Category: Gangs

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-beto-border-rallies-20190211-story.html

Eli Stokols & Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports for the LA Times:

President Trump falsely told a raucous rally in El Paso on Monday night that he is already building a wall on the adjacent border with Mexico, as a potential Democratic challenger assailed him at a large protest nearby and, in Washington, congressional negotiators announced a tentative funding deal without the billions he demanded for a wall.

Beneath banners reading “Finish the Wall,” Trump hailed what he called a “big, beautiful wall right on the Rio Grande,” though no such construction is known to be underway. When supporters launched into a chant of “Build the wall!” — standard at his rallies for years — Trump corrected them: “You mean finish the wall.”

The president alluded to lawmakers’ announcement of a deal, which came moments before he took the stage, but did not give it his blessing. Nor did he disparage it though one of his foremost confidants, Fox News host Sean Hannity, came on the air midway through the president’s rally and condemned the reported agreement as “this garbage compromise.”

Without the president and Congress agreeing to a border security funding bill by midnight Friday, the government could be partially shuttered again, just three weeks after a shutdown that at 35 days was the longest ever. The “agreement in principle” called for $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new barrier on the 2,000-mile border — less than a quarter of the $5.7 billion Trump demanded.

He told the crowd that he hadn’t bothered to find out the particulars of the agreement because he was eager to take the stage. “I could have stayed in there and listened, or I could have come out to the people of El Paso, Texas,” he said. “I chose you.”

Outside the El Paso County Coliseum, thousands of protesters, bundled against the evening chill, marched along the Rio Grande to a nearby park. There, El Paso’s former congressman and a possible Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke, joined other locals who spoke of El Paso and neighboring Juarez, Mexico, as one community and expressed indignation over Trump’s false characterization of their city as a violent one in last week’s State of the Union address.

“With the eyes of the entire country upon us, all of us together are going to make our stand. Here in one of the safest cities in the United States of America — safe, not because of walls but in spite of walls,” O’Rourke said, in the sort of rousing speech that brought nationwide attention to his Senate race last year, though he lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Let’s own this moment and the future and show this country there’s nothing to be afraid of when it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border,” O’Rourke said to cheers. “Let’s make sure our laws, our leaders and our language reflect our values.”

Late Monday, the House-Senate committee bargaining over border security funding and trying to avert another shutdown reached an “agreement in principle,” according to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Talks had stalled on the weekend, Republicans said, over Democrats’ demands to limit the detention of undocumented immigrants, many of them seeking asylum.

Should Congress pass a compromise, the onus would be on the president to accept it, or risk taking blame again for a partial federal shutdown. Before arriving in El Paso, Trump sought to preemptively shift blame to Democrats should the legislative effort ultimately fail. After the recent shutdown, polls showed the public put the blame squarely on him, and his approval rating slid.

With both his rally and the protest featuring O’Rourke receiving national coverage, the split-screen moment promised something of an audition of a hypothetical 2020 matchup, effectively creating a live debate between the president and a charismatic potential challenger on the issue that most animated Trump’s followers in 2016 and probably will again in his reelection bid.

Before leaving the White House, the president signaled that he too saw the dueling rallies as an early competition, with his familiar emphasis on crowd sizes. “We have a line that’s very long already,” Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to people waiting to enter his El Paso venue. He added, “I understand our competitor’s got a line too, but it’s a tiny little line.”

At his rally, Trump bragged that 10,000 supporters were inside the arena and 25,000 more were standing outside. According to the El Paso Fire Department, 6,500 people — the building’s capacity — were allowed inside, while at least 10,000 attended the protest rally. Organizers, however, had a slightly lower estimate.

“We have 35,000 people tonight and he has 200 people, 300 people,” Trump said. “Not too good. That may be the end of his presidential bid.”

While the border visit was intended as an opportunity for Trump to promote his signature issue, he wandered widely in his remarks — attacking Democrats repeatedly, including on abortion and on a so-called Green New Deal environmental platform that some are advocating, and mocking Virginia Democrats for controversies that have roiled the state’s government.

Trump’s drumbeat on immigration has yet to pay political dividends beyond his own supporters, and it has further galvanized his opponents. His fear-mongering during campaign rallies last fall over caravans of immigrants failed to prevent a Democratic wave that cost Republicans a net 40 seats and their majority in the House.

And during his State of the Union address, his incorrect portrayal of El Paso — he said it had “extremely high rates of violent crime” and was “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” until the government built a “powerful barrier” there — touched a nerve among civic leaders and citizens.

The El Paso County Commissioners Court on Monday approved a resolution assailing the president and his administration for misinformation and lies about a “crisis situation” on the U.S.-Mexico border, and noting that the federal government said “no crisis exists” and that “fiscal year 2017 was the lowest year of illegal cross-border migration on record.”

Yet Trump, at the rally, denounced his critics and media fact-checkers who disputed his claims that existing border fencing had slashed crime rates in El Paso. “They’re full of crap when they say it doesn’t make a difference,” he said, suggesting that local officials tried to “pull the wool over everybody’s eyes” by reporting low crime rates.

Lyda Ness-Garcia, a lawyer and founder of the Women’s March of El Paso, said organizers of Monday night’s protest were motivated to counteract Trump’s “lies” about their city.

“There was a deep sense of anger in our community, from the left and the right. It’s the demonization of our border. It’s the misrepresentation that the wall made us safe when we were safe long before,” she said.

Referring to the Mexican city just over the border, Garcia added: “We’re connected to Juarez. People forget. We’re not separate. We’re one culture.”

In truth, violent crime dropped in El Paso after a peak in 1993. It was at historic lows before Congress authorized a fence along the Rio Grande in 2006. Crime began to rise again over the next four years, after the fencing went up.

The city’s Republican mayor, Dee Margo, admonished Trump after the State of the Union speech, saying during an appearance on CNN that the president’s depiction of El Paso is “not factually correct.”

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, said organizers intended the march as a community celebration rather than an anti-Trump or pro-O’Rourke political event. “The administration, they didn’t believe our community would react, that people would get upset about the lies,” he said. “Our community spoke in numbers.”

Garcia noted that residents had seen the fallout from the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies firsthand, both in family separations and in asylum-seekers being turned away from border bridges and required to remain in Mexico while they await hearings.

In December, two Guatemalan migrant children died in Border Patrol custody in the El Paso area after seeking asylum.

“Trump has created policies and strategies that have created deep wounds in our region,” Garcia said. “We are not a violent city. We are not criminals. We are part of America and we deserve respect from this president.”

Although the protest event brought together roughly 50 local groups, O’Rourke’s political star power generated significant media coverage.

“If you’re Beto, there couldn’t be a better, more visual contrast,” said Jen Psaki, a former communications director to President Obama. “By leading a march, he gets back to his grass-roots origins and it allows him to stand toe to toe with the president of the United States and to echo a message that even local Republicans agree with. It gives him a platform and a megaphone at a beneficial time.”

Not willing to cede the moment completely to O’Rourke, Julian Castro — a former mayor of San Antonio, an Obama Cabinet member and already a declared presidential candidate — went Monday to the border checkpoint where his grandmother entered the United States as a young girl. He filmed a video denouncing the president and calling Trump’s visit to El Paso an effort “to create a circus of fear and paranoia” and “to tell lies about the border and about immigration.”

Speaking directly into the camera, Castro added, “Don’t take the bait.”

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Eli Stokols

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Eli Stokols is a White House reporter based in the Los Angeles Times Washington, D.C., bureau. He is a veteran of Politico and the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the 2016 presidential campaign and then the Trump White House. A native of Irvine, Stokols grew up in a Times household and is thrilled to report for what is still his family’s hometown paper. He is also a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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Molly Hennessy-Fiske

CONTACT

Molly Hennessy-Fiske has been a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times since 2006. She won a 2018 APME International Perspective Award;2015 Overseas Press Club award; 2014 Dart award from ColumbiaUniversity; and was a finalist for the Livingston Awards and Casey Medal. She completed a Thomson Reuters fellowship in Lebanon in 2006 and a Pew fellowship in Mexico in 2004. Hennessy-Fiske grew up in Upstate New York and graduated from Harvard College. She spent last year as Middle East bureau chief before returning to cover foreign/national news as Houston bureau chief.

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The racist lies about immigration just keep spewing forth from Trump and his White Nationalist support groups, including the “right wingnut” media.

We’re not being invaded by foreign criminals. Actually, we’re experiencing a quite predictable and potentially manageable influx of refugees seeking to exercise their legal rights to lawfully apply for asylum in the US. Not surprising, given that we have no viable refugee program in or near the Northern Triangle and have undoubtedly contributed to the breakdown of the rule of law and society in those “failed states.” 

