-on-planes-to-guatemala–often-without-telling-them-where-theyre-going/2020/01/13/0f89a93a-3576-11ea-a1ff-c48c1d59a4a1_story.html

Kevin Sieff
Kevin Sieff
Latin American Correspondent, Washington Post

Kevin Sieff reports from Guatemala for WashPost:

By

Kevin Sieff

Jan. 14, 2020 at 4:21 p.m. EST

GUATEMALA CITY — The chartered U.S. government flights land here every day or two, depositing Honduran and Salvadoran asylum seekers from the U.S. border. Many arrive with the same question: “Where are we?”

For the first time ever, the United States is shipping asylum seekers who arrive at its border to a “safe third country” to seek refuge there. The Trump administration hopes the program will serve as a model for others in the region.

But during its first weeks, asylum seekers and human rights advocates say, migrants have been put on planes without being told where they were headed, and left here without being given basic instruction about what to do next.

When the migrants land in Guatemala City, they receive little information about what it means to apply for asylum in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. Those who don’t immediately apply are told that they must leave the country in 72 hours. The form is labeled “Voluntary Return.”

 

“In the U.S., the agents told us our cases would be transferred, but they didn’t say where. Then they lined us up to get on the plane,” said a woman named Marta, 43, from Honduras. She sat in a migrant shelter here with her 17-year-old son, who nursed a gunshot wound in his left cheek — the work, both say, of a Honduran faction of the MS-13 gang.

“When we looked out the window, we were here,” she said. “We thought, ‘Where are we? What are we supposed to do now?’ ”

After the volcano, indigenous Guatemalans search for safer ground — in Guatemala, or the United States

Human rights organizations in Guatemala say they have recorded dozens of cases of asylum seekers who were misled by U.S. officials into boarding flights, and who were not informed of their asylum rights upon arrival. Of the 143 Hondurans and Salvadorans sent to Guatemala since the program began last month, only five have applied for asylum, according to the country’s migration agency.

 

“Safe third country” is one of the Trump administration’s most dramatic initiatives to curb migration — an effort to remake the U.S. asylum system. President Trump has called it “terrific for [Guatemala] and terrific for us.”

But an Asylum Cooperation Agreement is bringing migrants to a country that is unable to provide economic and physical security for its own citizens — many of whom are themselves trying to migrate. In fiscal 2019, Guatemala was the largest source of migrants detained at the U.S. border, at more than 264,000. The country has only a skeletal asylum program, with fewer than a dozen asylum officers.

Trump wants border-bound asylum seekers to find refuge in Guatemala instead. Guatemala isn’t ready.

As the deal was negotiated, it drew concerns from the United Nations and human rights organizations. But its implementation, advocates say, has been worse than they feared.

“It’s a total disaster,” said Thelma Shau, who has observed the arrival of asylum seekers at La Aurora International Airport in her role overseeing migration issues for Guatemala’s human rights ombudsman.

“They arrive here without being told that Guatemala is their destination,” she said. “They are asked, ‘Do you want refuge here or do you want to leave?’ And they have literally minutes to decide without knowing anything about what that means.”

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President Trump and first lady Melania Trump meet in the Oval Office last month with then-President Jimmy Morales of Guatemala. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The Guatemalan government says that it explains asylum options and that migrants are simply choosing to leave voluntarily.

“Central American people are given comprehensive attention when they arrive in the country, and respect for their human rights is a priority,” said Alejandra Mena, a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s migration agency. “The information provided is complete for them to make a decision.”

In Guatemala, lenders that were supported by USAID and the World Bank are now funding illegal migration.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment. The United States has signed similar “safe third country” agreements with El Salvador and Honduras, but they have not yet been implemented. In recent days, Trump administration officials have said they are considering sending Mexican asylum seekers to Guatemala to seek refuge.

Human rights groups in Guatemala that have observed the process say migrants here are not given key information about their options — such as what asylum in Guatemala entails and where they would stay while their claims are being processed. Many migrants are aware that Guatemala suffers from the same gang violence and extortion that forced them from their home countries.

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Migrants from Guatemala disembark from a raft in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, in June. (Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press)

Paula Arana observed the orientation as child protection liaison for the human rights ombudsman.

“It’s clear that the government is not providing enough information for asylum seekers to make a decision, especially in the three minutes they are given,” she said. “Instead, they are being pushed out of the country.”

The United States had suggested that it would begin implementing the agreement by sending single men to Guatemala. But less than a month after it began, families with young children are arriving on the charter flights. Last week, Arana said, a 2-year-old arrived with flulike symptoms.

On Thursday, a man named Jorge, 35, his wife and two daughters, ages 11 and 15, landed here. A day later, they were clustered together at the Casa del Migrante, a shelter in Guatemala City where government officials took them in a bus. They had been given the papers with 72 hours’ notice to leave Guatemala, and couldn’t figure out what to do.

The family had fled multiple threats from gangs in Honduras, which started with an interpersonal dispute between Jorge’s wife and one of the gang’s leaders. Jorge was certain that going back would mean certain death. Like Marta, Jorge did not want his last name to be published out of fear for his family’s safety.

“We’re thinking about our options. We know we can’t stay here. What would I do? Where would we stay?” he said. “Maybe we need to try to cross to the United States again.”

In western Guatemala, cultivating coffee was once a way out of poverty. As prices fall, growers are abandoning their farms for the United States.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is not participating in the program. But officials say they’re aware of problems with its implementation.

“UNHCR has a number of concerns regarding the Asylum Cooperation Agreement and its implementation,” said Sibylla Brodzinsky, UNHCR’s regional spokeswoman for Central America and Mexico. “We have expressed these concerns to the relevant U.S. and Guatemalan authorities.”

 

Human rights advocates who have interviewed the asylum seekers, known locally as “transferidos,” say many have decided that their best option is to migrate again to the United States. Smugglers often offer their customers three chances to make it across the border.

Migrants at the Casa del Migrante described spending a week in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in the United States, where they had intended to make their asylum claims. Many carried binders full of evidence they assumed would bolster their cases. On her phone, Marta saved avideo of her son being tortured by MS-13 gang members.

But in their brief conversations with U.S. immigration officials, they were told they would not be given a chance to apply for asylum in the United States.

“We had all this information to show them,” Marta said, leafing through photos of her son’s scars and Honduran court documents. “They said, ‘That’s not going to help you here.’ ”

This school aims to keep young Guatemalans from migrating. They don’t know it’s funded by the U.S. government.

In interviews with The Washington Post, some migrants said they were told vaguely that their cases were being “transferred.” Others were told they were going to be returned to their countries of origin.

“One agent told me, ‘You’re going back to Honduras,’ ” Marta said. But then they arrived in Guatemala City.

“When we looked out the window, we just assumed it was a stop,” her son said.

Marta thought Guatemala might be even more dangerous. They had no connection to the country and nowhere to stay beyond their first few days. When she left the migrant shelter to buy food Friday morning, she said, she stumbled upon a crime scene with a dead body a few blocks away.

During their nine-day detention at an ICE facility in Texas, she said, the family shared a cell with a Guatemalan family that was fleeing violence perpetrated by a different MS-13 group based here.

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Agronomy students, some hooded, block a street outside a Guatemala City hotel before lawmakers voted on the deal that made Guatemala a “safe third country” for migrants seeking asylum in the United States. (Oliver De Ros/Associated Press)

“Why would they send us to a country where the same gangs are operating?” she asked.

 

In the absence of a thorough explanation of their asylum rights in Guatemala, El Refugio de la Niñez is offering a short tutorial to the asylum seekers. So far, 45 have attended.

“The Guatemalan government is completely absent in this whole process,” said Leonel Dubon, the director of the U.N.-funded center. “It sends a clear message. The government isn’t here to offer shelter, it’s here to push people out as quickly as possible.”

The Trump administration negotiated the “safe third country” agreement last year with lame-duck Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales.

As Guatemala pursues war criminals, a dark secret emerges: Some suspects are living quiet lives in the U.S.

Guatemala’s constitutional court initially blocked the deal. Then Trump threatened tariffs on the country and taxes on remittances sent home by Guatemalans living in the United States. It was eventually signed in July.

The new Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, was sworn in Tuesday. He has raised concerns about the agreement, saying he hadn’t been briefed on its details.

At the signing ceremony, Trump said it would “provide safety for legitimate asylum seekers, and stop asylum fraud and abuses [of the] system.”

U.S. asylum officers do not vet the cases of migrants before they are sent to Guatemala.

In her brief conversations with U.S. immigration agents, Marta tried to get them to look at her binder full of documents and photos.

“They weren’t interested,” she said. “They just kept saying that your case will be transferred to an institution that can handle it.”

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Kevin writes about a tragically absurd situation that seems to have fallen “below the radar screen” of public outrage or even discourse. This is wrong! Most days I can’t believe that the county that I proudly served for more than 35 years is engaging in this type of abusive behavior that would be below the level of even some Third World dictatorships.

And, it isn’t just “occasional abuse” — it’s systemized, institutionalized abuse and dehumanization on a global and regular basis — all approved or de facto enabled by feckless and spineless Federal Appellate Courts, all the way up to the Supremes! These are folks who should know better and really have no other meaningful function in our “separation of powers” system other than to protect our individual rights. Authoritarian governments and dictators hardly need “courts” to enforce their will, even if some find it useful to “go through the motions” of creating and employing complicit “judges.” As one of my Round Table colleagues succinctly put it “there appears to be no bottom!”

Clearly, the “Safe Third Country” exception was never intended by Congress, nor does the statutory language permit it, to be used to “orbit” asylum applicants to some of the most dangerous refugee sending countries in the world with thoroughly corrupt governments and non-existent asylum systems. So, why does the Trump regime have confidence that it can and will get away with these atrocities? Because they believe, correctly so far, that the Article III Federal Courts, many of them now stacked with Trump’s hand-selected “toady judges,” are afraid to stand up to tyranny and protect the rights of desperate, mostly brown-skinned, asylum seekers.

Obviously, from an institutional standpoint, the Article III Courts are saying:

 “Who cares what happens to a bunch of brown-skinned foreigners. Let ‘em die, rot, or be tortured. Human rights, due process, and human dignity simply don’t matter when they don’t affect us personally, financially, or socially. That’s particularly true because the results of our abuses are taking place, thankfully, in foreign nations: out of sight, out of mind. Not our problem.”

Apparently, many Americans agree with this immoral and illegal approach. Otherwise, the “black robed, life tenured ones” would be pariahs in their communities, churches, and social interactions. They wouldn’t be offered those cushy teaching positions at law schools or a chance to expound before public audiences.

But, not speaking out against bad judges and not insisting on integrity and courage in the Article III courts could ultimately prove fatal for all of our individual rights. Judges who use their privileged positions to turn a blind eye to the oppression of others, particularly the most vulnerable humans among us, and the catastrophic failure of the rule of law and Due Process in  the U.S. immigration system can hardly be expected to stand up for the individual rights of any of us against Government oppression. 

After all, why should an exulted Federal Appellate Judge or a Supreme Court Justice care about what happens to you, unless your blood is about to spatter his or her pristine black robe? Many of those supportive of or complicit in Trump’s tyranny will personally experience the costs of a feckless Federal Judiciary when their “turn in the barrel” comes. And, the Trump regime’s list of those who’s “lives and rights don’t matter” is very, very long and continually expanding.

All I can say now is that some day, the full truth about what happens to those unlawfully and immorally turned away at our borders will “out.” Then, many Articles III judges will try to disingenuously protect their reputations by saying, similar to many judges of the Third Reich, “Gee, who knew,” or “I was powerless,” or “It was a political problem beyond our limited jurisdiction.”

My charge to the New Due Process Army: Don’t let the complicit judges get away with it in the “Court of History.” You see, know, and experience first-hand every day the results of Article III judicial complicity. Don’t ever forget what those judges have done and continue to do to human lives from their protected and “willfully clueless” ivory towers! Ultimately, you aren’t as powerless as the “complicit ones” think you are!

Due Process Forever; Feckless, Complicit, Immoral Federal Judges Never!

PWS

01-14-20 

  

ADOLFO FLORES @ BUZZFEED: More On The EOIR “Tent Court” Farce!

Adolfo Flores
Adolfo Flores
Immigration Reporter
BuzzFeed News
Laura Lynch
Laura Lynch
Senior Policy Counsel
AILA

 

See below Buzzfeed’s latest story about tent court access.

Immigration “Tent Courts” Aren’t Allowing Full Public Access, Attorneys Say

Observers and reporters can’t watch what some consider to be the most important part of an immigration proceeding.

Adolfo FloresBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on January 13, 2020, at 4:23 p.m. ET

The Trump administration recently agreed to open its “tent courts,” makeshift tribunals where immigrants made to wait in Mexico attend hearings, but lawyers and legal observers say the set up still fails to give the public full access.

Attorneys and advocates said the government is still keeping the public out of what some consider to be the most important part of immigration court proceedings by using judges located inside a Fort Worth, Texas, facility that is closed to the public. The hearings are where immigrants get the opportunity to present arguments and evidence as to why they should be allowed to stay in the US.

Judges at the Fort Worth Immigration Adjudication Center, which the public has no access to, are overseeing the individual merits hearings via video that’s beamed into “tent courts” in Brownsville, Texas. At the same time, the public has also been barred from attending the hearings in person at the “tent court,” effectively closing off public access.

“It’s highly problematic,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Using these adjudication centers and judges is clearly intentional. The agency is trying to operate these cases in secret.”

The facilities in Falls Church, Virginia, and Fort Worth were created by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the nation’s immigration courts, as a way to reduce its growing case backlog.

Denying public access is especially concerning because most immigrants in “Remain in Mexico,” formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), are not represented by an attorney, Lynch said. An analysis of 56,004 MPP hearings found that only 4% of immigrants are represented by a lawyer, the rest are having to make their case on their own.

“Many immigrants are walking into these tent courts unrepresented,” Lynch said. “And there’s no way to observe them.”

EOIR refused to confirm whether judges at the adjudication center were listening to merits hearings in Brownsville. But attorneys with clients at the Brownsville “tent court” confirmed to BuzzFeed News that they’ve had cases before judges at the Fort Worth adjudication center and have been rescheduled to judges there in the future.

“All immigration judges hear all case types. Due to pending litigation, we have no further comment,” said Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesperson for EOIR.

The Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In September, DHS opened two temporary court facilities along the Texas border, one in Brownsville and another in Laredo for immigrants in the “Remain in Mexico” program. Judges in brick and mortar courts throughout the US, officials said, would hear their cases and make rulings via video.

When the “tent courts” started their first hearings, they were immediately criticized for its lack of transparency because reporters, legal observers, and the public couldn’t attend hearings from inside.

Instead, DHS and EOIR said the public could attend the hearings by going to the courtroom where the immigration judges, who would be video conferenced into the “tent courts,” were physically at. But that’s not possible when immigration judges hear merits hearings from adjudication centers closed to the public.

In general, immigration courts are open to the public, although according to the Justice Department, immigrants can request that merits hearings be closed.

At the Brownsville “tent courts,” however, merits hearings are closed automatically by design, said Andrew Udelsman, a fellow in the Texas Civil Rights Project’s racial and economic justice program.

“The case right now appears to be a blanket rule that the public has no access to MPP merits proceedings and that is illegal,” Udelsman told BuzzFeed News. “There is a First Amendment right of public access to court proceedings. That right is being violated by this blanket denial of access to merit proceedings.”

Demonstators, all part of a grassroots group called Witness at the Border supported by ACLU Texas and Children’s Defense Fund Texas, gather to protest outside the Brownsville “tent courts.”

Last week, Reynaldo Leaños Jr., a reporter with Texas Public Radio, tried to attend a merits hearing at the Brownsville “tent court” after a Cuban asylum-seeker invited him to attend. Yet private security contracted by the government told Leaños no one was allowed into the hearings.

Asked by BuzzFeed News why that was the case, a security guard with Ahtna at the facility, who declined to give his name, said it was because the shipping containers the merits hearings are held in were too small to accommodate additional members of the public.

Norma Sepulveda, an immigration attorney who had a hearing last week in Brownsville with a judge located in Fort Worth, said it was “ridiculous” that the merits hearings were being held inside small shipping containers that only fit seven people.

“I don’t know why they put us in these tiny rooms to hold the hearings other than to say there’s no space for anyone else to be present,” Sepulveda told BuzzFeed News. “These hearings are being scheduled with these judges intentionally to be able to conduct them without any oversight.”

Sepulveda said her client’s son, a resident of the US, was initially listed as a witness in the case and was allowed into the room. However, when Sepulveda said she was no longer going to call him to testify he was removed from the room by private security.

“It’s clear to me that the policy is no spectators, if you will, and no family support for individual hearings,” Sepulveda said.

Private security at the “tent courts” in Brownsville also enforcing different rules from one day to the next, that legal observers and attorneys said don’t make sense.

On the first day the public was allowed into the Brownsville facilities, private security agents said reporters weren’t allowed to attend hearings with a pen and notepad. Yet, on the second day they did allow journalists to take notes, but not observers like Udelsman of the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Private security officials are also only allowing the public to view master calendar hearings, the first time people see a judge, which tend to be short preliminary hearings. Requests to attend different master calendar hearings, other than the one room made available, were denied.

“They’re preventing anybody from being able to explain in the most accurate manner possible, what’s happening,” Udelsman said. “You’re prohibiting the public from knowing what’s happening in the courtroom and making life as difficult as possible for the few people who are able to report on what’s happening.”

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

 

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Main: 202.507.7600 I Fax: 202.783.7853 I www.aila.org

1331 G Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005

 

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Thanks for passing this along and for all you do, Laura!

 

“Secret proceedings” and lack of transparency are key steps toward any neo-fascist state!

 

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

01-14-20

 

 

 

 

EXILED: HOW THE TRUMP REGIME’S JUDICIALLY-ENABLED TRASHING OF ASYLUM LAW & DUE PROCESS HAS LEFT AN INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY OF LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS MAROONED IN A STRANGE & DANGEROUS LAND — “With The List’s queue regularly stretching longer than six months, many migrants fall victim to predatory robbery, kidnapping or murder before they can find refuge; others find the wait in one of the most dangerous cities in the world simply unendurable. . . . But for many people . . . going home is not an option.”

Jack Herrera
Jack Herrera
Independent Reporter covering Migration & Human Rights

Someone using POLITICO for iOS wants to share this article with you:

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How Trump Created a New Global Capital of Exiles

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By Jack Herrera

TIJUANA, Mexico—If you go early in the morning to the plaza in front of El Chaparral, the border crossing where a person can walk from Mexico into the state of California, you’ll hear shouts like “2,578: El Salvador!” and “2,579: Guatemala!”—a number, followed by a place of origin. Every day, groups of families gather around, waiting anxiously underneath the trees at the back of the square. The numbers come from La Lista, The List: When a person’s number is called, it’s their turn to ask for asylum in the United States.…

READ FULL ARTICLE ON POLITICO.COM »

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“Going home is not an option.” My friend and colleague on the Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges, Judge Jeffrey S. Chase used a similar observation as the lead in his recent blog: https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/12/23/hon-jeffrey-s-chase-crime-refugee-protection-the-implication-that-refugees-should-either-stay-or-return-home-ignores-the-impossibility-of-such-request-as-refugees-by/.

We should never forget the life-tenured Article III judges, mostly on the appellate level including the Supremes, whose abandonment of both their oaths of office and their humanity has enabled the Trump Regime’s all-out assault on the rule of law and our democratic institutions to succeed to the extent it already has. 

Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. justice system and all the laws he doesn’t like or doesn’t want to follow counts heavily on the complicity or the outright assistance off Article III Federal Judges. To date, notwithstanding some wimpy disingenuous protests from Chief Justice Roberts, bemoaning the predictable lack of respect for the judicial system that he and his colleagues enabled by their complicity, the higher level Article IIIs haven’t disappointed Trump. That’s how the regime’s scofflaws can, without any legislative action, create “exile cities” in “unsafe third countries” right at our border, in violation of both the guarantees of our asylum laws and the Constitutional right to Due Process!

I spent many years of my career dealing daily with the results of failed states, authoritarian regimes, and fallen democracies. I know a lot about how oppression works and how democracies and constitutional republics fail.

I have some very bad news for the “life-tenured ones” in their ivory towers: failed states, authoritarian regimes, and failed democracies ultimately have no use for anything approaching an independent judiciary. Maybe those Article III appellate judges should think and reflect before they cast their next votes to empower autocracy over democracy.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-07-20

 

“SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were THEIR Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?  

“SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were Their Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?  

Robbie Whelan
Robbie Whelan
Mexico City Correspondent
Wall Street Journal

 

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Robbie Whelan reports for the WSJ:

Latin America

Violence Plagues Migrants Under U.S. ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program

Migrants seeking shelter in the U.S. under Trump administration policy report rising numbers of kidnappings by criminal groups

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico—Every morning, Lorenzo Ortíz, a Baptist pastor who lives in Texas, drives a 12-seat passenger van packed with food and blankets across the border to pick up migrants who have been dropped off in Mexico and ferry them to shelters.

His mission is to keep the migrants safe from organized crime groups that prowl the streets of this violent Mexican border town. Since the Trump administration began implementing its Migrant Protection Protocols program at the start of 2019—widely known as Remain in Mexico—some 54,000 migrants, mostly from Central America, have been sent back to northern Mexico to wait while their asylum claims are processed. Mexico’s government is helping implement it.

But in cities like Nuevo Laredo, migrants are sitting ducks. Over the years, thousands have reported being threatened, extorted or kidnapped by criminal groups, who prey upon asylum seekers at bus stations and other public spaces.

“Over the last year, it’s gotten really bad,” Mr. Ortíz said.

A typical scheme involves kidnapping migrants and holding them until a relative in the U.S. wires money, typically thousands of dollars, in ransom money. Gangs have also attacked shelters and even some Mexican clergy members who help migrants.

There have been 636 reported cases of kidnapping, rape, torture and other violent crimes against migrants returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico, according to Human Rights First, which interviews victims in border cities and advocates for migrants’ due process rights. At least 138 of these incidents involved kidnappings of children.

Many more cases of extortion and violence go unreported for fear of retribution. As more migrants are returned to dangerous areas such as Nuevo Laredo under Remain in Mexico, the situation is expected to worsen, the nonprofit Human Rights First said in a recent report.

The Mexican government has played down the violence. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard recently acknowledged kidnapping incidents, but said that “it’s not a massive number.” Only 20 such cases have been investigated by the government, he added.

The Trump administration has credited the program with deterring migrants from attempting to cross into the U.S. Monthly apprehensions of migrants at the U.S. Southern border have plunged from more than 144,000 in May to 33,500 in November. The Remain in Mexico program was expanded in June.

On a recent visit to the border, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the program has been a “game-changer” for U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers because it has freed them from having to perform humanitarian duties.

But Mr. Ortíz’s daily commute back and forth over the border highlights what migrants’ advocates say is a key element of the program—it isolates migrants not only from the legal counsel they need to argue their asylum claims, but from resources like food, shelter and medical care that are abundant on the U.S. side, but near-nonexistent in Mexico.

“You have all this infrastructure to help feed and clothe and house people set up on this side, in Laredo and Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and then suddenly the administration changes the policy, and you have to send it all to Mexico, because now everyone is on the other side,” said Denise LaRock, a Catholic Sister who helps distribute donations to asylum seekers through the nonprofit Interfaith Welcome Coalition. Mexico has been unable to provide enough safe shelter and other resources to migrants.

In Matamoros, another large recipient of asylum seekers under the program across the border from Brownsville, Texas, a tent city of more than 3,000 people has sprung up. Migrants there have complained of overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and insufficient medical treatment. In November, a migrant from El Salvador was murdered in Tijuana, opposite San Diego, while waiting with his wife and two children for an asylum hearing under the Remain in Mexico program.

On a recent, briskly-cold Wednesday, Mr. Ortíz, dressed in a ski vest and a baseball cap with the logo of the U.S. Chaplain International Association, picked up six migrants, including two children aged 8 and 14, at the immigration office in Nuevo Laredo. All were from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, and were returning from legal appointments in the U.S. Hearings take place in makeshift courts set up in tents in Laredo, just across the bridge over the Rio Grande that separates the two cities.

At the front door of the office, six young men sat idly around a motorcycle, hats pulled low over their heads, watching the scene unfold, periodically walking up to the church van and peering in. Mr. Ortíz said these men were “hawks” or lookouts for criminal gangs.

“They know who I am, I know who they are,” he said. “You have to know everyone to do this work. The cartels respect the church. I’ve driven all around Nuevo Laredo in this van, full of migrants, and they never mess with me.”

At one point two of the lookouts asked the pastor for some food. He gave them two boxes of sandwich cookies. They clapped him on the shoulder, eating the treats as they walked back to their observation post.

Mr. Ortíz, a native of central Mexico, came to the U.S. at age 15 and eventually built a small contracting business in Texas. He became an ordained Baptist minister about a decade ago and three years ago began ministering to migrants full time. This year, he converted several rooms of his home in Laredo, Texas, into a dormitory for migrants and built men’s and women’s showers in his backyard.

After picking up the migrants, Mr. Ortíz ferried the group to an unmarked safe house with a chain-locked door on a busy street in the center of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

Inside, about 90 migrant families crowded into rows of cots set up in a handful of bedrooms and a concrete back patio. Among the Central Americans are also migrants from Peru, Congo, Haiti, Angola and Venezuela.

Reports of migrant kidnappings have increased since the Remain in Mexico program began, Mr. Ortíz said. In September, armed men stormed the safe house—one of two that the pastor brings migrants to—and detained the shelter’s staff for about an hour.

Since then, Mr. Ortíz said, the volunteer staff has stopped allowing migrants to leave the house unaccompanied, even to buy milk for young children at a nearby store.

Rosa Asencio, a schoolteacher fleeing criminal gangs in El Salvador and traveling with her two children ages 4 and 7, was returned to Nuevo Laredo under Remain in Mexico. She says she hasn’t been outside the shelter for nearly three weeks. “They can kidnap you anywhere,” she said.

María Mazariegos, an Honduran housekeeper, said she was kidnapped along with her 12-year-old daughter Alexandra from the bus station in Nuevo Laredo in September.

Gang members held her in a windowless cinder-block room that bore signs of torture for three days with one meal of tortillas and beans. She was released after her family members in the U.S. convinced her captors that they didn’t have the money to pay a ransom.

Then, two weeks later, while she was returning from a court appointment in the U.S., a shelter staff member confirmed, another group tried to kidnap her. An escort from the shelter was able to talk the kidnappers out of it.

She has court hearing under Remain in Mexico rules on Jan. 22, where a judge is expected to decide on her asylum case. If she is rejected, she plans to move to the Mexican city of Saltillo, where she has heard there are more jobs and less violence.

“Just about anywhere is better than here,” Ms. Mazariegos added.

Write to Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com

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

These two quotes really tell you all you need know about this grotesquely immoral and illegal “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” (sometimes totally disingenuously referred to as the “Migrant Protection Protocols”) and the sleazy U.S. Government officials responsible for it:

There have been 636 reported cases of kidnapping, rape, torture and other violent crimes against migrants returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico, according to Human Rights First, which interviews victims in border cities and advocates for migrants’ due process rights. At least 138 of these incidents involved kidnappings of children.

. . . .

On a recent visit to the border, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the program has been a “game-changer” for U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers because it has freed them from having to perform humanitarian duties.

Let’s not forget that the Immigration “Court” system that has life or death power over these asylum claims has been twisted and “gamed” against legitimate asylum seekers, particularly women and children with brown skins, by the White Nationalist politicos who unconstitutionally control it. All this while the Article III appellate courts look the other way and “swallow the whistle” on protecting the legal and constitutional rights of the most vulnerable among us.

Let’s see, essentially: “It’s great program because it allows us to evade our humanitarian duties under humanitarian laws and concentrate on faux law enforcement directed against individuals who are not legitimate targets of law enforcement.” Doesn’t say much for the legal and moral authority of the Article III, life-tenured judges who think this is acceptable for our country.