The idea that real criminals, terrorists, drug smugglers, or human traffickers will be stopped or even materially deterred by a Wall is beyond absurd. Walls generally “reroute migration” and kill more innocent people. Real threats to our security are laughing at Trump and his base while they view the diversion, wasted time and money, and the failure to beef up intelligence, undercover, and anti-smuggling operations as a free gift.

And, I’m sure they cheer the focus on “rounding up” and detaining asylum applicants who turn themselves in to apply for asylum (because Trump has intentionally disabled reasonable processing through legal ports of entry) instead of doing the real law enforcement work of breaking up criminal enterprises. 

“Numbers” aren’t everything, particularly when the majority of the apprehensions have little to do with criminals or other “bad guys. But, it’s easier to “chalk up big numbers” and support a bogus White Nationalist narrative about “loss of border security” by apprehending asylum applicants who are in search of ever more elusive justice in the U.S.

Unfortunately, outright fibs and bogus racist narratives seem to work for our “Lier-in-Chief!” Here is an article from today’s NY Times by native Texan Richard Parker actually suggesting that Trump succeeds because Texans are as addicted to “Tall Tales” as Trump is to “Big Lies!” In other words, a “match made in Heaven.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/el-paso-trump-beto.html

Rather an unhappy commentary, if true. Who am I as a “mere Badger” to say, but I would suspect that these tall tales of fake invasions and bogus fear mongering directed mostly at the growing Latino community appeal more to some Texans than to others.

Just shows the importance of the work of the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) in defending our laws and Constitution!  Also illustrates the importance of committing ourselves to “regime change” in 2020. The immigration nonsense from Trump and his supporters and the intentional divisiveness, chaos, and anarchy that flow from it is an existential threat to our national existence —  much greater than his mostly fake “border emergency.” 

PWS

02-12-19

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  2. MOLLY HENNESSEY-FISKE @ LA TIMES: As DHS Disintegrates Under Trump, Volunteers Pick Up The Pieces & Save Lives!
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

EXPOSED: In Matter of A-B-, Sessions & An Immigration Judge Found That The Government Of El Salvador Offered “Reasonable Protection” To Persecuted Women & That Internal Relocation Appeared “Reasonably Available” To A Severely Battered & Threatened Woman — They Lied!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/el-salvador-votes-for-president-as-the-country-seeks-a-new-way-to-deal-with-gangs/2019/02/02/1ce34c1e-2288-11e9-b5b4-1d18dfb7b084_story.html

Anna-Catherine Brigida reports on the recent El Salvadoran presidential election for the Washington Post:

. . . ..

“The ultimate actor who determines whether you have more or less homicides tomorrow or right now or in a week is not the government. It’s the gangs,” said José Miguel Cruz, an expert on Salvadoran gangs at Florida International University. “They do it for political purposes as a bargaining tool to improve their position vis-a-vis the government or vis-a-vis the society.”

. . . .

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Read Anna’s complete article at the link.  This is a “must read” for members of the NDPA or anyone else handling El Salvadoran asylum cases in this “Post-Matter of A-B- Era.”

Fact is, the gangs are in many practical ways the “de facto government” in El Salvador. That makes Sessions’s suggestion that persecuted individuals can get reasonable protection from the government or avoid persecution in a tiny, totally gang-infested country absurdly disingenuous. It also calls into question the judicial integrity of those U.S. Immigration Judges who mindlessly “parrot” Sessions’s “parallel universe” dicta regarding conditions in El Salvador. Indeed, it has been reported elsewhere that gangs are actually the largest employer in El Salvador, exercising far more power over politics and the economy than the government! https://www.newsweek.com/ms-13-barrio-18-gangs-employ-more-people-el-salvador-largest-employers-1200029

Also, this article illustrates the absurdity of the position often taken by the BIA and some Immigration Judges that resistance to gangs is not a “political act.” In a country where gangs and government are inextricably intertwined, and gangs actually control more of the country than does the national government, of course resisting or publicly standing up against gangs is an expression of political opposition to those in power. And, it’s a political statement for which the consequences all too often can be deadly.

Matter of A-B- has yet to be tested in a Court of Appeals. But, it spectacularly “flunked” its initial judicial test before Judge Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3rd  Judge Sullivan clearly saw through many of Sessions’s biased conclusions that contradict not only  the history and purpose of he Refugee Act, but also well established case law. Although A-B- was an Immigration Court case, and many of Sullivan’s conclusions would apply in Immigration Court proceedings, EOIR saw fit to construe Grace narrowly as applying solely in “Credible Fear Reviews.” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3BE

It’s important for advocates to press all challenges to Matter of A-B- in the Circuit Courts of Appeals. If appellate judges agree with Judge Sullivan, all of the erroneous “summary denials” of asylum based on A-B- will come back to Immigration Court for rehearings, thus further adding to the Administration-created mess in America’s most dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust court system, where Due Process for asylum seekers has become a bad joke rather than the watchword.

PWS

02-04-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  2. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

“MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MORPHS INTO CONTEMPT FOR COURT AS ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT & SEPARATED FAMILIES “GO POUND SAND” — They Just Don’t Care About Humanity!

Angelina Chaplin reports for HuffPost:

On Friday, officials from the Trump administration said it would require too much effort to reunite the thousands of families it separated before implementing its “zero-tolerance” policy in April, according to a declaration filed as part of an ongoing lawsuit between the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last month, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services released a report stating that “thousands” more immigrant families had been separated than the government had previously disclosed. In the declaration submitted Friday, HHS officials said they don’t know the exact number of children who were taken from their parents before “zero tolerance” and that finding them would be too much of a “burden” since there was no formal tracking system in place.

“The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit against ICE, in a statement. “The administration also doesn’t dispute that separations are ongoing in significant numbers.”

HHS did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

The deputy director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Jallyn Sualog, said that 100 ORR analysts would have to work eight hours each day for between seven and 15 months to “even begin reconciling” data on separated families. “In my judgment, ORR does not have the requisite staff for such a project,” Sualog wrote in the declaration.

Immigration advocates are appalled by the fact that the government didn’t bother to properly track separated families and that it is now shirking its responsibility to reunite parents and children.

“They are saying they just don’t care,” said Michelle Brané, the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “It’s shocking frivolous om a human rights perspective for a government to behave this way.”

“I think the policy of taking the children away in the first place was cruel,” said Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer, “but to not even have a system to return the parents to the children just increases the magnitude of the cruelty.”

The government also failed to properly track the roughly 2,800 children that it separated from their parents under the “zero-tolerance” policy between April and June. The administration was required to reunite families as part of an ACLU lawsuit, an ongoing process that has at times required immigration advocates to search for deported parents on foot in remote, crime-ridden areas of Central America.

According to the inspector general’s report, 159 children who were separated under “zero tolerance” are still in ORR care, most of whose parents were deported and decided to keep their kids in the U.S. due to dangerous situations back home. If the government doesn’t allow those parents to re-apply for asylum in the U.S., families may remain permanently separated. Gelernt worries that before “zero tolerance” the government could have deported hundreds more parents who might not have had a say in their children’s futures.

In the declaration, Jonathan White, a commander with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, said that most unaccompanied children are released to family sponsors and that in addition to logistical challenges, trying to reunite separated kids with their parents could be destabilizing and “would present grave child welfare concerns.”

But Gelernt says the government should not be making decisions on behalf of mothers and fathers. “[The administration] had no right to just give these kids away unless the parent was making an informed decision,” he said. “This is not a situation where the parents put the child up for adoption. This is a situation where the child was forcibly taken from the parents.”

On Feb. 21, Gelernt will argue in front of a federal judge in California that all families separated before “zero tolerance” should be part of the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit and that the government has a responsibility to reunify these parents with their children. He is disappointed that the administration failed to act humanely towards immigrant families in its declaration.

“The [government] is saying it’s not legally required for them to [reunite families] and therefore they won’t do it,” he said. “But why not do it because it’s the right thing to do?”

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Isn’t it time for the U.S. District Judge to start holding ICE and ORR officials in contempt of court? What about former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions who “masterminded” this cruel fiasco?

Can there be justice without any morality or accountability?

PWS

02-02-19

 

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INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

http://time.com/longform/migrants/

Haley Sweetland Edwards writes in Time Magazine:

But they were willing to do whatever it took. Going back to Guatemala was simply not an option, they said. Monterroso explained that in October, their family was forced to flee after a gang threatened to murder the children if they didn’t pay an exorbitant bribe, five months’ worth of profits from their tiny juice stall. The family hid for a day and a half in their house and then sneaked away before dawn. “There is nobody that can protect us there,” Monterroso said. “We have seen in the other cases, they kill the people and kill their children.” Her voice caught. “The first thing is to have security for them,” she said of her kids, “that nothing bad happens to them.”