Obviously, this has less to do with the law, which is clearly against what the “regime” is doing, or legitimate law enforcement, which has little to do with the vast majority of legal asylum seekers, and lots to do with vulnerable, brown-skinned individuals desperately seeking justice being “out of sight, out of mind” to the exalted, tone-deaf Article III Judges who are failing to do their Constitutional duties. “Going along to get along” appears to be the new mantra of far too many of the Article III appellate judges.

Assuming that our republic survives and that “Good Government” eventually returns to both the Executive and the Legislative Branches, an examination of the catastrophic failure of the Article III Judiciary to effectively stand up for the Constitutional, legal, and individual human rights of asylum seekers obviously needs reexamination and attention.

The glaring lack of legal expertise in asylum, immigration, and human rights laws as well as basic Constitutional Due Process, and the total lack of human empathy among far, far too many Article III appellate jurists is as stunning as it is disturbing! The past is the past; but, we can and should learn from it. At some point, if we are to survive as a nation of laws and humane values, we need a radically different and more courageous Article III Judiciary that puts humanity and human rights first, not last!

The “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” will not go down in history as a “law enforcement success” as Wolf-man and the other Trump regime kakistocrats and their enablers and apologists claim; it eventually will take its place as one of the most disgraceful and cowardly abandonments of American values in our history. And, the role of the complicit Supreme Court Justices and Court of Appeals Judges who turned their backs on our asylum laws, our Constitution, and human decency will also be spotlighted!

As I was “indexing” this article, I “scrolled through” the name and thought of my old friend the late Arthur Helton, a courageous humanitarian, lawyer, teacher, role model, and occasional litigation opponent (during my days at the “Legacy INS”). Arthur, who literally gave his life for others and his steadfastly humane view of the law, was a believer in the “fundamental justice” of the American judicial system. I wonder what he would think if he were alive today to see the cowardly and complicit performance of so many Article III appellate judges, all the way up to and including the Supremes, in the face of the unlawful, unconstitutional, institutionalized evil, hate, and tyranny of our current White Nationalist regime.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-31-19

THE KEY TO “JUDICIAL” ADVANCEMENT IN BARR’S BIASED, NATIVIST POLITICAL REGIME: DENY ALL ASYLUM CASES — Regime Flaunts “Generous” Standard Established By Supremes In Cardoza-Fonseca, Mocks Due Process — A “Kakistocracy In Action!”

Bryan Johnson
Bryan Johnson, Esquire
Immigraton Attorney
New York, NY

https://amjolaw.com/2019/12/24/immigration-judges-asylum-grants-denials-in-fy-2018-2019/

Immigration Judges Asylum Grants & Denials in FY 2018-2019

by Bryan Johnson on December 24, 2019

After over 7 months, EOIR finally provided the Immigration Judges’ asylum grants and denials for FY 2018 and FY 2019, respectively.

To see the same statistics from FY 2014 to FY 2017, see this previous post. (which took less than 1 month for responsive records)

Of note is the asylum grants and denials for the 6 Immigration Judges who AG William Barr hand-picked for the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2019:

2 of the 6 new BIA members–Hunsucker and Cassidy–denied all their asylum cases in FY 2019.

All 6 of the new BIA members had asylum grant rates of below 10% in FY 2019.

Judge Gorman and Goodwin’s asylum grant rates dropped precipitously in FY 2019–from 14% to 3% and 9% to 3 %, respectively.

Immigration :

FY 2018: 210 asylum denials. 3 asylum grants. Grant rate: 1.4%

FY 2019: 166 asylum denials. 9 asylum grants. Grant rate: 5%

Immigration Judge Earle Wilson:

FY 2018: 226 asylum denials. 9 asylum grants. 3.8% grant rate.

FY 2019: 110 denials. 3 asylum grants. 2.6 % grant rate.

Immigration Judge William Cassidy:

FY 2018: 24 asylum denials. 1 asylum grant. 4% grant rate.

Bryan Johnson
Bryan Johnson, Esquire
Immigraton Attorney
New York, NY

FY 2019: 40 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

Immigration Judge Keith Hunsucker:

FY 2018: 19 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

FY 2019: 35 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

Immigration Judge Stephanie Gorman:

FY 2018: 174 asylum denials. 30 asylum grants. 14.7% grant rate.

FY 2019: 281 asylum denials. 11 asylum grants. 3.76% grant rate.

Immigration:

FY 2018: 302 asylum denials. 33 asylum grants. 9.85 % grant rate.

FY 2019: 177 asylum denials. 6 asylum grants. 3.27% grant rate.

For reference purposes, the average grant rate for FY 2018 and FY 2019 was 33% and 29%, respectively.

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

Go to the link for complete individual Immigration Judge asylum stats. 

The idea that a “court” system is providing “fair and impartial” decisions to  asylum seekers by advancing to important appellate positions biased, obviously unqualified, anti-asylum “jurists”with grant rates that are a small fraction of the already artificially and unethically suppressed “national average” is a total fraud — a grotesque national disgrace rivaled only by the gutless Article III judges who have allowed and encouraged this to happen on their watch!

Somewhat remarkably, after three years of concerted efforts to “zero out” asylum grants, including gimmicks like illegally and unethically rewriting asylum law to screw refugees, denying the statutory and Constitutional right to counsel, using coercive and punitive detention, abusive criminal prosecutions, and family separation to coerce asylum seekers into giving up viable claims, production quotas encouraging rote asylum denials, packing the Immigration Courts with appointees from enforcement backgrounds, and stacking the BIA with anti-asylum zealots, the overall asylum grant rate is still 29%.

That suggests that under a fair and impartial judicial system asylum seekers  could and should succeed in the vast majority of cases. With no material improvements in worldwide refugee-creating conditions, and indeed a record number of refugees fleeing oppression, there is no bona fide explanation for how grant rates would go from 43% in FY 2016 to 29% in FY 2019 without any legislative changes. And, let’s be clear: the 43% in 2016 was already artificially suppressed from 56% in FY 2012. Even the 2012 rate was unrealistically low. A realistic grant rate under a properly generous application of asylum law probably would have been in the 70%-80% range.

The answer is obvious: Government fraud and misfeasance in asylum adjudication on a massive scale, motivated by a White Nationalist, racist, nativist political agenda that clearly violates both the asylum laws and our Constitution. And, this doesn’t even take into account the many asylum seekers artificially denied access to the system at all through the “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico Program,” and ludicrously illegal and fraudulent “Safe Third Country” agreements with patently unsafe and corrupt failed states. 

Yet, while it’s all happening in plain view, indeed touted by Stephen Miller and other racist officials, the Article III Courts of Appeals and the Supremes have taken a dive. They are are allowing the “Second Coming of Jim Crow” to unfold before their eyes, every day, without taking the strong, courageous judicial actions necessary to preserve Due Process and fundamental fairness and to “just say no” to the overt racism driving anti-asylum policies.

Sure, the stock market is up and we’re essentially at full employment. But, that really has little or nothing to do with justice, morality, values, and the rule of law. Eventually, the inevitable economic cycles will turn again. 

With social justice, integrity, the rule of law, and our republic in shambles, how will the Article IIIs and the other cowardly enablers justify their roles and dereliction of their duty to stand up for the rights of the most vulnerable among us? And, who will stand up for them and their rights when the anti-American forces driving Trumpism decide that these toady judges’ complicit role is no longer essential to the planned destruction of American democracy?

In INS v. Cardoza Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 452 (1987), Justice Blackmun, in his concurring opinion, cautioned:

“The efforts of these courts stand in stark contrast to — but, it is sad to say, alone cannot make up for — the years of seemingly purposeful blindness by the INS, which only now begins its task of developing the standard entrusted to its care.” INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 452 (1987).

Unfortunately, after years of progress under Administrations with more integrity and intellectual honesty, the interpretation and application of U.S. asylum law is now in, perhaps terminal, regression under this corrupt and intellectually dishonest White Nationalist regime and the kakistocracy it has constructed within the immigration bureaucracy, including the parody of justice and Due Process that takes place daily in the Immigration “Courts.”

Even more tragically, this time around the Supremes and the Article III Circuit Courts, far from being part of the solution and fearless defenders of the rule of law and the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers, have become a key part of the “purposeful blindness” feeding and driving the problem — in effect, “slaughtering the innocents.” By their complicity and fecklessness, they are ripping apart our system of justice and our established constitutional order. I’m sure that Justice Blackmun would be both horrified and outraged by the institutional cowardice and dereliction of duty by his black-robed, life tenured successors.

Due Process Forever; Corrupt, Complicit Federal Courts Never!

PWS

12-28-19

WE KNOW THAT SESSIONS, WHITAKER, & BARR HAVE TURNED THE DOJ INTO A LEGAL, MORAL, PROFESSIONAL, & ETHICAL CESSPOOL — Some Federal Judges Are Beginning To Take Notice: “To say the least, it is disappointing that [DOJ] counsel, after consulting with other counsel including ‘prosecutors and appellate attorneys’ in this District’s United States Attorney’s office, submitted a legal memorandum to the Court that failed to acknowledge contrary case law that did not support its position.”

Dan Kowalski
Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)
Hon. Elizabeth A. Wolford
Hon. Elizabeth A. Wolford
U.S. District Judge
WDNY

Dan Kowalski over @ LexisNexis Immigration Community reports:

FW:  due process victory: Hassoun v. Searls

“[T]he Court finds that 8 C.F.R. § 241.14(d) is not a permissible reading of § 1231(a)(6), and that it is accordingly a legal nullity that cannot authorize the ongoing, potentially indefinite detention of Petitioner. … The Court further finds that an evidentiary hearing is necessary before it can determine the lawfulness of Petitioner’s continued detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226a.”

Note also the roasting, on page 11, of DOJ lawyers for failure to do basic 1L legal research: “To say the least, it is disappointing that Respondent’s counsel, after consulting with other counsel including “prosecutors and appellate attorneys” in this District’s United States Attorney’s office, submitted a legal memorandum to the Court that failed to acknowledge contrary case law that did not support its position.”

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/hassoun_op.pdf 

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

I hear and appreciate U.S District Judge (WDNY) Elizabeth A. Wolford’s outrage and frustration. 

But, for hard working members of the New Due Process Army this is “just another day at the office” in dealing with the Trump Regime’s unethical, scofflaw, fact free White Nationalist nativist agenda: lies and pretexts presented to the Supremes to hide an intentional census undercount directed at reducing Hispanic voting and political power; false narratives about migrants and crime; a bogus largely self-created “border emergency;” fraudulent “national security” justifications; EOIR “administrative changes” intended to undermine the right to representation and eliminate due process; twisted unethical “precedents” entered by the chief prosecutor that always come out against the individuals; misogynist racist misinterpretations of asylum law intended to kill, maim, and torture vulnerable women of color; child abuse cloaked in disingenuous “law enforcement” rationales; bogus “civil detention” to punish lawful asylum seekers; a grotesquely dishonest “Migrant Protection Protocol” intended to subject migrants to deadly conditions in Mexico; “Safe” Third Countries that are among the most dangerous in the world without functioning asylum systems; irrational “public charge” regulations intended to reduce legal immigration without legislation; EOIR’s distorted statistics intentionally manipulated to minimize asylum grants and cover up the anti-asylum bias improperly infused into the system; vicious unsupported attacks on the private bar by the Attorney General and other regime politicos. The list goes on forever.

Unfortunately, this scofflaw and unethical behavior will continue until Federal Judges back up their words with actions: declarations of unconstitutionality; sanctions against the Government for frivolous litigation; removing political control over EOIR; referring Barr and other DOJ attorneys who are abusing the justice system to bar authorities for possible discipline.

“This ain’t your Momma’s or Papa’s DOJ!” (Or for that matter one that those of us who served in the recent past would recognize.) Its antecedents and “role models” are America’s vile, deadly, discredited Jim Crow era and 20th & 21st Century fascist regimes.

Time for Article III Judges to get out of their ivory towers, stop tiptoeing around Government corruption, dishonesty and misconduct, and start looking at things from the human perspective of the individuals and their courageous attorneys caught up in this legal, moral, and ethical quagmire and fighting not only for their own lives but for the future of our nation! There is and will be “only one right side of history” in this existential struggle!

Due Process Forever; The Corrupt White Nationalist Immigration Agenda Never!

PWS

12-21-19

REGIME’S NEWEST SCHEME TO SCREW ASYLUM SEEKERS: BOGUS REGS THAT WOULD ILLEGALLY & UNNECESSARILY EXTEND THE GROUNDS OF “MANDATORY DENIAL,” DECREASE ADJUDICATOR DISCRETION, & SHAFT REFUGEE FAMILIES — Regime’s Outlandish “Efficiency Rationale” Fails to Mask Their Cruelty, Racism, Fraud, Waste, & Abuse – Julia Edwards Ainsley (NBC News) & Dean Kevin R. Johnson (ImmigrationProf Blog) Report

Julia Edwards Ainsley
Julia Edwards Ainsley
NBC News Correspondent

https://apple.news/AXSXjJIOxRUSM4ZOgQm9plQ

 

Trump admin announces rule further limiting immigrants’ eligibility for asylum

DUIs, drug paraphernalia possession and unlawful receipt of public benefits would be among seven triggers barring migrants from even applying for asylum.

 

by Julia Ainsley | NBC NEWS

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced a new rule Wednesday that would further limit immigrants’ eligibility for asylum if they have been convicted of certain crimes, including driving under the influence and possession of drug paraphernalia.

The rule, if finalized, would give asylum officers seven requirements with which to deem an immigrant ineligible to apply for asylum.

Other acts that would make an immigrant ineligible for asylum under the new rule include the unlawful receipt of public benefits, illegal re-entry after being issued a deportation order and being found “by an adjudicator” to have engaged in domestic violence, even if there was no conviction for such violence.

The rules could eliminate large numbers of asylum-seekers from ever having their cases heard in court. Currently, immigration courts have a backlog of over 1 million cases, according to data kept by Syracuse University.

In a statement, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security said the new rule would “increase immigration court efficiencies.”

Andrew Free, an immigration attorney based in Nashville, said the new regulation is “calculated to enable the denial of as many claims as possible.”

Free said the most common charges he sees for his immigrant clients are driving under the influence, domestic violence and driving without a license. Driving without a license is particularly common for immigrants who have had to use fake travel documents to enter the U.S. and live in states that do not give licenses to undocumented migrants.