All told, more than 159,000 migrants filed for asylum in the U.S. in fiscal year 2018, a 274% increase over 2008. Meanwhile, the total number of apprehensions along the southern border has decreased substantially—nearly 70% since fiscal year 2000. President Donald Trump has labeled the southern border a national crisis. He refused to sign any bill funding the federal government that did not include money for construction of a wall along the frontier, triggering the longest shutdown in American history, and when Democrats refused to budge, he threatened to formally invoke emergency powers. The President says the barrier, which was the centerpiece of his election campaign, is needed to thwart a dangerous “invasion” of undocumented foreigners.

But the situation on the southern border, however the political battle in Washington plays out, will continue to frustrate this U.S. President, and likely his successors too, and not just because of continuing caravans making their way to the desert southwest. Months of reporting by TIME correspondents around the world reveal a stubborn reality: we are living today in a global society increasingly roiled by challenges that can be neither defined nor contained by physical barriers. That goes for climate change, terrorism, pandemics, nascent technologies and cyber-attacks. It also applies to one of the most significant global developments of the past quarter-century: the unprecedented explosion of global migration.

. . . .

They abandoned their homes for different reasons: tens of millions went in search of better jobs or better education or medical care, and tens of millions more had no choice. More than 5.6 million fled the war in Syria, and a million more were Rohingya, chased from their villages in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands fled their neighborhoods in Central America and villages in sub-Saharan Africa, driven by poverty and violence. Others were displaced by catastrophic weather linked to climate change.

Taken one at a time, each is an individual, a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, hope and despair. But collectively, they represent something greater than the sum of their parts. The forces that pushed them from their homes have combined with a series of global factors that pulled them abroad: the long peace that followed the Cold War in the developed world, the accompanying expansion of international travel, liberalized policies for refugees and the relative wealth of developed countries, especially in Europe and the U.S., the No. 1 destination for migrants. The force is tidal and has not been reversed by walls, by separating children from their parents or by deploying troops. Were the world’s total population of international migrants in 2018 gathered from the places where they have sought new lives and placed under one flag, they would be its fifth largest country.

The mass movement of people has changed the world both for better and for worse. Migrants tend to be productive. Though worldwide they make up about 3% of the population, in 2015 they generated about 9% of global GDP, according to the U.N. Much of that money is wired home—$480 billion in 2017, also according to the U.N.—where the cash has immense impact. Some will pay for the passage of the next migrant, and the smartphone he or she will keep close at hand. The technology not only makes the journey more efficient and safer—smugglers identify their clients by photos on instant-messaging—but, upon arrival, allows those who left to keep in constant contact with those who remain behind, across oceans and time zones.

Yet attention of late is mostly focused on the impact on host countries. There, national leaders have grappled with a powerful irony: the ways in which they react to new migrants—tactically, politically, culturally—shape them as much as the migrants themselves do. In some countries, migrants have been welcomed by crowds at train stations. In others, images of migrants moving in miles-long caravans through Central America or spilling out of boats on Mediterranean shores were wielded to persuade native-born citizens to lock down borders, narrow social safety nets and jettison long-standing humanitarian commitments to those in need.

. . . .

The U.S., though founded by Europeans fleeing persecution, now largely reflects the will of its Chief Executive: subverting decades of asylum law and imposing a policy that separated migrant toddlers from their parents and placed children behind cyclone fencing. Trump floated the possibility of revoking birthright citizenship, characterized migrants as “stone cold criminals” and ordered 5,800 active-duty U.S. troops to reinforce the southern border. Italy refused to allow ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at its ports. Hungary passed laws to criminalize the act of helping undocumented people. Anti-immigrant leaders saw their political power grow in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Italy and Hungary, and migration continued to be a factor in the Brexit debate in the U.K.

These political reactions fail to grapple with a hard truth: in the long run, new migration is nearly always a boon to host countries. In acting as entrepreneurs and innovators, and by providing inexpensive labor, immigrants overwhelmingly repay in long-term economic contributions what they use in short-term social services, studies show. But to maximize that future good, governments must act -rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.

. . . .

But protocols and treaties can, at best, hope to respond to the human emotions and hard realities that drive migration. No wall, sheriff or headscarf law would have prevented Monterroso and Calderón, or Yaquelin and Albertina Contreras, or Sami Baladi and Mirey Darwich from leaving their homes. Migrants will continue to flee bombs, look for better-paying jobs and accept extraordinary risks as the price of providing a better life for their children.

The question now is whether the world can come to define the enormous population of international migrants as an opportunity. No matter when that happens, Eman Albadawi, a teacher from Syria who arrived in Anröchte, Germany, in 2015, will continue to make a habit of reading German-language children’s books to her three Syrian-born kids at night. Their German is better than hers, and they make fun of her pronunciation, but she doesn’t mind. She is proud of them. At a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise, she tells them, “We must be brave, but we must also be successful and strong.” —With reporting by Aryn Baker/Anröchte, Germany; Melissa Chan, Julia Lull, Gina Martinez, Thea Traff/New York; Ioan Grillo/Tijuana; Abby Vesoulis/Murfreesboro, Tenn.; and Vivienne Walt/Paris •

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I strongly encourage everyone to read Haley’s outstanding article at the link.  It is one of the best and most easily understandable explanations of a complex phenomenon that I have seen recently. As I always say, “lots of moving parts.” But Haley and her colleagues have distilled the fundamental truths concealed by this complexity. Congrats and appreciation to Haley and everyone who worked on this masterpiece!

Haley debunks and eviscerates the restrictionist, racist “fear and loathing” baloney that Trump and his White Nationalist gang peddle. The simple truth always has been and continues to be that America needs more immigration.

The only real question is whether we are going to be smart and funnel it into expanded legal and humanitarian channels or dumb like Trump and push the inevitable migration into an extra-legal system. The latter best serves neither our country nor the humans pushed into an underground existence where they can be exploited and are artificially prevented from achieving their full potential for themselves and for us. Right now, we have a mix skewed toward forcing far, far too many good folks to use the extra-legal system.

We’ll only be able to improve the situation by pushing the mix toward the legal and the humanitarian, rather than the extra-legal. That’s why it’s virtually impossible to have a rational immigration debate with folks like Trump who start with the racist-inspired fiction that migrants are a “threat” who can be deterred, punished, and diminished.

Contrary to Trump and the White Nationalists, the real immigration problems facing America are 1) how can we best integrate the millions of law-abiding and productive undocumented individuals already residing here into our society, and 2) how can we most fairly and efficiently insure that in the future individuals like them can be properly screened and come to our country through expanded humanitarian and legal channels. Until we resolve these, American will continue to founder with immigration and fail to maximize its many benefits. That’s bad for us, for migrants, and for the future of our nation.

As a reminder, in the context of Congressional negotiations on border security, I recently put together a list of “practical fixes” to the immigration system which would address border security, humanitarian relief, and improved compliance with Constitutional Due process without major legislative changes — mostly “tweaks” and other common sense amendments that would make outsized improvements and certainly would be an improvement on squandering $5.7 billion and getting nothing but a largely symbolic “instant white elephant” border wall in return.  So, here it is again in all its hypothetical glory:  “THE SMARTS ACT OF 2019:

https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3E3

SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019

  • Federal Employees
    • Restart the Government
    • Retroactive pay raise

 

  • Enhanced Border Security
    • Fund half of “Trump’s Wall”
    • Triple the number of USCIS Asylum Officers
    • Double the number of U.S. Immigration Judges and Court Staff
    • Additional Port of Entry (“POE”) Inspectors
    • Improvements in POE infrastructure, technology, and technology between POEs
    • Additional Intelligence, Anti-Smuggling, and Undercover Agents for DHS
    • Anything else that both parties agree upon

 

  • Humanitarian Assistance
    • Road to citizenship for a Dreamers & TPSers
    • Prohibit family separation
    • Funding for alternatives to detention
    • Grants to NGOs for assisting arriving asylum applicants with temporary housing and resettlement issues
    • Require re-establishment of U.S. Refugee Program in the Northern Triangle

 

  • Asylum Process
    • Require Asylum Offices to consider in the first instance all asylum applications including those generated by the “credible fear” process as well as all so-called “defensive applications”

 

  • Immigration Court Improvements
    • Grants and requirements that DHS & EOIR work with NGOs and the private bar with a goal of achieving 100% representation of asylum applicants
    • Money to expand and encourage the training and certification of more non-attorneys as “accredited representatives” to represent asylum seekers pro bono before the Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts on behalf of approved NGOs
    • Vacate Matter of A-B-and reinstate Matter of A-R-C-G-as the rule for domestic violence asylum applications
    • Vacate Matter of Castro-Tum and reinstate Matter of Avetisyan to allow Immigration Judges to control dockets by administratively closing certain “low priority” cases
    • Eliminate Attorney General’s authority to interfere in Immigration Court proceedings through “certification”
    • Re-establish weighing of interests of both parties consistent with Due Process as the standard for Immigration Court continuances
    • Bar AG & EOIR Director from promulgating substantive or procedural rules for Immigration Courts — grant authority to BIA to promulgate procedural rules for Immigration Courts
    • Authorize Immigration Courts to consider all Constitutional issues in proceedings
    • Authorize DHS to appeal rulings of the BIA to Circuit Courts of Appeal
    • Require EOIR to implement the statutory contempt authority of Immigration Judges, applicable equally to all parties before the courts, within 180 days
    • Bar “performance quotas” and “performance work plans” for Immigration Judges and BIA Members
    • Authorize the Immigration Court to set bonds in all cases coming within their jurisdiction
    • Fund and require EOIR to implement a nationwide electronic filing system within one year
    • Eliminate the annual 4,000 numerical cap on grants of “cancellation of removal” based on “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship”
    • Require the Asylum Office to adjudicate cancellation of removal applications with renewal in Immigration Court for those denied
    • Require EOIR to establish a credible, transparent judicial discipline and continued tenure system within one year that must include: opportunity for participation by the complainant (whether Government or private) and the Immigration Judge; representation permitted for both parties; peer input; public input; DHS input; referral to an impartial decision maker for final decision; a transparent and consistent system of sanctions incorporating principles of rehabilitation and progressive discipline; appeal rights to the MSPB

 

  • International Cooperation
    • Fund and require efforts to work with the UNHCR, Mexico, and other countries in the Hemisphere to improve asylum systems and encourage asylum seekers to exercise options besides the U.S.
    • Fund efforts to improve conditions and the rule of law in the Northern Triangle

 

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

No, it wouldn’t solve all problems overnight. But, everything beyond “Trump’s Wall” would make a substantial improvement over our current situation that would benefit enforcement, border security, human rights, Due Process, humanitarian assistance, and America. Not a bad “deal” in my view!

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

PWS

01-27-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

BUZZFEED NEWS: “Our Gang” Leader Judge Jeffrey Chase Blasts Nielsen’s Latest Disingenuous Attack On Legal Asylum Seekers — “Outrageous Move”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/the-trump-administration-will-start-sending-some-asylum

Hamed Aleaziz reports:

SAN FRANCISCO — Central American migrants seeking asylum at the US–Mexico border will be forced to remain in Mexico while their cases in the US are being processed, the Trump administration said Thursday.

The unprecedented policy change will take effect on Friday with the return of the first group of migrants at the border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, according to Vox.

The policy, titled the Migrant Protection Protocols, is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to discourage migrants, including asylum-seekers, from trying to enter the United States. Previous attempts, such as banning asylum for those who crossed without authorization, were blocked by the courts, and this effort also is likely to face a challenge in court.

Under the policy, certain migrants at the border will receive a “notice to appear” in US immigration court and will be returned to Mexico until their hearing, according to a Department of Homeland Security fact sheet. The Mexican government, according to the agency, has provided the ability for those individuals to stay in the country until their court dates in the US. On the day of their hearing, migrants will be taken to US immigration courts for their cases to be heard.

Unaccompanied children will be excluded from the policy and those from “vulnerable populations” may be excluded on a case-by-case basis.

“We have implemented an unprecedented action that will address the ongoing humanitarian and security crisis at our Southern border,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “For far too long, our immigration system has been exploited by smugglers, traffickers, and those who have no legal right to remain in the United States. The Migrant Protection Protocols represent a methodical commonsense approach to exercising our statutory authority to require certain individuals to await their court proceedings in Mexico.”

A US official close to the process who is critical of the policy told BuzzFeed News it would lead migrants to “revert to sneaking in rather than going to ports of entry” and cause “more deaths in the desert.”

The Trump administration informed the Mexican government that it was going to be enacting the policy based on a statute stating that certain individuals can be sent back to the contiguous country they arrived from.

BuzzFeed News first reported that the administration was considering such a policy back in November.

Trump administration officials have accused asylum-seekers of gaming the US system, requesting asylum that they know they won’t qualify for so that they can remain in the country for months or years while immigration courts hear their cases.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said the policy was a circumvention of the country’s immigration laws.

“Today’s announcement creates more questions than answers. Even putting aside the unlawfulness of this action, we do not know where these asylum-seekers will be held, who will be responsible for their safety, how and where their hearings will take place, or how access to counsel will be handled,” she said in a statement Thursday.

Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge, said the move was outrageous.

“We should be allowing asylum-seekers to enter and pursue their claims according to the international legal norms,” he said. “It will obviously be much more difficult for asylum-seekers to obtain counsel and to meaningfully participate in increasingly complex legal claims from outside the country.”

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

Right on, Jeffrey! Thanks for expressing our outrage in the dishonest, deceitful, inhumane, and counterproductive actions of shallow Trump sycophant Nielsen. Another mess is sure to follow. Despite her claims, and Nielsen is an established liar, everything I’ve read indicates that Mexico is unready to implement this if it involves more than a few hundred individuals. And, if the program were that small, it wouldn’t be worth doing. The Trump Administration of incompetents has yet to carry out any major new program without screwups.

What if Trump, Nielsen, DOJ, and EOIR just did their jobs by generously and efficiently granting asylum as mandated by the Refugee Act, the Supremes in Cardoza–Fonseca, and, ironically, the BIA’s own well-established but seldom enforced precedent Mogharrabi?

What if we took 50,000 refugees directly from the Northern Triangle, as we easily could and should do?

What if the Administration worked with, rather than against, pro bono groups and NGOs so that asylum seekers could fairly and efficiently move through the system consistent with Due Process?

What if DHS enforcement actually concentrated on potential “bad guys” rather than getting sidetracked by treating refugee families like criminals?

What if Trump treated refugees like the deserving and productive human beings that they have been throughout our history and welcomed and integrated them into our society?

What if he stopped using false narratives and restrictionist White Nationalist racist lies to make policy?

What if he cut the often illegal, always “built to fail,” and grossly fiscally wasteful gimmicks, smoke, mirrors, and job avoidance and just got the job done?

We’d actually be on the way to making America great again. Too bad that neither the Trump Administration nor the GOP seems interested in doing the real work of making government function within the law and advancing the real general public interests!

PWS

01-25-19

Related posts:

  1. IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

JUDGE SULLIVAN STUFFS TRUMP’S REQUEST TO KEEP ON VIOLATING ASYLUM LAW PENDING APPEAL — Stay Denied In Grace v. Whitaker!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/25/politics/sullivan-asylum-ruling/index.html

Dan Berman reports for CNN:

Washington (CNN)Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan on Friday rejected a Justice Department request to stay his earlier ruling blocking the Trump administration’s policy that makes it difficult for victims fleeing domestic and gang violence to qualify for asylum in the United States.

Last month, Sullivan agreed with a group of women and children who said the policy imposed a heightened standard in reviewing their claims, concluding that the administration must stop deporting migrants currently in the US “without first providing credible fear determinations consistent with the immigration laws.”
Friday, he wrote: “The government now requests a stay, pending appeal of the Court’s Order, to enable the unlawful policies to continue to apply in all expedited removal cases, except the plaintiffs. … Defendants’ motion for stay is DENIED.”
The attorney general has full authority over the immigration courts — a separate court system which operates under the Justice Department.
*********************************
We have an Administration without shame, human decency, or, obviously, the will and skill to govern. And, a DOJ where lawyers act not as legal guardians of the people’s rights, but continue to defend the indefensible, ill serves the American people.
PWS
01-25-19

Related posts:

  1. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  4. NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!

SPECIAL COURTSIDE “PRESS RELEASE” — “Court Chaos”

COURT CHAOS

“It’s chaos on top of disaster. By the end of next week, Trump will have added at least 100,000 cases to the already existing backlog of 800,000 + cases, plus another 300,000 that former A.G. Sessions diabolically and unnecessarily promised to artificially force back into the system. That’s 4-5 years of work for the Courts even with no new filings! People with good cases are denied justice while others postpone their day of reckoning indefinitely.