“People who are fleeing persecutions and violence are not going to be able to get travel documents from the governments inflicting violence upon them. If you have to resort to other means of proving your identity, you won’t be eligible [for asylum,]” Free said.

The Trump administration has unveiled a number of new requirements meant to curb asylum applications this year. The most successful of those policies has been “Remain in Mexico” or MPP, that requires lawful asylum-seekers from Central America to wait in Mexico, often in dangerous conditions, until their court date in the United States. Over 60,000 asylum-seekers are currently waiting in Mexico for a decision to be made in their case, a process that can take over a year.

 

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

Kevin R. Johnson
Kevin R. Johnson
Dean
U.C. Davis Law


The Beat Goes On! Joint Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Restrict Certain “Criminal Aliens'” Eligibility for Asylum

By Immigration Prof

 Share

 

Consistent with the efforts to facilitate removal of “criminal aliens,” the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security released the announcement below today:

“The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security (collectively, “the Departments”) today issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would amend their respective regulations in order to prevent certain categories of criminal aliens from obtaining asylum in the United States. Upon finalization of the rulemaking process, the Departments will be able to devote more resources to the adjudication of asylum cases filed by non-criminal aliens.

Asylum is a discretionary immigration benefit that generally can be sought by eligible aliens who are physically present or arriving in the United States, irrespective of their status, as provided in section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. § 1158. However, in the INA, Congress barred certain categories of aliens from receiving asylum. In addition to the statutory bars, Congress delegated to the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to establish by regulation additional bars on asylum eligibility to the extent they are consistent with the asylum statute, as well as to establish “any other conditions or limitations on the consideration of an application for asylum” that are consistent with the INA. Today, the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security are proposing to exercise their regulatory authority to limit eligibility for asylum for aliens who have engaged in specified categories of criminal behavior. The proposed rule will also eliminate a regulation concerning the automatic reconsideration of discretionary denials of asylum applications in limited cases.

The proposed regulation would provide seven additional mandatory bars to eligibility for asylum. The proposed rule would add bars to eligibility for aliens who commit certain offenses in the United States.Those bars would apply to aliens who are convicted of:

(1) A felony under federal or state law;

(2) An offense under 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A) or § 1324(a)(1)(2) (Alien Smuggling or Harboring);

(3) An offense under 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (Illegal Reentry);

(4) A federal, state, tribal, or local crime involving criminal street gang activity;

(5) Certain federal, state, tribal, or local offenses concerning the operation of a motor vehicle while under the influence of an intoxicant;

(6) A federal, state, tribal, or local domestic violence offense, or who are found by an adjudicator to have engaged in acts of battery or extreme cruelty in a domestic context, even if no conviction resulted; and

(7) Certain misdemeanors under federal or state law for offenses related to false identification; the unlawful receipt of public benefits from a federal, state, tribal, or local entity; or the possession or trafficking of a controlled substance or controlled-substance paraphernalia.

The seven proposed bars would be in addition to the existing mandatory bars in the INA and its implementing regulations, such as those relating to the persecution of others, convictions for particularly serious crimes, commission of serious nonpolitical crimes, security threats, terrorist activity, and firm resettlement in another country.

Under the current statutory and regulatory framework, asylum officers and immigration judges consider the applicability of mandatory bars to asylum in every proceeding involving an alien who has submitted an application for asylum. Although the proposed regulation would expand the mandatory bars to asylum, the proposed regulation does not change the nature or scope of the role of an immigration judge or an asylum officer during proceedings for consideration of asylum applications.

The proposed rule would also remove the provisions at 8 C.F.R. § 208.16(e) and §1208.16(e) regarding reconsideration of discretionary denials of asylum. The removal of the requirement to reconsider a discretionary denial would increase immigration court efficiencies and reduce any cost from the increased adjudication time by no longer requiring a second review of the same application by the same immigration judge.” (bold added).

KJ

December 18, 2019 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)

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What total, unadulterated BS and gratuitous cruelty!

For example, 8 C.F.R. § 208.16(e) and §1208.16(e) are humanitarian provisions that seldom come up except in highly unusual and sympathetic cases. The idea that they represent a “drain” on IJ time is preposterous! And, if they did, it would be well worth it to help to keep deserving and vulnerable refugee families together!

I had about three such cases involving those regulations in 13 years on the bench, although I cited the existing regulation for the proposition that discretionary denials are disfavored, as they should be under international humanitarian laws. Federal Courts and the BIA have held that asylum should not be denied for “discretionary reasons” except in the case of “egregious adverse factors.” Therefore, an Immigration Judge properly doing his or her job would very seldom have occasion to enter a “discretionary denial” to someone eligible for asylum. Obviously, the regime intends to ignore these legal rulings.

One of my colleagues wrote “they are going to capture a lot of people and force IJs to hear separate asylum applications for each family member. So counterproductive.”

Cruelty, and more “aimless docket reshuffling” is what these “maliciously incompetent gimmicks” are all about.

I note that this is a “joint proposal” from EOIR and DHS Enforcement, the latter supposedly a “party” to every Immigration Court proceeding, but actually de facto in charge of the EOIR “judges.” That alone makes it unethical, a sign of bias, and a clear denial of Due Process for the so-called “court” and the “Government party” to collude against the “private party.”

When will the Article IIIs do their job and put an end to this nonsense? It’s not “rocket science.” Most first year law students could tell you that this absurd charade of a “court” is a clear violation of Due Process! So, what’s the problem with the Article IIIs? Have they forgotten both their humanity and what they learned in Con Law as well as their oaths of office they took upon investiture?

Right now, as intended by the regime with the connivance and complicity of the Article IIIs, those advocating for the legal, constitutional, and human rights of asylum seekers are being forced to divert scarce resources to respond to the “regime shenanigan of the day.” It’s also abusing and disrespecting the Article III Courts. Why are they so blind to what’s REALLY going on when the rest of us see it so clearly? These aren’t “legal disputes” or “legitimate policy initiatives.” No, they are lawless outright attacks on our Constitution, our nation, our human values, and our system of justice which Article III Judges are sworn to uphold!

Join the New Due Process Army and fight to protect our democracy from the White Nationalist Regime and the complicit life-tenured judges who enable and encourage it!

Due Process Forever; “Malicious Incompetence” & Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

12-21-19

CONFRONTING THE “AMERICAN STAR CHAMBER” — Innovation Law Lab, SPLC, CLINIC, & Others Force Article III Courts To Face Their Judicial Complicity In Allowing EOIR’s “Asylum Free Zones” & Other Human Rights Atrocities To Operate Under Their Noses

Tess Hellgren
Tress Hellgren
Staff Attorney/Fellow
Innovation Law Lab

My friend Tess Hellgren, Staff Attorney/Justice Catalyst Legal Fellow @ Innovation Law Lab reports:

 

Hi all,

 

As some of you are already aware, I am very pleased to share that Innovation Law Lab and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit this morning challenging the weaponization of the nation’s immigration court system to serve the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.  More information is available below and at http://innovationlawlab.org/faircourts/.

 

I would like to thank all of you again for participating in our IJ roundtable and sharing your experiences for our report on the immigration court system (you will see a reference to it in our press release below). The insights we gained over the course of that report were vital in helping us identify and understand the problems in the immigration courts under the current administration.

 

Sincerely,

 

Tess

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 18, 2019

 

Contact:
Marion Steinfels, marionsteinfels@gmail.com / 202-557-0430

Ramon Valdez, ramon@innovationlawlab.org / 971-238-1804
Immigration Advocates File Major Lawsuit Challenging

Weaponization of the Nation’s Immigration Court System

Advocates Launch Immigration Court Watch App to Ensure

Greater Accountability, Transparency in Courts

 

WASHINGTON, DC – The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Innovation Law Lab (Law Lab),  Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and Santa Fe Dreamers Project (SFDP) have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the weaponization of the nation’s immigration court system to serve the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda.

 

“Under the leadership of President Trump and the attorney general, the immigration court system has become fixated on the goal of producing deportations, not adjudications,” said Stephen Manning, executive director of Innovation Law Lab. “The system is riddled with policies that undermine the work of legal service providers and set asylum seekers up to lose without a fair hearing of their case.”

 

The complaint outlines pervasive dysfunction and bias within the immigration court system, including:

 

  • Areas that have become known as “asylum-free zones,” where virtually no asylum claims have been granted for the past several years.
  • The nationwide backlog of pending immigration cases, which has now surpassed 1 million — meaning that thousands of asylum seekers must wait three or four years for a court date.
  • The Enforcement Metrics Policy, implemented last year, which gives judges a personal financial stake in every case they decide and pushes them to deny more cases more quickly.
  • The “family unit” court docket, which stigmatizes the cases of recently arrived families and rushes their court dates, often giving families inadequate time to find an attorney and prepare for their hearings.

 

“The immigration courts make life-and-death decisions every day for vulnerable people seeking asylum – people who depend on a functioning court system to protect them from persecution, torture, and death,” said Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project. “While prior administrations have turned a blind eye to the dysfunction, the Trump administration has actively weaponized the courts, with devastating results for asylum seekers and the organizations that represent them.”

 

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of six legal service providers whose work for asylum seekers has been badly impaired as a result of the unjust immigration court system.

 

“As the political rhetoric surrounding immigrants has become sharper, we’ve noticed a decline in the treatment our clients receive in immigration court,” said Linda Corchado, Director of Legal Services, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. “While asylum seekers are entitled to a full and fair hearing, their proceedings are too often rushed, and judges deny our requests for time to properly prepare their cases and collect and translate crucial evidence from across the world.”

 

In addition to filing on behalf of their own organizations, plaintiffs include Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP), Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and Santa Fe Dreamers Project (SFDP).

 

The complaint can be viewed here and here: http://innovationlawlab.org/faircourts.

 

In an effort to ensure greater transparency and accountability in the nation’s immigration courts, Innovation Law Lab also announced the full launch of an Immigration CourtWatch app, which enables court observers to record and upload information on the conduct of immigration judges.

 

The new tool allows data on immigration judge conduct to be gathered and stored in both individual and aggregate forms. This will provide advocates with valuable information to fight systemic bias and other unlawful court practices. This data can be used to bolster policy recommendations, along with advocacy and legal strategies.

 

Advocates, attorneys and other court watchers are encouraged to download and access the app available here: http://innovationlawlab.org/courtwatch.

In June, Law Lab and SPLC released a report, based on over two years of research and focus group interviews with attorneys and former immigration judges from around the country, on the failure of the immigration court system to fulfill the constitutional and statutory promise of fair and impartial case-by-case review. The report can be accessed here: The Attorney General’s Judges:  How the U.S. Immigration Courts Became a Deportation Tool.

###

 

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, see www.splcenter.org and follow us on social media: Southern Poverty Law Center on Facebook and @splcenter on Twitter.  

 

Innovation Law Lab, based in Portland, Oregon with projects around the country and in Mexico, is a nonprofit organization that harnesses technology, lawyers, and activists to advance immigrant justice. For more information, visit www.innovationlawlab.org.

 

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

Hon. Ilyce Shugall
Hon. Ilyce Shugall
U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired)
Director, Immigrant Legal Defense Program, Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco.

 

And, here’s a statement in support of this much-needed litigation action from my distinguished Round Table colleague Judge (Ret.) Ilyce Shugall:

 

These were my remarks during the press conference:

 

I am Ilyce Shugall, a former immigration judge.  I became an IJ in 9/2017 and resigned in 3/2019.  I was sworn in by then-Chief IJ Mary Beth Keller.  She has also resigned.  I swore to uphold the constitution at my investiture.  When the administration made it impossible to continue to do so, I resigned.

 

I defended immigrants in immigration court for 18 years before I became an immigration judge, so I understood the inherent problems and limitations on judicial independence in a court system housed inside the Department of Justice, a prosecuting arm of the executive branch.  However, as Melissa said, this administration’s policies have entirely eroded what independence and legitimacy remained in the immigration court system.

 

As an immigration judge, I watched independence being stripped from the judge corps on a regular basis.  The attorney general ended administrative closure, taking away a vital docketing tool from the judges, while simultaneously contributing to the court’s ever-growing backlog.  The attorney general also significantly limited the judges’ ability to grant continuances.  Then, the attorney general and EOIR director implemented performance metrics which required judges complete 700 cases per year and created time limits on the adjudication of cases.  And this was only the beginning.  These policies have had a drastic impact on those appearing in immigration court, particularly those fleeing horrific violence who have been preventing from effectively presenting their cases.

 

New policies, memoranda, and regulations are being published regularly by this administration. Each one, an attack on the system, and each one with the goal to eliminate due process and expedite deportations.  I hope this lawsuit will eventually lead to a truly independent immigration court system, where judges can uphold their oaths and therefore immigrants receive the due process they are entitled and deserve.

 

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Every one of us in America is entitled to Due Process; every day, vulnerable asylum applicants and other migrants are being dehumanized and denied their Due Process rights by an ridiculously unconstitutional Immigration “Court” system operating with the complicity of life tenured Federal Judges, all the way up to the Supremes, who are failing to live up to their oaths of office.

 

The grotesque, constant, open abuse of the legal and constitutional rights of the most vulnerable among us threatens the rights of each of us, including those individuals responsible for putting the Trump regime in power, maintaining it, and the Article III judges who are failing to stand up to the regime’s unconstitutional cruelty and mocking of our the rule of law. Enough! It’s long past time for the Article IIIs to live up to their responsibilities and stand up for the victims of tyranny!

The case is

LAS AMERICAS IMMIGRANT ADVOCACY CENTER, et. al v. TRUMP  (D OR)

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

 

PWS

 

12-18-19

 

THIRD CIRCUIT FINALLY EXPOSES THE BIA AS A BIASED, UNPROFESSIONAL, UNETHICAL MESS, THREATENING INDIVIDUALS WITH TORTURE &/OR DEATH IN VIOLATION OF DUE PROCESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS:  In Sharp Contrast To Recent “Go Along To Get Along” Actions By The Supremes, 9th, 5th, 11th, and 4th Circuits, Circuit Judges McKee, Ambro and Roth Stand Up & Speak Out On BIA’s Unbelievably Horrible Performance: “I think it is as necessary as it is important to emphasize the manner in which the BIA dismissed Quinteros’ claim that he would be tortured (and perhaps killed) if sent back to El Salvador. For reasons I will explain below, it is difficult for me to read this record and conclude that the Board was acting as anything other than an agency focused on ensuring Quinteros’ removal rather than as the neutral and fair tribunal it is expected to be. That criticism is harsh and I do not make it lightly.”