Many of these cases will never be decided unless Congress reforms this broken system by removing political control from the DOJ. I call this “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) — cases being moved around by incompetent politicos at the DOJ without ever being completed. And under Sessions, the DOJ excelled at ADR, unnecessarily and artificially “jacking” the backlog by an incredible 50%+ in less than two years of politically biased and incompetent maladministration of the system. And, that’s even with more judges on the bench! Trump and his cronies have effectively destroyed one of America’s largest and most important court systems.

It must be reformed into a court independent of Executive overreach and incompetence. A new court must be established run by apolitical expert judges with the assistance of professional court administrators accountable to those judges, not Administration politicos. It’s not rocket science, just common sense, fundamental fairness, and above all, Constitutional Due Process.”

PWS

01-25-19

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

CHASE, SCHMIDT, & THE REST OF “OUR GANG” READY TO “STEP UP” TO TEACH ASYLUM LAW FOR FURLOUGHED U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES! – Read The Latest From Hon. Jeffrey Chase On How Asylum Law Can Be Properly Interpreted To Save Lives (What It’s Supposed To Do) & “Move” Dockets Without Curtailing Anyone’s Rights!

fullsizeoutput_40da.jpeg

 

IJs Grant Gender-Based Asylum Claims

As my friend Paul Schmidt announced on his excellent blog immigrationcourtside.com, immigration judges in San Francisco and Arlington, VA recently issued written decisions granting asylum to victims of domestic violence.  Notably, the decisions concluded that “Mexican females” and “women in Honduras” constituted cognizable particular social groups under applicable case law, including the former Attorney General’s decision in Matter of A-B-.

Asylum advocates have sought for many years to have the Board of Immigration Appeals recognize a particular social group defined by gender alone.  However, the BIA has declined to consider the issue.1 The need for such guidance from the Board has increased significantly since the issuance of Matter of A-B- last June.  Even under the holdings of that decision, gender continues to meet all of the criteria for a cognizable particular social group, as gender is an immutable characteristic fundamental to one’s identity, is sufficiently particular to provide a clear benchmark for inclusion, is socially distinct in all societies, and is not defined by the harm which gives rise to the applicant’s fear of persecution.

In the seven months since Matter of A-B- was issued, the BIA has yet to respond with a precedent decision affirming the continued viability of domestic violence-based asylum claims.  Nor has the BIA affirmed that gender alone may constitute a cognizable particular social group for the above reasons, in spite of the fact that its members have had years to consider the issue, and could rely on so many outstanding legal sources on the topic.  The BIA showed an ability to respond quickly in issuing a precedent decision in only two months time following the Supreme Court’s decision in Pereira v. Sessions.  So the present silence should be interpreted as a specific choice by the BIA to remain silent, likely motivated by its fear of upsetting its higher-ups in the present administration.

In the absence of guidance from the BIA, and while waiting for appeals to work their way through the circuit courts (I am aware of appeals relating to this issue currently pending in the First and Fourth Circuits), the two recent immigration judge decisions are encouraging.  In the San Francisco case, Judge Miriam Hayward (who has since retired from the bench) found “Mexican females” to constitute a cognizable particular social group. In Arlington, Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Deepali Nadkarni made the same finding for the group consisting of “women in Honduras.”  Redacted copies of their written decisions may be read here: http://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SF-IJ-Hayward-DV-PSG-grant.pdf;  http://immigrationcourtside.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Nadkarni-Grant-Women-in-Honduras-PSG.pdf

In addition to their particular social group analysis, both decisions conclude that at least one central reason for the persecution suffered was the asylum applicant’s membership in the gender-defined group.  For example, in the San Francisco case, Judge Hayward found such nexus was established by a combination of specific statements made by the male persecutor (i.e. “a woman’s only job was to shut up and obey her husband,” and “I’m the man and you’re going to do what I say”); a report of an expert on domestic violence citing gender as a motivating factor for domestic violence; and a statement in a multi-agency report that violence against women in Mexico “is perpetrated, in most cases, to conserve and reproduce the submission and subordination of them derived from relationships of power.”

In her decision, Judge Nadkarni held that the size of the group defined by gender does not prevent it from being defined with particularity, and noted that the BIA “has routinely recognized large groups as defined with particularity.”  It also bears mentioning that the ICE prosecutor in Judge Nadkarni’s case “conceded that the Honduran police was unable or unwilling to protect the respondent…” Without such concession in her case, Judge Hayward found that country reports and Mexican law itself were sufficient to establish that the government was unable or unwilling to protect the respondent even under the heightened standard expressed by the former AG in Matter of A-B-.

As I stated in an earlier article, immigration judges have received no guidance or training from EOIR in analyzing domestic violence claims in the aftermath of Matter of A-B-.  As a result, some immigration judges remain uncertain as to whether the law allows them to grant such claims at present.  It is hoped that these decisions will serve as a useful template for judges. It seems particularly instructive that one such decision was issued by Judge Nadkarni, a management-level judge who supervises all immigration judges sitting in the Arlington, Batavia, Buffalo, and Charlotte Immigration Courts, as well as the Headquarters court which hears cases remotely by televideo.  Judge Nadkarni is the direct boss of V. Stuart Couch, the Charlotte-based immigration judge whose refusal to grant asylum as directed by the BIA in Matter of A-B- led to the former Attorney General’s certifying that case to himself.

Congratulations to attorneys Kelly Engel Wells of Delores Street Community Services and Mark Stevens of Murray Osorio PLLC for successfully representing the asylum applicants.

In light of these decisions, and in the absence of guidance from EOIR, our group of former immigration judges and BIA members would be happy to provide sitting judges with outside training and resources on this topic.   Interested judges may contact me, and perhaps we can set up group training sessions for furloughed judged during the present shutdown.

Notes:

  1. See, e.g. Matter of A-R-C-G-, 26 I&N Dec. 388, 395, n. 16, acknowledging the argument of amici “that gender alone should be enough to constitute a particular social group in this matter,” but declining to reach the issue.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

 

JEFF CHASE

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Thanks Jeffrey! I’m “with you” all the way, my friend!
EOIR would do much better if it were to lose the venomous “(junior) partner of DHS Enforcement, no sympathy, compassion, or kindness for the most vulnerable among us, and scofflaw” persona that it acquired under White Nationalist AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and act more like a real court of law (or at least a fair and impartial quasi-judicial tribunal) again.
While there is zero chance of it happening, soon to be AG Bill Barr (who grotesquely has painted himself as a great admirer of his biased and incompetent predecessor) would do himself and our country a great and lasting service if he hired a retired Federal Judge with a strong record in (positive) humanitarian law, individual due process, and court administration (e.g., a “reincarnation” of the late Judge Patricia Wald) to run and rebuild EOIR with a Due Process, independent adjudication, and judicial efficiency focus, and kept the politicos out of the process, no matter how much they might complain or not like fair results on the “deportation railway.” But, not going to happen till we get “regime change.”
Viewing “law enforcement” as a solemn responsibility to insure that individuals’ rights are protected, individuals are treated fairly regardless of status, creed, gender, or race, and that life-saving protection is generously granted whenever legally possible is as much a part of the Attorney General’s Constitutional responsibility as  booting folks out of the country. It’s sad, disturbing, and very damaging to our country, that so few Attorneys General have taken this responsibility seriously, particularly in recent years.
PWS
01-21-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  3. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

TRUMP’S “OFFER” MIGHT WELL BE A STUNT – BUT, IT’S ALSO AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE DEMS TO STEP UP, SAVE LIVES, AND GOVERN RESPONSIBLY – They Should Make A Counterproposal – Here’s The “SMARTS Act Of 2019!”

There are opposing “schools of thought” on Trump’s latest immigration statement. For example, the LA Times says it another “Trump stunt to shift blame” that the Dems should resist.  https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-trump-shutdown-daca-20190119-story.html

Makes sense.

 

On the other hand, the Washington Post says that notwithstanding Trump’s annoying tactics, it’s an opportunity to reopen the Government and save the Dreamers that the Dems should pursue. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/make-a-deal-to-help-the-real-people-behind-the-rhetoric/2019/01/19/f5b18866-1c17-11e9-88fe-f9f77a3bcb6c_story.html?utm_term=.5b08d589dfa9

Also makes sense.

 

I understand the Dems reluctance to enable Trump’s “hostage taking” strategy. But, I doubt they can solve that with Trump and the GOP controlling two of the three political arms of Government.

 

Indeed, a better idea would be for Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader McConnell to get together “when the smoke clears” and see what they can do jointly to take back and fix the bipartisan Congressional budget process and protect it from overreach by Executives of both parties.  For two of the major legislative “gurus” of our age in the twilight of their careers, that would be a great “bipartisan legacy.”

 

But, for the time being, folks are suffering, and lives are in danger: Government employees, those that depend on Government, asylum applicants, Dreamers, TPSers, those in Immigration Court, and the families of all of the foregoing. So, I think the Dems should make a “robust” counterproposal that gives Trump at least part of his “Wall,” but also includes other important reforms and improvements that will diminish the impact of border migration issues in the future. Most important, almost everything in this proposal would save or improve some human lives and benefit America in the short and long run.

 

So, here’s my outline of the “SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019”

 

SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019

 

  • Federal Employees
    • Restart the Government
    • Retroactive pay raise

 

  • Enhanced Border Security
    • Fund half of “Trump’s Wall”
    • Triple the number of USCIS Asylum Officers
    • Double the number of U.S. Immigration Judges and Court Staff
    • Additional Port of Entry (“POE”) Inspectors
    • Improvements in POE infrastructure, technology, and technology between POEs
    • Additional Intelligence, Anti-Smuggling, and Undercover Agents for DHS
    • Anything else in the Senate Bill that both parties agree upon

 

  • Humanitarian Assistance
    • Road to citizenship for a Dreamers & TPSers
    • Prohibit family separation
    • Funding for alternatives to detention
    • Grants to NGOs for assisting arriving asylum applicants with temporary housing and resettlement issues
    • Require re-establishment of U.S. Refugee Program in the Northern Triangle

 

  • Asylum Process
    • Require Asylum Offices to consider in the first instance all asylum applications including those generated by the “credible fear” process as well as all so-called “defensive applications”

 

  • Immigration Court Improvements
    • Grants and requirements that DHS & EOIR work with NGOs and the private bar with a goal of achieving 100% representation of asylum applicants
    • Money to expand and encourage the training and certification of more non-attorneys as “accredited representatives” to represent asylum seekers pro bono before the Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts on behalf of approved NGOs
    • Vacate Matter of A-B-and reinstate Matter of A-R-C-G-as the rule for domestic violence asylum applications
    • Vacate Matter of Castro-Tumand reinstate Matter of Avetisyan to allow Immigration Judges to control dockets by administratively closing certain “low priority” cases
    • Eliminate Attorney General’s authority to interfere in Immigration Court proceedings through “certification”
    • Re-establish weighing of interests of both parties consistent with Due Process as the standard for Immigration Court continuances
    • Bar AG & EOIR Director from promulgating substantive or procedural rules for Immigration Courts — grant authority to BIA to promulgate procedural rules for Immigration Courts
    • Authorize Immigration Courts to consider all Constitutional issues in proceedings
    • Authorize DHS to appeal rulings of the BIA to Circuit Courts of Appeal
    • Require EOIR to implement the statutory contempt authority of Immigration Judges, applicable equally to all parties before the courts, within 180 days
    • Bar “performance quotas” and “performance work plans” for Immigration Judges and BIA Members
    • Authorize the Immigration Court to set bonds in all cases coming within their jurisdiction
    • Fund and require EOIR to implement a nationwide electronic filing system within one year
    • Eliminate the annual 4,000 numerical cap on grants of “cancellation of removal” based on “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship”
    • Require the Asylum Office to adjudicate cancellation of removal applications with renewal in Immigration Court for those denied
    • Require EOIR to establish a credible, transparent judicial discipline and continued tenure system within one year that must include: opportunity for participation by the complainant (whether Government or private) and the Immigration Judge; representation permitted for both parties; peer input; public input; DHS input; referral to an impartial decision maker for final decision; a transparent and consistent system of sanctions incorporating principles of rehabilitation and progressive discipline; appeal rights to the MSPB

 

  • International Cooperation
    • Fund and require efforts to work with the UNHCR, Mexico, and other countries in the Hemisphere to improve asylum systems and encourage asylum seekers to exercise options besides the U.S.
    • Fund efforts to improve conditions and the rule of law in the Northern Triangle

 

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

No, it wouldn’t solve all problems overnight. But, everything beyond “Trump’s Wall” would make a substantial improvement over our current situation that would benefit enforcement, border security, human rights, Due Process, humanitarian assistance, and America. Not a bad “deal” in my view!

 

PWS

01-20-19

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

THE GUARDIAN EXPOSES CONTINUING CHILD ABUSE BY ADMINISTRATION: Child Separations Underreported — Children Detained In Health-Threatening Conditions!

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/17/trump-family-separations-report-latest-news-zero-tolerance-policy-immigrant-children?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

The Trump administration may have separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the border for up to a year before family separation was a publicly known practice, according to a stunning government review of the health department’s role in family separation.

A report by the health department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) published Thursday said officials at the health department estimated “thousands of separated children” were put in health department care before a court order in June 2018 ordered the reunification of 2,600 other children.

“The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is unknown,” the report said.

In 2017, officials at the health department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) observed a steep increase in the number of children referred to ORR care who had been separated from their parents or guardians by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to the report.

In response to the increase, officials began informally tracking separations. “Thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017, before the accounting required by the court, and HHS has faced challenges in identifying separated children,” the report said.

US attorney general Jeff Sessions announced the “zero tolerance” policy that made family separations possible in April 2018, but advocacy groups had been warning for months that family separations were already taking place.

In June 2018, a federal judge ordered 2,600 children to be reunited with their parents, but the health department said in the five months following the order, it was still identifying children who should have been considered separated but were not being clearly tracked in government systems.

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

Alexandra Villarreal reports for The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/17/pennsylvania-detention-center-sick-children?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

At the Berks Family Residential Center, an immigrant detention facility in Leesport, Pennsylvania, advocates and former detainees say it’s normal for children held there to have health problems.

One mother, who asked to use her middle name Arely, told the Guardian that children often had fevers or vomited when she was detained at Berks. She said she watched helplessly as her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter threw up blood for three days.

Another woman – who asked to be referred to only by her middle name Fernanda because she still fears her antagonists in her home country – remembered children with the flu and respiratory illnesses, and how the on-site medical professionals would take their temperatures but never give out medicine. When Fernanda’s own daughter had fever, she had to go to the hospital just to get Tylenol, she said.

Since attorney Jacquelyn Kline began representing immigrant families detained at Berks in the summer of 2014, she said the majority of her clients have gotten sick. Usually, the illnesses have been minor. But sometimes, when common problems have gone ignored or untreated, they have spiraled to become something more.

“In my experience, [the staff] do the bare minimum and they don’t want to do more than that unless it becomes a situation where they have to do it,” Kline said. “Because they don’t address things when there are minor issues, it allows them to become more serious issues.”

One Berks resident wrote to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in late 2015 that though her son’s skin disease had spread to his genitals and bled when scratched, the clinical team had not provided him with medication.In May 2016, a three-year-old boy who had been suffering from fevers and loss of appetite for months was finally diagnosed with an intestinal parasitism after his mother found a worm in his diaper.

Berks did not respond to a request for comment. Ice’s public affairs officers are out-of-office for the duration of the government shutdown, according to an automated email from the Pennsylvania officer’s account. Ice confirmed that he is currently furloughed.

Relatives cry over the coffin of seven-year old Jakelin Caal, who died in a Texas hospital on 8 December, two days after being taken into custody by US border patrol agents.
Relatives cry over the coffin of seven-year old Jakelin Caal, who died in a Texas hospital on 8 December, two days after being taken into custody by US border patrol agents. Photograph: Johan Ordóñez/AFP/Getty Images

The fact that serious medical conditions occur and go untreated for days, weeks or months while immigrant children are under the government’s protection may come as a surprise to many. But advocates who have been on the ground at detention facilities under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are well acquainted with stories such as these that point to a wider trend.

“I am surprised that more children or parents have not died while in DHS custody, given the systemic failure on the part of the government to provide medical services,” said Kathryn Shepherd, national advocacy counsel for the Immigration Justice Campaign at the American Immigration Council.

In late 2018, the deaths of two migrant children while in US custody near the southern border made national headlines and refocused attention on immigrant children who are in the country illegally. First, seven-year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin died from cardiac arrest associated with dehydration on 8 December after being apprehended by DHS’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Then, on Christmas Eve, eight-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo became the second child in a matter of weeks to succumb to illness after being taken into custody by CBP. It was later determined that he had the flu.

At first glance, the deaths appeared an exceptional phenomenon. Homeland security secretary Kirstjen M Nielsen has said that before last December, an immigrant child had not died in CBP custody in more than a decade.