NELSON QUINTEROS, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 3rdCir., 12-17-19, published

PANEL:  Circuit Judges McKee, Ambro and Roth

OPINION BY: Judge Roth

CONCURRING OPINION: Judge McKee, Joined By Judges Ambro & Roth

LINK TO FULL OPINION:  https://www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/183750p.pdf

READ THE FULL CONCURRING OPINION RIPPING THE BIA HERE:

McKEE, Circuit Judge, with whom Judges Ambro and Roth join, concurring.

I join my colleagues’ thoughtful opinion in its entirety. I write separately because I think it is as necessary as it is important to emphasize the manner in which the BIA dismissed Quinteros’ claim that he would be tortured (and perhaps killed) if sent back to El Salvador. For reasons I will explain below, it is difficult for me to read this record and conclude that the Board was acting as anything other than an agency focused on ensuring Quinteros’ removal rather than as the neutral and fair tribunal it is expected to be. That criticism is harsh and I do not make it lightly.

The BIA’s puzzling conclusions concerning Quinteros’ New York Yankees tattoo, although not the sole cause of my concern, illustrate the reasons I feel compelled to write separately. I will therefore begin by discussing the BIA’s decision-making process concerning this tattoo.

As Judge Roth notes, Quinteros testified that his New York Yankees tattoo would identify him as a former gang member.1 He also produced corroborating testimony to that effect from an expert witness and a study from the Harvard Law School International Rights Clinic. The first Immigration Judge to consider this evidence—which was apparently undisputed by the government—did so carefully and ultimately concluded that Quinteros “[h]as shown a clear likelihood that he would be killed or tortured by members of MS-13 and 18th Street gangs.”2 This finding was affirmed by the BIA upon its first review of Quinteros’ case,3 and affirmed again by the second IJ after we remanded for consideration in light of

1 Maj. Op. at 4-5.
2 JA125. The IJ also found the expert testimony convincing: “Dr. Boerman’s testimony persuasively illustrates how the Respondent could be mistaken for a gang member, since most gang members have tattoos, and there is a large number of MS-13 members in El Salvador . . .” Id.
3 JA130 (“We adopt and affirm the Immigration Judge’s decision.”).

1

Myrie.4 Thus, two IJs and a Board member had previously examined and accepted this finding. Yet, for reasons that are not at all apparent, the BIA suddenly reversed that conclusion upon this fourth review.

In an explanation that is both baffling and dismaying, the BIA now claims: “Apart from his own testimony and the testimony of his expert witness, the record is devoid of any objective evidence establishing that a person with a New York Yankees tattoo without any other gang identifying marks will be identified as a . . . gang member and subjected to torture.”5 I am at a loss to understand what the BIA is referring to by requiring “objective” evidence. The IJ whose order was being reviewed had held that Quinteros was credible, stating: “Based on a review of the totality of evidence, the Court finds that Respondent’s testimony was consistent with the record and he was forthright with the Court regarding his past membership in MS-13 gang. Thus, the Court finds Respondent credible.”6 Moreover, there was nothing to suggest that Quinteros’ testimony lacked credibility regarding any aspect of his fear of MS-13 or how gang members would interpret his tattoo, and neither IJ suggested anything to the contrary.7

The BIA properly states the applicable standard of review of an IJ’s credibility finding is “clear error,”8 but nowhere does it suggest any basis for finding such error in either IJs’ determination. I am therefore unable to ascertain any justification for the BIA’s sudden reversal after the three previous cycles of review all arrived at the opposite conclusion. I also remain baffled by the BIA’s usage of “objective evidence.” The firsthand testimony of the victim of any crime is probative evidence if it is credible9—the issue is

4 JA14.
5 JA5 (emphasis added).
6 JA12.
7 See JA 14 (second IJ’s conclusion that Quinteros was credible); JA118 (first IJ’s conclusion that Quinteros was credible); see also Pet. Br. 41-42.
8 See BIA Opinion at JA2 (citing C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(3)(i)).
9 For example, in statutory rape cases, fully half of the states (including Pennsylvania, where Quinteros is being held) have abolished their rules requiring corroboration. The victim’s

2

the credibility of the witness. Once a witness’s testimony is found to be credible, it cannot arbitrarily be rejected merely to achieve a particular result. Even more salient, the BIA’s rejection of Quinteros’ credible testimony is inconsistent with controlling precedent and the regulations governing CAT relief.10 Those regulations state: “[t]he testimony of the applicant, if credible, may be sufficient to sustain the burden of proof without corroboration.”11 Thus, it is clear that corroborative evidence may not be necessary. In this case, where the testimony of the applicant is credible and is not questioned in any way, there is no reason to need corroboration.

Accordingly, Quinteros’ testimony should have been sufficient proof of any dispute about his tattoo even if he could be described as lacking objectivity. Moreover, there was nothing offered to suggest that the expert witness or the report of the Harvard Clinic was anything less than objective. It is impossible to discern from the record why the BIA refused to accept that external evidence. Moreover, given its apparent disregard for these three distinct, previously accepted pieces of evidence, I seriously doubt whether any evidence would have been capable of changing the agency’s analysis. Thus, it is the BIA’s own objectivity that concerns me here.

The agency’s discussion of the location of Quinteros’ tattoo heightens these concerns. First, the BIA expressed

account, if credible, is sufficient. See 18 PA. CONS. STAT. § 3106 (2018) (“The testimony of a complainant need not be corroborated in prosecutions under [Pennsylvania criminal law]. No instructions shall be given cautioning the jury to view the complainant’s testimony in any other way than that in which all complainants’ testimony is viewed.”); Vitauts M. Gulbis, Annotation, Modern Status of Rule Regarding Necessity for Corroboration of Victim’s Testimony in Prosecution for Sexual Offense, 31 A.L.R. 4th 120 § 4[a] (1984).

10 See, e.g., Valdiviezo-Galdamez v. Att’y Gen., 663 F.3d 582, 591 (3d Cir. 2011) (accepting as objective evidence the testimony of the petitioner alone); Auguste v. Ridge, 395 F.3d 123, 134 (3d Cir. 2005) (accepting as “objective” the “[e]vidence of past torture inflicted upon the applicant . . .”). 11 8 C.F.R. § 208.16.

3

skepticism because the record does not contain a photograph of the tattoo, “or a description of its size and design.”12 It faulted Quinteros for not establishing that the tattoo is “publicly visible,” and stated, “[t]he record simply indicates that he has a tattoo on his right arm.”13 Yet, the Government never contested the existence of the tattoo and, as I have explained, Quinteros’ testimony about it was accepted as credible by the IJ.

Then the BIA objected that Quinteros never “clearly specified the location of his New York Yankees tattoo and his expert witness did not know its location.”14 However, two sentences later, the BIA states that “[t]he Record . . . simply indicates that he [Quinteros] has a tattoo on his right arm.”15 Therefore, not only was there never a dispute about the existence of the tattoo, there was also no dispute as to its location, and the BIA’s abortive suggestions to the contrary are simply inconsistent with a fair and neutral analysis of Quinteros’ claim. Finally, even if one sets that all aside, I can find no reasonable basis for the BIA to suppose that the specific design of the tattoo or testimony about its size was even necessary. Whatever its exact appearance, it was uncontested that it was a New York Yankees tattoo. And as noted by Judge Roth, the record had established that awareness of gang use of tattoos is so prevalent in El Salvador that individuals are routinely forced by police and rival gangs to remove their clothing for inspection of any tattoos that may be present.16 It therefore pains me to conclude that the BIA simply ignored evidence in an effort to find that Quinteros’ tattoo would not place him in peril as it was underneath his clothing.17

12 JA5.
13 JA5.
14 Id.
15 Id.
16 Maj. Op. at 22; see also JA61, 90-91, 162. Overlooking so obvious an inference of danger—arising from the undisputed existence of Quinteros’ tattoo—contradicts our directive that “the BIA must provide an indication that it considered such evidence, and if the evidence is rejected, an explanation as to why . . .” Zhu v. Att’y Gen., 744 F.3d 268, 272 (3d Cir. 2014). 17 JA5.

4

As troubling as the mishandling of Quinteros’ evidence might be standing alone, the BIA’s errors here are not an isolated occurrence. There are numerous examples of its failure to apply the binding precedent of this Circuit delineating the proper procedure for evaluating CAT appeals.18 Indeed, that framework has been mishandled, or simply absent, from several BIA opinions in the two years since we explicitly emphasized its importance in Myrie.19

As Judge Roth explains, Myrie instituted a two-part inquiry for evaluating whether a claim qualifies for relief under CAT. She describes the steps required and the points which must be addressed;20 we normally accept the BIA’s well- reasoned conclusions on each of these points, however,

“[t]he BIA must substantiate its decisions. We will not accord the BIA deference where its findings and conclusions are based on inferences

18 For our particular decisions on this topic, see Myrie v. Att’y Gen., 855 F.3d 509 (3d Cir. 2017); Pieschacon-Villegas v. Att’y Gen., 671 F.3d 303 (3d Cir. 2011).
19 Myrie, 855 F.3d at 516 (requiring the BIA to follow the process we have delineated, as, “[i]n order for us to be able to give meaningful review to the BIA’s decision, we must have some insight into its reasoning.”) (quoting Awolesi v. Ashcroft, 341 F.3d 227, 232 (3d Cir. 2003)). Among the examples of BIA error, see Serrano Vargas v. Att’y Gen., No. 17-2424, 2019 WL 5691807, at *2 (3d Cir. Nov. 4, 2019) (finding it “unclear” whether the BIA followed our precedent); Guzman v. Att’y Gen., 765 F. App’x. 721 (3d Cir. 2019) (finding ultimately non-determinative an incorrect application of the Myrie and Pieschacon-Villegas standards which had been summarily affirmed by the BIA); Zheng v. Att’y Gen., 759 F. App’x. 127, 130 (3d Cir. 2019) (requiring the appeals court to read between the lines of the BIA opinion to understand whether the conclusion satisfied the Myrie test); Antunez v. Att’y Gen., 729 F. App’x. 216, 223 (3d Cir. 2018) (concluding the BIA applied the wrong standard of review under Myrie).

20 Maj. Op, at 21.

5

or presumptions that 21 are not reasonably grounded in the record.”

In other words, the BIA cannot act arbitrarily. We expect that it will “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its actions, including a ‘rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.’”22 Here, as already seen, the BIA’s conclusions fell far short of that low bar. According deference would therefore be to compound a mistaken application of law.

The BIA’s misapplication of Myrie here is consistent with other examples. Beginning with the first prong of Myrie’s first question (what will happen if a petitioner is removed to his or her country of origin), the BIA ignored evidence in the record. I have already discussed much of its tattoo analysis.23 Similarly, the BIA simplistically concluded that because Quinteros left El Salvador when he was a boy, he would not be recognized by El Salvadorian gangs upon his return.24 That conclusion was clearly contradicted in the record by credible and undisputed evidence that Quinteros knows “at least 70” current or former gang members in the United States who were deported to El Salvador and would recognize him there.25 The BIA was required to at least review the evidence Quinteros offered and provide a non-arbitrary reason for rejecting it.26

21 Kang v. Att’y Gen., 611 F.3d 157, 167 (3d Cir. 2010) (quoting Sheriff v. Att’y Gen., 587 F.3d 584, 589 (3d Cir. 2009)).
22 Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of U.S., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983) (quoting Burlington Truck Lines v. United States, 371 U.S. 156, 168 (1962)).

23 JA5.
24 JA4. The BIA strangely maintains in the face of the evidence presented that “[Quinteros] has not clearly articulated exactly how anyone in El Salvador will remember or recognize him . . .” id.
25 JA63-64.
26 Huang, 620 F.3d at 388 (“The BIA simply failed to address any evidence that, if credited, would lend support to [Petitioner’s case], and thus the decision does not reflect a consideration of the record as a whole.”).

6

And the errors do not stop there. Because it had not substantively addressed the testimony offered above, the BIA was left without substantive findings on which to determine Question II of the Myrie framework: does what will likely happen to a petitioner amount to torture? As Judge Roth makes clear, the BIA is required to conduct both steps of the Myrie analysis.27 By declining to reach clear findings of what would happen upon removal, the BIA prevented itself from then being able to determine whether those results met the legal standard for torture. The Myrie framework cannot be so easily evaded.

Lastly, to briefly reiterate Judge Roth’s important observations regarding Myrie’s second prong,28 a proper inquiry must “take[] into account our precedent that an applicant can establish governmental acquiescence even if the government opposes the [group] engaged in torturous acts.”29 This is only logical, as few countries admit to torturing and killing their citizens, even when privately condoning such conduct. Thus, if we simply took countries at their word, there would barely be anywhere on the globe where CAT could apply. We have previously made clear that this is the proper inquiry to determine acquiescence and have remanded based on the BIA’s failure to look past the stated policies of a given government.30 Other Circuit Courts of Appeals have done the same.31 The BIA is thus on notice that results, not press

27 Maj. Op, at 23 (citing Myrie, 855 F.3d at 516).
28 Maj. Op, at 24-25.
29 Pieschacon-Villegas v. Att’y Gen., 671 F.3d 303, 312 (2011).
30 See, e.g., Guerrero v. Att’y Gen., 672 F. App’x 188, 191 (3d Cir. 2016) (per curiam); Torres-Escalantes v. Att’y Gen., 632 F. App’x 66, 69 (3d Cir. 2015) (per curiam).
31 Barajas-Romero v. Lynch, 846 F.3d 351, 363 (9th Cir. 2017); Rodriguez-Molinero v. Lynch, 808 F.3d 1134, 1140 (7th Cir. 2015) (“[I]t is success rather than effort that bears on the likelihood of the petitioner’s being killed or tortured if removed”); Madrigal v. Holder, 716 F.3d 499, 510 (9th Cir. 2013) (“If public officials at the state and local level in Mexico would acquiesce in any torture [petitioner] is likely to suffer, this satisfies CAT’s requirement that a public official acquiesce in the torture, even if the federal government . . . would not similarly acquiescence.”); De La Rosa v. Holder,

7

releases or public statements, are what drive the test for

acquiescence under Myrie.
III.