But for those familiar with the ways in which DHS holds immigrant families beyond the border through Ice, the deaths felt part of a long medical history of neglect, misdiagnoses and close calls associated with undocumented children. This history dates to at least 2014, when the department ramped up mass incarceration of immigrant families under President Barack Obama.

“I don’t think that this is a new problem,” said Shepherd. “I think that this is something that’s been a problem for a long time.”

Before accepting her current post, Shepherd served as managing attorney for a pro-bono project representing asylum-seeking families at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Women and children detained there have beenairlifted or rushed to a hospital in an ambulance on a number of occasions, she said. Last summer, Vice News reported that a toddler had died six weeks after leaving the Ice detention center, where she contracted what started as a common cold but evolved into a deadly virus.

Eight-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo died on Christmas Eve after being taken into custody by DHS’s Customs and Border Protection.
Eight-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo died on Christmas Eve after being taken into custody by DHS’s Customs and Border Protection. Photograph: Catarina Gomez/AP

Brad Berman, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of California- San Francisco and fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the DHS facilities he is aware of that hold immigrant families crossing through the US’s southern border appear to be “providing inadequate or substandard medical care”.

“They are violating their own standards – federal standards, as well as state standards, as well as ethical standards,” he said.

Vincent Picard, deputy assistant director to Ice public affairs, said that Ice spends more that $250m annually on healthcare for their charges. He cited the June 2017 DHS inspector general’s report that found the agency’s family residential centers to be “clean, well-organized and efficiently run”.

“Ice takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care,” Picard said in a statement. “Ice is committed to ensuring the welfare of all those in the agency’s custody, including providing access to necessary and appropriate medical care. Comprehensive medical care is provided to all individuals in Ice custody.”

An independent medical evaluation Berman did tells a different story. He found that “the standards of pediatric medical care and mental health evaluations and care” for one immigrant child “were breached during her stay” at Berks, the Ice family detention center in Pennsylvania, in 2016. The girl, whose mother Maria requested she be referred to by her middle name Beatriz, was bedwetting after traveling to the US from El Salvador. She was nine years old.

Soon after arriving at Berks, Beatriz had several appointments with Michael Mosko, a psychologist provided by the facility. In his notes from one of the sessions, Mosko wrote that after conferring with an interpreter , he was under the impression that the bedwetting “was related to nothing more than laziness”.

After Beatriz was released from Berks, she visited a pediatric urologist and nephrologist who diagnosed her with chronic renal failure – or loss of kidney function. Though the condition was likely associated with Beatriz’s premature birth, it was exacerbated by a misdiagnosis during her time in detention, Berman said.

Now, Beatriz takes pills every night for her illness, which Maria said can’t be cured.

“She looked good when we were in El Salvador,” Maria said. “It was when she came here that she got sick.”

For Maria and Beatriz – as for many of the families from Central America who have crossed the US-Mexico border in recent years – leaving El Salvador was an attempt at self-preservation. When licensed clinical social worker Kathryn S Miller evaluated Beatriz, her report indicates that Beatriz and Maria shared stories about how the child watched her mother get robbed at knifepoint, experienced a home invasion, and overheard accounts of family friends being murdered by gang members.

Over the course of a year, Miller evaluated a handful of children who were detained at Berks. She said there was no doubt that each of them had been exposed to repeated trauma while in their home countries and had legitimate reasons for requesting asylum.

While families seeking asylum make their case, many of them fall into DHS custody and rely on the medical professionals the department supplies.

“There’s just basic needs that children have,” said Miller. “And if they’re going to be tasked with taking care of vulnerable children, they need to have the training and support to make sure they’re taking good care of them.”

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

The shutdown hasn’t stopped the Administration’s many abuses of migrants and children. Clearly, a Wall is not the answer to forcing the Administration to follow the law.

PWS

01-17-19

 

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  2. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”

NO, WE’RE NOT “OVERWHELMED” WITH ASYLUM SEEKERS – BUT TRUMP’S SHUTDOWN IS ADDING TO THE IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG, CREATING MORE “AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING” THAT HELPED CREATE THE BACKLOG IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND SCREWING ASYLUM SEEKERS WITH PENDING CASES! — We Won’t Be Able To Solve Immigration Until The Immigration Court is Removed From The Executive Branch & Becomes An Independent Court!

The latest TRAC IMMIGRATION report confirms what most of us familiar with the dysfunctional U.S. Immigration Courts already knew: Trump has already needlessly added 42,000 cases to the backlog and will have added at least 100,000 of the shutdown lasts through the end of January.

 

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Since the beginning of the federal government shutdown, most Immigration Court hearings have been cancelled. As of January 11, the estimated number of cancellations reached 42,726. Each week the shutdown continues, cancelled hearings will likely grow by another 20,000. As many as 100,000 individuals awaiting their day in court may be impacted if the shutdown continues through the end of January.

Each week the shutdown continues the practical effect is to add thousands of cases back onto the active case backlog which had already topped eight-hundred thousand (809,041) as of the end of last November. Individuals impacted by these cancellations may have already being waiting two, three, or even four years for their day in court, and now may have to wait years more before their hearing can be rescheduled once the shutdown ends.

Immigration Courts in California have experienced the most hearing cancellations – an estimated 9,424 as of January 11. These and many more details are based on analyses of court records by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

For state-by-state impacts, see the full report at:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/543

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through November 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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

But, that’s not all folks!

Amy Taxin reports for NBC LA:

https://apple.news/AB_FhnUCjSkylre8-ue8cZQ 

The partial government shutdown over President Donald Trump’s demand for a border wall is playing havoc with the nation’s already backlogged immigration courts, forcing the postponement of hearings for thousands of immigrants.

For some of those asking for asylum in the U.S., the impasse could mean years more of waiting — and prolonged separation from loved ones overseas — until they get a new court date.

But for those immigrants with little chance of winning their bids to stay in this country legally, the shutdown could help them stave off deportation that much longer — adding to the very delays the Trump administration has railed against.

“It is just dripping with irony,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “This administration has put a lot of emphasis on speeding up court cases, and the shutdown obviously is just going to cause massive delays.”

The shutdown has furloughed hundreds of thousands of government employees and halted services that aren’t deemed essential, including, in many instances, the immigration courts overseen by the Justice Department.

Hearings involved detained immigrants are still going forward. But untold thousands of other proceedings have been postponed. No one knows for how long; it depends on when employees return to work and hearings can be reset.

Immigration experts said cases could be delayed months or years since the courts have more than 800,000 pending cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, and many courtrooms are tightly booked.

Immigration Judge Dana Marks, former president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said she has at least 60 hearings a day in her San Francisco courtroom and no space on her docket for at least the next three years.

“The cases that are not being heard now — there is no readily available place to reschedule them until at least 2022 or beyond,” Marks said of her courtroom.

Immigration judges hear a wide range of complex cases from immigrants from across the world, some who have recently arrived in the United States, others who have lived in the country for years and the government is seeking to deport.

Immigration judges have long sought more staffing to handle the ballooning caseload, which has roughly doubled in five years following a surge in Central American children and families arriving at the southern border. The Trump administration has tried to speed up the courts by assigning immigration judges quotas and stopping them from shelving cases.

Some of the toughest cases immigration judges hear are claims for asylum, or protection from persecution. And long wait times can be especially difficult for asylum seekers, since they can’t bring spouses or children to join them in the United States unless their asylum requests are approved.

Reynold Finnegan, an immigration attorney in Los Angeles, said one of his Afghan clients hasn’t seen his wife or children in nearly nine years. After being kidnapped and tortured by the Taliban, the man left his homeland, traveled across the world and made his way to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum, Finnegan said.

He waited more than six years for his final hearing before an immigration judge, but it was canceled last week because of the shutdown, and he doesn’t know how much longer it will take.

“He is devastated,” Finnegan said. “He was really planning on seeing his wife later in the year when he got approved, and his children.”

Since the shutdown began in December, immigrants have had to prepare for their scheduled court hearings and in many cases travel to court, knowing the proceedings might be postponed. In Northern states, that can mean hourslong car trips through ice and snow and taking days off from work.

The delays are painful for many immigrants, especially those who have strong asylum claims or green card applications and want to get their lives on solid footing in the United States.

Those with the weakest asylum claims actually benefit from the delays, because they are able to remain in the U.S. in the meantime and hold out hope of qualifying for legal status by some other means down the road.

In the 2017 fiscal year, immigration courts decided more than 52,000 asylum cases. About 1 in 5 were approved, according to statistics from the courts.