In Quinteros’ case, as has happened before, “[t]he BIA’s opinion frustrates our ability to reach any conclusion . . .”32 In Cruz, we stated that “the BIA’s cursory analysis ignored the central argument in [Petitioner’s] motion to reopen that he was no longer removable for committing a crime of moral turpitude.”33 In Kang, we disapproved when “[t]he BIA ignored overwhelming probative evidence . . . its findings were not reasonably grounded in the record and thus . . . . [t]he BIA’s determination was not based on substantial evidence.”34 In Huang, we complained when “[t]he BIA’s analysis [did] little more than cherry-pick a few pieces of evidence, state why that evidence does not support a well-founded fear of persecution and conclude that [petitioner’s] asylum petition therefore lacks merit. That is selective rather than plenary review.”35 There are simply too many additional examples of such errors to feel confident in an administrative system established for the fair and just resolution of immigration disputes.36 Most disturbing,

598 F.3d 103, 110 (2d Cir. 2010) (“[I]t is not clear . . . why the preventative efforts of some government actors should foreclose the possibility of government acquiescence, as a matter of law, under the CAT.”).

32 Cruz v. Att’y Gen., 452 F.3d 240, 248 (3d Cir. 2006).
33 Id.
34 Kang, 611 F.3d at 167.
35 Huang v. Att’y Gen., 620 F.3d 372, 388 (3d Cir. 2010).
36 See, e.g., Huang Bastardo-Vale v. Att’y Gen., 934 F.3d 255, 259 n.1 (3d Cir. 2019) (en banc) (castigating the BIA for its “blatant disregard of the binding regional precedent . . .”); Mayorga v. Att’y Gen., 757 F.3d 126, 134-35 (3d Cir. 2014) (reversing a BIA decision without remand and observing that “[i]deally the BIA would have provided more analysis, explaining why it accepted the IJ’s (erroneous) reasoning . . .”) (alteration in original); Quao Lin Dong v. Att’y Gen., 638 F.3d 223, 229 (3d Cir. 2011) (finding the BIA “erred by misapplying the law regarding when corroboration is necessary . . .”); Gallimore v. Att’y Gen., 619 F.3d 216, 221 (3d Cir. 2010) (holding that “[t]he BIA’s analysis in all likelihood rests on an historically inaccurate premise . . . . the

8

these failures gravely affect the rights of petitioners, such as Quinteros, who allege that they will face torture or death if removed to their country of origin.

Although the BIA is “[n]ot a statutory body . . .”37 it has been described as “[t]he single most important decision-maker in the immigration system.”38 I doubt that any court or any other administrative tribunal so regularly addresses claims of life-changing significance, often involving consequences of life and death. It is therefore particularly important that the opinions of the BIA fairly and adequately resolve the legal arguments raised by the parties and render decisions based only upon the record and the law.

I understand and appreciate that the BIA’s task is made more difficult by the incredible caseload foisted upon it, and the fact that BIA members (and IJs for that matter) are horrendously overworked.39 But administrative shortcomings

BIA’s opinion fails adequately to explain its reasoning and, in any event, appears incorrect as a matter of law.”). Nor is this a concern of recent vintage, the BIA has been on notice for well over a decade. See, e.g., Kayembe v. Ashcroft, 334 F.3d 231, 238 (3d Cir. 2003) (“[T]he BIA in this case has failed even to provide us with clues that would indicate why or how [petitioner] failed to meet his burden of proof. As a result, ‘the BIA’s decision provides us with no way to conduct our . . . review.’”) (quoting Abdulai v. Ashcroft, 239 F.3d 542, 555 (3d Cir. 2001)); Abdulai, 239 F.3d at 555 (“[T]he availability of judicial review (which is specifically provided in the INA) necessarily contemplates something for us to review . . . . the BIA’s failure of explanation makes [this] impossible . . .”) (emphasis in original).

37 Anna O. Law, THE IMMIGRATION BATTLE IN AMERICAN COURTS 23 (2010) (citing unpublished internal history of the BIA).
38 Andrew I. Schoenholtz, Refugee Protection in the United States Post September 11, 36 COLUM. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 323, 353 (2005).

39 See Am. Bar Ass’n, Comm’n on Immigration, 2019 Update Report: Reforming the Immigration System: Proposals to Promote Independence, Fairness, Efficiency, and

9

can never justify denying the parties a fair and impartial hearing, or excuse allowing adjudications to devolve into a mere formality before removal.

I would like to be able to feel comfortable that the lopsided outcomes in immigration proceedings40 reflect the merits of the claims for relief raised there rather than the proverbial “rush to judgment.” Thus, on remand, I can only hope that Quinteros’ claims are heard by more careful and judicious ears than he was afforded in this appearance.

Professionalism in the Adjudication of Removal Cases, Vol. 1, 20-21 (2019), available at https://www.naij- usa.org/images/uploads/newsroom/ABA_2019_reforming_th e_immigration_system_volume_1.pdf (noting the continued heavy caseload of the BIA, with an increasing number of appeals likely in the near future, and a resulting tendency to dispose of cases with single-member opinions that address only a single issue in the case).

40 Jaya Ramji-Nogales, et al., Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication, 60 STAN. L. REV. 295, 359-61 (2007) (reporting that between 2001 and 2005, the BIA’s rate of granting asylum fell by up to 84%, with some categories of applicants receiving asylum only 5% of the time).

10

 

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

 

It’s about time! But, this is long, long, long, long overdue! Way overdue! It’s long past time for “harsh criticism” of the BIA’s unconstitutional and inexcusable behavior. Forget about treading on the feelings of the BIA judges. Start thinking about the lives of the individuals they are harming and potentially torturing and killing! It’s time for the “Article IIIs” to “can the legal niceties” and take some action to halt the abuses before more innocent lives are lost!

 

Refreshing as it is in some respects, this concurring opinion vastly understates the overwhelming case against the BIA being allowed to continue to operate in this unprofessional, unethical, and unconstitutional manner. In the end, the panel also makes itself complicit by sending the case back for yet another unwarranted remand for the BIA to abuse this individual once again. For God’s sake, grant the protection, which is the only possible legally correct result on this record. CAT is mandatory, not discretionary!

 

Interestingly, while the panel was hatching this remand, the BIA in Matter of O-F-A-S-, 27 I&N Dec. 709 (BIA 2019) was essentially “repealing CAT by intentional misconstruction” and running roughshod over almost every CAT precedent and principle described by the panel. How many times can the regime “poke the Article IIIs in the eyes with two sharp sticks” before the latter take some notice? You’re being treated like fools, cowards, and weaklings, and the rest of us are daily losing whatever respect we once had for the role of life-tenured Federal Judges in protecting our republic and our individual rights!

 

Clearly, the intentionally skewed outcomes in asylum and other protection cases are a result of the regime’s illegal and unconstitutional White Nationalist “war on asylum,” particularly directed against vulnerable women, children, and individuals of color.  Many of these individuals are improperly and unconstitutionally forced to “represent” themselves, if they are even fortunate enough to get into the hearing system. It’s modern day racist Jim Crow with lots of gratuitous dehumanization to boot. And, it’s being enabled by feckless Article III appellate courts.

 

Judge McKee and his colleagues need not “wonder” if the skewed results of this system are fixed. The public pronouncements by overt White Nationalists like Session, Barr, Miller, “Cooch Cooch,” and Trump himself make their disdain for the law, the Constitution, individuals of color, and the Federal Courts crystal clear. There is no “mystery” here! Just look at “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” or the preposterously fraudulent “Safe Third Country Agreements” that have effectively eliminated Due Process and U.S. protection laws without legislation.

 

Read the truth from the National Association of Immigration Judges or one of the many other experts in the field who have exposed the unconstitutional operations of the Immigration Courts and the need for immediate action to end the abuse and restore at least a semblance of Due Process! Of course, these aren’t fair and impartial adjudications as required by the Constitution. They haven’t been for some time now. No reasonable person or jurist could think that “kangaroo courts” operating under the thumb of enforcement zealots like Sessions and Barr could be fair and impartial as required by the Constitution!

 

And the “backlogs” adding to the pressure on the BIA and Immigration Judges are overwhelmingly the result of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” by the DOJ, which went into “overdrive” during this regime. The regime then “pulls the wool” over the eyes of the Article IIIs and the public by deflecting attention from their own “malicious incompetence” while shifting the blame to the victims – the respondents and their attorneys. How cowardly and dishonest can one get? Yet, the Article IIIs fail time after time to look at the actual evidence of “malicious incompetence” by the Trump regime that has been compiled by TRAC and others!

 

Sessions and Barr have made it clear that the only purpose of their weaponized and “dumbed down” Immigration “Courts” is to churn out removal orders on the “Deportation Express.” “Reflect on the merits?” Come on, man! You have got to be kidding! There is nothing in this perverted process that encourages such care or reflection or even informed decision making. That’s why judges are on “production quotas!” It’s about volume, not quality. Sessions actually said it out loud at an Immigration Judges’ so-called “training session!” In the unlikely event that the respondent actually “wins” one, even against these odds, Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr have all shown how they can unconstitutionally and unethically simply reach down and change results to favor the DHS.

 

As the bogus denials pile up, even though country conditions are not materially improving in most “sending” countries, the Trump Regime, EOIR, DOJ, and DHS use these unfair results to build their false narrative that the artificially inflated denial rates reflect the lack of merits of the claims.

 

Would Court of Appeals Judges or Justices of the Supremes subject themselves or their families to “Immigration Court Justice” in any type of meaningful dispute? Of course not! So, why is it “Constitutionally OK” for often unrepresented individuals on trial for their lives to be subjected to this system? It clearly isn’t! So, why is it being done every day?

 

End the dangerous, unethical, and immoral “Judicial Task Avoidance.” Time for the Article IIIs to step up to the plate, stop enabling, stop remanding, stop looking the other way, and rule this entire system unconstitutional, as it most certainly is. Stop all deportations until Congress creates an independent Immigration Court system that complies with Due Process! Assign a “Special Master” to run EOIR without DOJ interference. Those few cases where the public health or safety is actually at risk should be tried before U.S. Magistrate Judges or retired U.S. District Judges until at least temporary Due Process fixes can be made to the Immigration Courts.

 

Sound radical? Not as radical as sentencing vulnerable individuals to death, torture, or other unspeakable harm without any semblance of Due Process — subjecting individuals to a “crapshoot for their lives.” And, that’s what we’re doing now because Article III Courts don’t have the guts to do their job and “just say no” – once and for all — to EOIR’s daily charade that mocks our Constitution and our humanity!

 

Due Process Forever!

A maliciously incompetent regime and complicit courts, never!

PWS

12-17-19

FARCE UNDER THE “BIG TOP” – “Clown Courts” Deliver Potential Death Sentences With Nary A Trace Of Due Process As Article III Judges Beclown Themselves By Looking The Other Way!

Michelle Hackman
Michelle Hackman
Immigration Reporter
Wall Street Journal
Alicia A. Caldwell
Alicia A. Caldwell
Immigration Reporter
Wall Street Journal

Michelle Hackman and Alicia A. Caldwell report for the Wall Street Journal:

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/immigration-tent-courts-at-border-raise-due-process-concerns-11576332002

Immigration Tent Courts at Border Raise Due-Process Concerns

By

Michelle Hackman and

Alicia A. Caldwell | Photographs by Verónica G. Cárdenas for The Wall Street Journal

Dec. 14, 2019 9:00 am ET

BROWNSVILLE, Texas—Each morning well before sunrise, dozens of immigrants line up on the international bridge here to enter a recently erected tent facility at the U.S. border.

Inside a large wedding-style tent, the government has converted shipping containers into temporary courtrooms, where flat screens show the judge and a translator, who are in front of a camera in chambers miles away.

The tents, which appeared at ports of entry here and up the Rio Grande in Laredo in late summer, are the latest manifestation of the Trump administration’s evolving response to a surge of migrants seeking asylum at the southern border.

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Do you think the differences between the tent courts and other immigration courts deny some applicants due process? Join the conversation below.

Migrants are ushered to these courts dozens at a time, allowing them access to the U.S. legal system without admitting them onto U.S. soil. They are already part of yet another Trump administration experiment, the Migrant Protection Protocols, which requires migrants to live in Mexico for the duration of their court cases.

The administration says the tent courts are designed to help the immigration system move more quickly through cases, providing asylum faster for qualified applicants and turning away the rest—many of whom, the administration says, have submitted fraudulent claims.

In the past, nearly all families and children arriving at the border were allowed into the U.S. to await hearings. But now, tens of thousands of asylum seekers must wait months in Mexican border cities that have some of the highest crime rates in the Western Hemisphere.

Asylum seekers waited in line to attend their immigration hearings on the Gateway International Bridge in Matamoros.

On a recent Friday, Judge Eric Dillow connected with the Brownsville tent via videoconference from his courtroom in Harlingen, Texas, about 30 miles away. The migrants, seated at a folding table, were shown on a large screen.

Judge Dillow planned to hold hearings for 28 migrants that morning, but only 17 appeared at the bridge the requisite four hours before their 8:30 a.m. hearing. Only two brought a lawyer. The rest were read their rights as a group, and when asked if they had questions, none raised their hands.

James McHenry, head of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that oversees immigration courts, said temporary courts adhere to the same procedures and offer the same rights to people as other immigration courts. “In all cases, a well-trained and professional immigration judge considers the facts and evidence, applies the relevant law, and makes an appropriate decision consistent with due process,” he said.

But immigrant-rights advocates and the union representing immigration judges—who are Justice Department employees—say the unique conditions of the tent courts deny migrants due process by depriving them of meaningful access to lawyers or interaction with judges, making the setup essentially a rubber stamp for deportation.

“It’s a system that’s designed in its entire structure to turn people away,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel with the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The judges union has expressed concern over numerous issues: Judges can’t interact with applicants face-to-face, which the union says is important to assess credibility. Immigration court officials aren’t in the tents, which are operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Judges can’t hand migrants documents directly to ensure they contain no errors. Unlike most U.S. courts, the tents are closed to the public and press.

A Cuban asylum seeker waited in Matamoros to present his documents to the agent who will be escorting him to his immigration hearing.

“The space of the court is supposed to be controlled by the court,” said Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “But the tents, we don’t have any control over.”

Most migrants who cross the border near Brownsville are sent to Matamoros, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande, where they live in shelters or tents near the bridge.

They are returned with little more than a sheet of paper stating their first court date and a list of lawyers to contact. But those contacts aren’t very useful because they have either U.S.-based or toll-free phone numbers that don’t function in Mexico.

Of the 47,313 people whose cases were filed between January and September, only 2.3% have legal representation and only 11 have been granted asylum or other legal status, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which tracks immigration court data.

Pro-bono lawyers who work with these migrants are fearful to travel far beyond the U.S. border into Mexico. Inside the tents, lawyers are typically permitted 15 minutes to meet clients before hearings. In most other U.S. courts, lawyers are free to visit clients, and detention facilities provide more opportunities for meetings.

On two recent days in the tents, migrants appearing alone spent about five minutes each before a judge, while migrants with lawyers took between 20 and 30 minutes each.

“The system is dependent on individuals not finding representation because they can be deported much easier and faster,” said Jeff O’Brien, a California-based immigration lawyer representing several Brownsville clients pro bono. “If everyone had a lawyer, it would essentially come to a halt.”

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent checked documents presented by asylum seekers.

Documentation errors are a common hurdle. Applicants’ addresses are often listed on forms as simply “domicilio conocido,” which roughly translates as general delivery, or sometimes a Matamoros shelter that many migrants avoid because they are scared to travel farther into the city.

Tent camp residents also had notices for hearings when courts aren’t open: one at 1 a.m. and another on a Saturday.

It isn’t known how the government notifies these migrants about changes in their cases without valid addresses. Migrants who aren’t at the bridge for hearings are assumed to have abandoned their cases. Government lawyers ask judges to deport absentees—ending asylum requests and barring them from the U.S. for a decade.

Asked about how address discrepancies are handled, a Justice Department spokesman said judges follow the Immigration Court Practice Manual. The manual requires migrants in the U.S. to notify the court of address changes, and in cases where they are detained, it requires the government to notify the court where. Neither scenario applies to migrants in Mexico.

Without lawyers, applicants routinely make paperwork errors—such as submitting documents in Spanish, or documents translated into English without a form certifying the translator is English-proficient—that advocates say they have seen judges use to order them deported.

At a recent hearing in Brownsville, a Honduran woman and her baby daughter appeared before Judge Sean D. Clancy in Harlingen. A CBP officer in Brownsville had faxed the woman’s asylum application to Harlingen, where a clerk handed it to the judge.

A Central American asylum-seeking mother hugged her child on a November morning in Matamoros.

“Are you afraid of returning to Honduras?” Judge Clancy asked the woman. A translator beside him repeated the question in Spanish. “Very much,” came the translated reply.

Judge Clancy looked at her application and noted a different response. “One question here says, ‘Do you fear harm if you return to your home country?’ And you checked ‘no.’”

The woman appeared confused. Judge Clancy told her to return to court with a properly completed application on April 15, when a date for her full asylum hearing would be set.

Write to Michelle Hackman at Michelle.Hackman@wsj.com and Alicia A. Caldwell at Alicia.Caldwell@wsj.com

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

What a total disgrace and mockery of justice! What do Circuit Court of Appeals judges do for a living if they don’t have the legal skills and courage to stand up for our Constitution and our asylum laws against US Government fraud and abuses like this?

Nobody without a lawyer has any chance in this system! With a representation rate of an astoundingly low 2.3% due to the Trump regime’s intentional obstacles, roadblocks, and refusal to promote and facilitate pro bono representation, this system is nothing less than an unconstitutional and illegal “killing floor” (a reasonable chance to be represented by pro bono counsel is actually a statutory requirement). You don’t have to be much of an Article III Judge to recognize the the systemic fraud and abuse going on here. But, a judge would have to have the courage to stand up to the Trump regime and put a stop to this disgraceful nonsense! Sadly, courage seems to be something in very short supply at the appellate levels of the Federal Judiciary these days.

Thanks Michelle and Alicia for exposing this ongoing parody of justice!

 

PWS

12-17-19

 

 

 

PROFILES IN JUDICIAL COWARDICE: AS FEDERAL COURTS FAIL, DUE PROCESS DIES, & THE REGIME SIMPLY THUMBS ITS NOSE AT THE LAW BY RETURNING ASYLUM SEEKING FAMILIES TO “DEATH ZONES!” — “Experts, advocates, the United Nations and Guatemalan officials say the country doesn’t have the capacity to handle any sizable influx, much less process potential protection claims. Guatemala’s own struggles with corruption, violence and poverty helped push more than 270,000 Guatemalans to the U.S. border in fiscal 2019.”

Molly O’Toole
Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-12-10/u-s-starts-pushing-asylum-seeking-families-back-to-guatemala-for-first-time

Molly O’Toole reports for the LA Times:

In a first, U.S. starts pushing Central American families seeking asylum to Guatemala

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A woman leaves the market in Guatemala City with a bundle of bamboo culms. (Luis Soto / Associated Press)

By MOLLY O’TOOLE  STAFF WRITER

DEC. 10, 2019 6:58 PM

WASHINGTON —  U.S. officials have started to send families seeking asylum to Guatemala, even if they are not from the Central American country and had sought protection in the United States, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

In July, the Trump administration announced a new rule to effectively end asylum at the southern U.S. border by requiring asylum seekers to claim protection elsewhere. Under that rule — which currently faces legal challenges — virtually any migrant who passes through another country before reaching the U.S. border and does not seek asylum there will be deemed ineligible for protection in the United States.

A few days later, the administration reached an agreement with Guatemala to take asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. border who were not Guatemalan. Although Guatemala’s highest court initially said the country’s president couldn’t unilaterally enter into such an agreement, since late November, U.S. officials have forcibly returned individuals to Guatemala under the deal.

At first, U.S. officials said they would return only single adults. But starting Tuesday, they began applying the policy to non-Guatemalan parents and children, according to communications obtained by The Times and several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials.

One family of three from Honduras, as well as a separate Honduran parent and child, were served with notices on Tuesday that they’d soon be deported to Guatemala.

The Trump administration has reached similar agreements with Guatemala’s Northern Triangle neighbors, El Salvador and Honduras, in each case obligating those countries to take other Central Americans who reach the U.S. border. Those agreements, however, have yet to be implemented.

The administration describes the agreements as an “effort to share the distribution of hundreds of thousands of asylum claims.”

The deals — also referred to as “safe third country” agreements — “are formed between the United States and foreign countries where aliens removed to those countries would have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection,” according to the federal notice.

Guatemala has virtually no asylum system of its own, but the Trump administration and Guatemalan government both said the returns would roll out slowly and selectively.

The expansion of the policy to families could mean many more asylum seekers being forcibly removed to Guatemala.

Experts, advocates, the United Nations and Guatemalan officials say the country doesn’t have the capacity to handle any sizable influx, much less process potential protection claims. Guatemala’s own struggles with corruption, violence and poverty helped push more than 270,000 Guatemalans to the U.S. border in fiscal 2019.

Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Molly O’Toole

Molly O’Toole is an immigration and security reporter based in the Los Angeles Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Foreign Policy covering the 2016 election and Trump administration, and a politics reporter at the Atlantic’s Defense One. She has covered migration and security from Mexico, Central America, West Africa, the Middle East, the Gulf, and South Asia. She is a graduate of Cornell University and NYU, but will always be a Californian.

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To be an Article III Federal Appellate Judge or Supreme Court Justice these days seems to be little more than a license to take a “what me worry approach” to Due Process, immigration, asylum, racism, and the human tragedy unfolding around us every day. As long as it isn’t their kids and families being harassed, abused, allowed to die in prison, or unlawfully sent to potential “death camps” in some of the most dangerous regions of the world, who cares? 

Abuse of others, particularly the less fortunate and most vulnerable: “Out of sight, out of mind.” As long as the paychecks keep coming and the security is good in the ivory tower, the legal gobbledygook and spineless task evasion will keep flowing until our nation finally goes out of business under Trump’s anti-Constitutional authoritarian onslaught.

Will it affect those lifetime judicial pensions? Just don’t let the screams of the abused, tortured, and dying keep you up at night judges! But do authoritarian dictatorships really need “judges,” even subservient ones?

PWS

12-11-19

 

WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”

Angelina Chapin
Angelina Chapin
Reporter
HuffPost
Jodi Goodwin, Esquire
Jodi Goodwin, Esquire
Immigration Attorney
Harlingen, TX

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/remain-in-mexico-policy-immigrant-kids_n_5deeb143e4b00563b8560c69

Angelina Chapin reports for HuffPost:

A few times a week, attorney Jodi Goodwin walks across the bridge from Brownsville, Texas, to a refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico, to meet with asylum-seekers. Her clients are among the more than 2,500 immigrants crammed into tents while they wait for U.S. immigration hearings ― often stuck for months in dirty and dangerous conditions.

The forced return to Mexico of migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. is one of President Donald Trump’s most inhumane immigration policies, yet it hasn’t received nearly the attention that his family separation and prolonged detention practices have.

Since January, under Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” initiative ― also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) ― the U.S. government has sent at least 54,000 immigrants to wait for their court dates in Mexican border towns. Instead of staying with relatives in the U.S., families are sleeping in tents for up to eight months, in unprotected areas where infections spread within crowded quarters and cartel kidnappings are commonplace. Family separation ended a year ago. But Trump’s mistreatment of asylum-seekers continues in a different form.

Some parents are so desperate that they’ve resorted to sending their children across the bridge alone, since unaccompanied kids who arrive at the border cannot be turned away under MPP. Since October, at least 135 children have crossed back into the U.S. by themselves after being sent to wait in Mexico with their parents, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In Mexico, many of these migrants don’t have access to lawyers and are forced to plead their cases in makeshift tent courts set up along the U.S. border where overwhelmed judges conduct hearings via video teleconference. The courts have limited public access ― lawyers and translators say that they have been barred from attending hearings. Migrants’ advocates argue that the tent courts violate due process, and immigrant rights organizations have filed a federal lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the use of videoconferencing.

Goodwin, who has 42 clients, said there is a serious shortage of lawyers willing to represent immigrants staying in another country where crime is rife. She spoke with HuffPost about why the Remain in Mexico policy is even more traumatic than separating thousands of families and why it hasn’t sparked public outrage.

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AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAWYERS ASSOCIATION

Jodi Goodwin (center) at the refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico.

HuffPost: Immigrant parents forced to wait in Mexico are making the heart-wrenching choice to send their kids to the U.S. alone. What are the conditions like at the camp in Matamoros?

Jodi Goodwin: It smells like urine and feces. There’s not enough sanitation. There’s 10 port-a-potties for thousands of people. Up until recently, there was no potable water available at all. People were bathing in the Rio Grande river, getting sick and, in some cases, drowning. People were seriously dehydrated.

The camp sounds completely unfitting for any human being, let alone children.

It’s a horrific situation to put families in. It’s great to live in a tent for the weekend when you’re going to the lake. It’s not great to live in a tent for months at a time where you don’t have basic necessities.

Are kids getting sick?

The kids are sick every day. I’ve seen all kinds of respiratory illnesses and digestive illnesses. I’ve seen chronic illnesses like epilepsy. I saw a baby that appeared to have sepsis who was forced to wait on the bridge for more than three hours before being taken to a hospital.

And what about the kidnappings? Have you heard of families being taken by cartel members who then try and extort an immigrant’s U.S. relatives for money?

About half of the people I’ve spoken to in Mexico have been kidnapped. The cartel knows if they can grab an immigrant, they’re likely to be able to work out a ransom. If they don’t, then they just kill them.

Any specific examples?

I dealt with one case where a mom from El Salvador and her 4-year-old son were kidnapped within an hour of being sent back to Mexico under MPP. They were taken for eight days before her brother in the U.S. paid the kidnappers $7,000.

The lady was terrified. She was sleep-deprived, food-deprived and water-deprived. She said that the people who had kidnapped her were extremely violent and hit her kid. They were drinking alcohol and raping people at a stash house where several other people were being held.

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LOREN ELLIOTT / REUTERS

Migrants, most of them asylum-seekers sent back to Mexico from the U.S. under the “Remain in Mexico” program, occupy a makeshift encampment in Matamoros, Mexico, on Oc. 28, 2019.

The last time we spoke, you were on the frontlines of family separation, visiting detention centers where mothers were hysterically crying after being ripped apart from their children. How does the trauma of MPP compare, particularly for parents who are sending their kids across the border alone?

It’s way worse. I can’t with any confidence say that they will ever see their children again.

Why not?

I knew there were legal ways to get out of family separation. We were able to talk with our clients and didn’t have to go off to another country. And for those parents who got through their interviews or their court hearings, we were able to get them back with their kids.

With MPP, the assault is not only on human rights but also on due process within the court systems, which has completely hijacked the ability to be able to fix things. The parents can’t even get into the country to try to reunify with their kids.

Nearly 3,000 children were separated from their parents under Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. Do you think a similar number of families will be ripped apart because of Remain in Mexico?

It could be more. Over 55,000 people have been sent back to Mexico. I’ve talked to so many parents who have sent their kids across. It’s a heart-wrenching decision process that they go through. How do you give up your baby?

It reminds me of Jewish parents who were captives in Nazi Germany and had to convince their kids to get on a different train or go in a different line to save their own lives.

Have you witnessed these separations firsthand?

In November I saw a little boy and his 4-year-old sister sent across the bridge with an older child, who was about 14 years old. The teenager carried the baby boy, who still had a pacifier in his mouth, and the girl was holding onto the older kid’s belt loop.

I was standing on the bridge between Matamoros and the U.S. and I turned around to look down at the bank of the Rio Grande river. Every single parent who has sent their kid to cross tells me the same thing: As soon as they say goodbye and hug their kids, they run to the bank to watch them. [Her voice breaks] I knew there was somebody probably standing on that bank hoping those kids made it across.

Do you still think about those kids?

Oh yeah. The green binky that the little baby was sucking on is knitted in my mind.

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VERONICA CARDENAS / REUTERS

The Mexican National Guard patrols an encampment where asylum-seekers live as their tents are relocated from the plaza to near the banks of the Rio Grande in Matamoros on Dec. 7, 2019.

You’ve been working hundreds of hours a month to try and help people stranded in Matamoros. This work must take a toll on you personally.

I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me.

I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.

Family separation resulted in massive outcry from the public, which eventually pressured the government to end the zero-tolerance policy. Why is MPP not getting the same attention?

There is no public outrage because it’s not happening on our soil. It’s happening literally 10 feet from the turnstile to come to the U.S. But because it’s out of sight and out of mind, there is no outrage. What ended family separation was public outrage. It had nothing to do with lawsuits. It had everything to do with shame, shame, shame.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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

I’m with you, Jodi!  Thanks for your dedication to justice for the most vulnerable!

What’s wrong with this scenario: life-tenured Federal Judges who won’t stand up for the rule of law, Due Process, and Equal Protection in the face of an arrogantly and overtly lawless White Nationalist Regime; DOJ and other U.S. Government lawyers who defend immoral and disingenuous positions in Federal Court, often, as in the Census Case and the DACA Case using pretextual rationales and knowingly false information; dehumanization, with overwhelming racial and religious overtones, of those who deserve our protection and rely on our sense of fairness; undercutting, mistreating and humiliating the brave lawyers like Jodi who are standing up for justice in the face of tyranny; GOP legislators who are lawyers defending Trump’s mockery of the Constitution, human decency, and the rule of law and knowingly and defiantly spreading Putin’s false narratives.  

Obviously, there has been a severe failure in our legal and ethical education programs and our criteria for Federal Judicial selections, particularly at the higher levels, and particularly with respect to the critical characteristic of courage. Too many “go alongs to get alongs!” I can only hope that our republic survives long enough to reform and correct these existential defects that now threaten to bring us all down.

Where’s the accountability? Where’s the outrage? Where’s our humanity?

We should also remember that many asylum seekers from Africa, who face extreme danger in Mexico, are also being targeted (“shithole countries?”) and abused as part of the Regime’s judicially-enabled, racially driven, anti-asylum, anti-rule-of-law antics at the Southern Border. https://apple.news/AyYSWSXNfSdOm63skxWaUTQ

Also, morally corrupt Trump Regime officials continued to tout “Crimes Against Humanity” as an acceptable approach to border enforcement and “reducing apprehensions!” Will machine gun turrets be next on their list? Will Article III Judges give that their “A-OK?”

We’re actually paying Article III Federal Judges who are knowingly and intentionally furthering “Crimes Against Humanity.” Totally outrageous!

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!
Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

12-10-19

11TH CIRCUIT TANKS, DEFERS TO MATTER OF A-B- — Refugee Women Of Color Sentenced To Potential Death Without Due Process By Judges Elizabeth L. Branch, Peter T. Fay, & Frank M. Hull!

http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201814788.pdf

AMEZCUA-PRECIADO v. U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, 11th Cir., 12-03-19, published (per curium)

PANEL: BRANCH, FAY and HULL, Circuit Judges.

Maria Amezcua-Preciado, a native and citizen of Mexico, along with her two minor children, petitions for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA”) final order reversing the Immigration Judge’s (“IJ”) grant of her application for asylum and denying her withholding of removal. The BIA concluded, based on recent precedent from the Attorney General, Matter of A-B-, 27 I. & N. Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), that Amezcua-Preciado’s proposed social group of “women in Mexico who are unable to leave their domestic relationships” was not a cognizable particular social group under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”). After review, we agree with the BIA that Amezcua-Preciado failed to establish membership in a particular social group. We thus deny Amezcua- Preciado’s petition for review.

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

Wow, what an amazingly gutless and disingenuous performance! Complicit Article III courts have become one of the Trump Regime’s key White Nationalist tools for “deconstructing” U.S. immigration, refugee, and asylum laws.

These aren’t legal disagreements; they are a derelictions of ethical and moral responsibilities. Matter of A-B- was a biased, legally incorrect, factually distorted, unethical attack on asylum law by a Sessions, who was not a “fair and impartial adjudicator.” It ignored a generation of well-developed jurisprudence, legal analysis, and overwhelming factual support for recognizing gender-based domestic violence as a basis for asylum.

Matter of A-R-C-G-, overruled by A-B-, represented a broad consensus within the legal community. Indeed, much of the impetus for that decision came from DHS itself, who had been successfully and efficiently applying its principles in Asylum Offices and in Immigration Courts long before A-R-C-G- actually became a precedent. Remarkably, no actual party requested Sessions’s intervention in A-B-; he rejected ICE’s request to vacate his interference and return the case to the BIA for adjudication under A-R-C-G- criteria. Obviously, the fix was on. But, that made no difference to Branch, Fay, and Hull in their disingenuous haste to “roll over” for the White Nationalist agenda.

I hope that when future historians eventually dissect the rancid racism, misogynism, and White Nationalism of the current regime they will fully expose jurists like Branch, Fay, & Hull who used their privileged positions to “go along to get along,” enabling and furthering the regime’s illegal and unethical “war on asylum seekers, migrants of color, and women.”

DUE PROCESS FOREVER; COMPLICIT COURTS NEVER!

PWS

12-03-18

“LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” UPDATE: SAN DIEGO IMMIGRATION JUDGES STAND UP AGAINST TRUMP REGIME’S LAWLESS BEHAVIOR — Elsewhere Along The Border, Most Judges Appear To “Go Along To Get Along” With White Nationalist Agenda!

Alicia A. Caldwell
Alicia A. Caldwell
Immigration Reporter
Wall Street Journal

https://apple.news/A8ArjPBJHQmSHq_XVgoRjKw

Alicia A. Caldwell reports for the WSJ:

U.S.

Judges Quietly Disrupt Trump Immigration Policy in San Diego

Immigration court terminates more than a third of ‘Remain in Mexico’ cases

SAN DIEGO—Immigration judges in this city are presenting a challenge to the Trump administration’s policy of sending asylum-seeking migrants back to Mexico, terminating such cases at a significantly higher rate than in any other court, according to federal data.

Between January and the end of September, immigration judges in San Diego terminated 33% of more than 12,600 Migrant Protection Protocols cases, also known as Remain in Mexico, according to data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Judges in El Paso, Texas, the busiest court hearing MPP cases, terminated fewer than 1% of their more than 14,000 cases.

The nine San Diego judges have repeatedly ruled that asylum seekers waiting in Mexico weren’t properly notified of their court dates or that other due process rights were violated.

The high rate of dismissals is undermining the Trump administration’s goal of quickly ordering the deportation of more illegal border crossers who request asylum, including those who don’t show up from Mexico for their court hearings.

The effect is more symbolic than practical. Such a decision doesn’t mean a migrant is allowed to stay in the U.S., even if they show up for their court hearing. Instead, it saves them from being banned from coming to the country for 10 years and makes it tougher for the government to charge them with a felony if they cross the border illegally in the future. Those whose case is dismissed when they aren’t in court might not even know about the decision unless they call a government hotline.

Spokespeople for Customs and Border Protection, which carries out MPP at the border, and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests for comment.

However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose lawyers represent the government in immigration Court, have filed an appeal with a Justice Department panel. The appeal questions whether judges who terminate cases for migrants who don’t show up in court made a mistake.

A spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the immigration court’s parent agency, said immigration judges don’t comment on their rulings.

Denise Gilman, an immigration lawyer and director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, said the high number of dismissals in San Diego sends a message that judges there believe many government’s cases don’t meet minimum legal standards.

That stands in contrast to immigration judges elsewhere, experts and advocates said.

“Everywhere but in San Diego, [judges] are going with the flow,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer and policy analyst with the American Immigration Council, which opposes the Trump administration’s border policies.

Immigration judges are unlike most other judges in that they are civil servants, neither appointed nor elected. In civil courts, some jurisdictions are known as more plaintiff- or defendant-friendly. Some federal appeals courts skew left or right, but most don’t rule so frequently on a single policy as immigration judges on MPP.

The Trump administration has sent more than 55,000 asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico to await court hearings under MPP. Migrants were first turned back in January, and through the end of September, just over 5,000 have been ordered deported. Eleven were granted some sort of relief, including asylum, according to TRAC.

Over two recent days in San Diego, multiple judges made clear that they had concerns about Remain in Mexico program as they dismissed cases.

Judge Scott Simpson terminated cases for a family of three from Honduras after ruling that the government violated their due process rights by not properly filling out their notice to appear. As a result, he said, the migrants didn’t know the grounds on which they could fight their case.

“I found that the charging document was defective on a technicality,” Judge Simpson explained to Belma Marible Coto Ceballos and her two children. “It just means that your court case is over.”

MORE ON IMMIGRATION

Bipartisan House Deal Opens Path to Citizenship for Illegal Immigrant Farmworkers

Immigrant-Visa Applicants Required to Show They Can Afford Health Care

U.S. Immigration Courts’ Backlog Exceeds One Million Cases

New Trump Administration Rule Will Look at Immigrants’ Credit Histories

Ms. Coto quietly nodded as she listened to an interpreter before her attorney, Carlos Martinez, objected to the government’s plan to send the family back to Mexico while it appeals the termination. She and her children are afraid to return, Mr. Martinez explained, after Ms. Coto was assaulted in Tijuana.

Judge Simpson said he didn’t have the authority to keep the family in the U.S., but sought assurances that authorities would interview Ms. Coto about her fears of being sent back to Mexico.

During a separate hearing that same day, 10 MPP cases were closed by Judge Christine A. Bither, who also raised questions about the migrants’ addresses listed on government documents. She denied a government request to issue deportation orders in their absence.

Judge Simpson, meanwhile, repeatedly questioned how the government would update migrants in Mexico about their cases. Migrants routinely move between shelters or cities and don’t have a fixed address where they can receive mail.

He noted that migrants’ addresses are routinely listed on government documents as “domicilio conocido,” or general delivery in Spanish. In one case, he noted that “domicilio conocido” was misspelled for a migrant family that arrived late to the port of entry and missed the bus to immigration court. The government agreed to dismiss that case.

Write to Alicia A. Caldwell at Alicia.Caldwell@wsj.com

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As noted in the article, the issues raised by the San Diego rulings are now before the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”). Even if the BIA Appellate Immigration Judges “do the right thing” and reject the DHS appeal, I’m relatively sure that Billy Barr will change the result so that the DHS “wins” (and justice “loses”) no matter what the law says.

Larger question: a system where the biased prosecutor gets to hire and supervise the “judges” and then change the result if the individual nevertheless wins is obviously unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment. So whatever happened to the Article III Courts whose job it is to uphold the Constitution and enforce the Bill of Rights against Executive overreach (which is exactly why the Bill of Rights was included in our Constitution)? Why are those gifted with life-tenure so feckless in the face of clear Executive tyranny?

Some Immigration Judges who lack life tenure and the other protections given to Article III judges are willing to stand up; those who are empowered so they can stand up instead stand by and watch injustice unfold every day in this fundamentally unfair system that is an insult to Constitutional Due Process, a mockery of justice, and a disgrace to their oaths of office!

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

PWS

11

THREE THANKSGIVING CHEERS FOR IMMIGRATION JUDGE JULIE NELSON (SF) & APPELLATE IMMIGRATION JUDGE ELLEN LIEBOWITZ (BIA) — Doing Justice, Granting Asylum, Saving Lives In The Age Of Trump!

My colleague Judge Jeffrey Chase of our Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges reports some good news:

Also, for those of you who subscribe to Ben Winograd’s index of unpublished BIA Decisions, today’s update includes an unpublished decision dated Nov. 6, 2019, Matter of A-C-A-A- (single BM Ellen Liebowitz), affirming the IJ’s grant of asylum in a domestic violence case based on her cognizable PSG of “Salvadoran females.”  The written decision of the IJ, Julie L. Nelson in SF, is also included.

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Thanks to those judges like Judge Nelson and Judge Liebowitz who are continuing to stand up for the rights of asylum seekers “post-A-B-.” 

And, many thanks to Jeffrey & Ben for passing this good news along and for all they do for Due Process every day!

What if rather than the “A-B- atrocity” made precedent by unethical White Nationalist Jeff Sessions, we had an honest, independent Immigration Court system that encouraged fair and impartial adjudications and implemented asylum laws generously, as intended (see, e.g., INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca) by publishing precedent decisions like this recognizing the right to protection? 

BIA precedents on asylum have intentionally been constructed in a negative manner, showing judges how to deny, rather than grant, protection and encouraging them to take a skewed anti-asylum view of the law. Even worse, bogus, unethical, legally incorrect “Attorney General precedents” are uniformly anti-asylum; the applicant never wins.  

Some judges, like Judge Nelson and Judge Leibovitz, take their oaths of office seriously. But, too many others “go along to get along” with the unlawful and unethical “anti-asylum program” pushed by the White Nationalist Trump Regime.

Indeed, even during my tenure as an Immigration Judge, I remember being required to attend asylum “training” sessions (in years when we even had training) where litigating attorneys from the Office of Immigration Litigation basically made a presentation that should have been entitled “How to Deny Potentially Valid Asylum Claims And Have Them Stand Up On Judicial Review.”

It’s also past time for the Supremes and the Circuit Courts of Appeals to get their collective heads out of the clouds, start paying attention, begin doing their jobs and strongly rejecting “disingenuous deference” to bogus, illegal, unethical  “precedents” rendered by politically biased enforcement hacks like Sessions and Barr who have unethically usurped the role of quasi-judicial adjudicator for which they are so clearly and spectacularly unqualified under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. It’s nothing short of “judicial fraud” by the Article IIIs! Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

With a more honest and legally correct favorable precedents on asylum, many more cases could be documented and granted at the Asylum Office and Immigration Court levels. The DHS would be discouraged from wasting court time by opposing meritorious applications. The backlog would start going down. There would be fewer appeals. Justice would be served. Worthy lives would be saved. DHS could stop harassing asylum seekers and start enforcing the laws in a fair and reasonable manner. America would lead the way in implementing humanitarian laws, and we would become a better country for it.

Help the New Due Process Army fight for a better, more just, future for America and the world.

Due Process Forever!

Happy Thanksgiving.

PWS

11-28-19