Courts have been crippled by a government shutdown. More than 37,000 immigration hearings were delayed by one in 2013.

And it isn’t just immigration courts that are affected. Since Justice Department attorneys are allowed to work in limited circumstances only, some high-profile civil cases have been put on hold, including a lawsuit in Oregon by the widow of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, a man shot by police in 2016 after the takeover of a wildlife refuge.

Government attorneys have also sought to put on hold environmental cases, including challenges to logging projects and wild horse roundups in Montana and a lawsuit over the disposal in Oklahoma of toxic coal ash from power plants.

Most major criminal cases are expected to stay on track because of federal requirements for a speedy trial.

One aspect of immigration unaffected by the shutdown is the review of applications for green cards and citizenship. That’s because those tasks, which are handled by an agency in the Homeland Security Department, are paid for by application filing fees.

One asylum seeker, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of persecution in her home country, said the wait has been unbearable since her 2014 court date was twice delayed. It is now set for February.

“The past four years have been horrible enough, but this uncertainty, and my life being handled with such, I don’t know, no one cares, basically,” she said. “The process takes forever — just to get the date in front of the judge.”

Associated Press writers Dave Kolpack, Amy Forliti and Matthew Brown contributed to this report.

 

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

But, wait!  That’s not all folks. There’s more!

Brittany Shoot @ Fortune writes that Immigration Court waiting times could double as a result of Trump’s shutdown!

https://apple.news/AEy1h1oc7RSux5Cdw1fo4PQ

The United States immigration courts are overburdened. Roughly 800,000 cases are portioned out between around 400 immigration judges, according to PBS NewsHour.And with the federal government shutdowncontinuing into its third week, applicants who have already waited years for their court date may now be shuttled to the back of the line, their hearings rescheduled as late as the 2022. This directly effects people’s everyday lives, as immigration status impacts basics such as the ability to get a work permit.

Focus on immigration enforcement under the Department of Homeland Security may be up, but the immigration courts, which fall under the Department of Justice, have not been given much attention despite the record-high demand for hearings that has been growing over the past decade. Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president emeritus of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told NewsHour the effects of the shutdown are having a “devastating impact.” San Francisco-based Judge Marks says that her own caseload of nearly 4,000 dockets includes cases that are already several years old. With no scheduling slots available, she says those cases may be reset to another date several years in the future.

Non-detained immigrants make up about 90% of judges’ caseloads, and those cases can end up involving anything from asylum decisions to deportations. The other 10% of cases, those for immigrants who are detained by immigration officials, are the only ones that can be processed during the shutdown. And that’s why the vast majority of those waiting for a hearing will simply be moved to the back of the line again.

The effects of the record-long government shutdownare also touching the lives of everyone from private-sector contractorsto Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents and travelers. And if the shutdown continues for another two weeks, its cost to the economy will surpass $5.7 billion, the amount it would cost to build President Trump’s border wall.

Visit FORTUNE.com

 

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

Yeah, it’s going to continue to get worse until the shutdown ends and the Immigration Courts are removed from the DOJ.

Also, don’t let Trump, the DOJ, or any of their apologists in Congress or elsewhere “con” you into blaming the largely contrived “flood of asylum applicants” for this. We must stop “blaming the victims” for the lousy policies and gross incompetence of this Administration!

The Immigration Court has been in trouble and should have been fixed years ago. But, Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, and Miller intentionally have made things much, much worse—with no hope of improvement in sight.

Returning Due Process and fairness as the primary focus of these courts as well as placing them under professional court administration working for the Immigration Judges, not bureaucrats in Washington or Falls Church, wouldn’t solve the current immigration issues overnight. But, it certainly would be a head start and a beginning of a solution. That’s one heck of an improvement over the “downward spiral” promoted by this Administration. And, it wouldn’t cost $5.7 billion to fix, either!

PWS

01-15-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

EOIR & USCIS ISSUE COURT-REQUIRED NEW GUIDANCE ELIMINATING LARGE PORTIONS OF SESSIONS’S BOGUS GUIDANCE IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE/GANG RELATED CASES — Advocates Should Be Pushing This At All Levels In All Forums!

Dear Colleagues,

Following up on U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan’s powerful decision in Grace v. Whitaker, which found major elements of Matter of A-B- and the related USCIS Policy Memorandum to be inconsistent with the law, we are pleased to share the instructions which the Court ordered USCIS and EOIR to provide asylum officers and immigration judges conducting credible fear interviews and reviews of negative credible fear findings.  This guidance takes immediate effect and should be relied upon and cited to by advocates.

The Court declared that the following policies contained in Matter of A-B- and the related USCIS Policy Memorandum are arbitrary, capricious, and in violation of immigration law as applied to credible fear proceedings:

1.     The general rule against claims relating to domestic and gang violence.

2.     The requirement that a noncitizen whose claim involves non-governmental persecutors “show the government condoned the private actions or at least demonstrated a complete helplessness to protect the victim.”

3.     The Policy Memorandum’s rule that domestic violence-based particular social group definitions that include “inability to leave” a relationship are impermissibly circular and therefore not cognizable.

4.     The Policy Memorandum’s requirement that individuals must delineate or identify any particular social group in order to satisfy credible fear based on the particular social group protected ground.

5.     The Policy Memorandum’s directive that asylum officers should apply federal circuit court case law only “to the extent that those cases are not inconsistent with Matter of A-B-.”

6.     The Policy Memorandum’s directive that asylum officers should apply only the case law of “the circuit” where the individual is “physically located during the credible fear interview.”

While the Court’s order is limited to credible fear interviews in the expedited removal process, we urge advocates to use the Court’s reasoning in merits hearings before the Asylum Office and the Immigration Court, and on review before the BIA and circuit courts.  Of the six findings above, only (4) and (6) are specific to the nature of the credible fear process, which is intended to be a low screening standard, providing the applicant with the benefit of the most advantageous case law.  The other four findings (1,2,3, and 5) are more broadly based on Judge Sullivan’s interpretation of key statutory terms of the refugee definition, and his reasoning should be adopted and argued in the merits context as well.

Best,

Karen
Karen Musalo
Bank of America Foundation Chair in International Law

Professor & Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies

SSRN Author Page:  http://ssrn.c

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Thanks, Karen. The actual guidance memos can be found at the link in Karen’s e-mail.

The EOIR “guidance” asserts that it applies only in credible fear reviews. While technically true, as Karen more accurately points out, the rationale of Judge Sullivan’s findings 1, 2, 3, and 5 should apply equally in removal proceedings. Even if the “captive” BIA won’t listen the real, Article III Courts should. That’s why it’s critical to challenge all A-B- denials in the Circuits. And, as I noted before, no Circuit has yet had an opportunity to review A-B-.

Most, if not all, cases denied on the basis of Sessions’s flawed decision in Matter of A–B– should be subject to remand from the Article IIIs.  Just another example of how Sessions continues to harm individuals who deserve Due Process, while contributing to the largely DOJ-made backlog and wasting the time of the Article III Courts.

PWS

01-13-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  2. NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!
  3. JUDGE SULLIVAN STUFFS TRUMP’S REQUEST TO KEEP ON VIOLATING ASYLUM LAW PENDING APPEAL — Stay Denied In Grace v. Whitaker!
  4. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS TRUMP HAS THE WRONG “BORDER CRISIS”

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/424893-there-is-a-border-crisis-its-just-not-quite-what-the-president-said-it-is

Family Pictures

Nolan writes, in part:

. . . .

Unfortunately, Trump has made it easier for them by basing his request on claims about who is crossing the border that can be disputed readily, such as that many of them are terrorists or criminals.
He should base his otherwise correct argument instead on the numbers — on the fact that the sheer number of illegal crossings has overwhelmed our immigration courts, creating a backlog crisis that has made it virtually impossible to enforce our immigration laws, and that the border cannot be secured when illegal crossers are allowed to remain here indefinitely.
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Go on over to The Hill at the link for Nolan’s complete article.
  • Democrats aren’t destroying Trump’s credibility; he’s doing that himself with his constant lies and false narratives; this is just the latest and one of the most egregious examples;
  • By all reliable counts, illegal border crossings at the Southern Border are down substantially;
  • What is “up” are crossings by unaccompanied children and families from the Northern Triangle seeking asylum;
  • Such individuals present a humanitarian situation arising from a crisis in the Northern Triangle; but, they are not a “security threat” to the US; almost all turn themselves in at ports of entry or shortly after entering to apply for asylum under our legal system as they are entitled to do;
  • Those (other than unaccompanied children) who don’t establish a “credible fear” can be returned immediately without ever getting to the Immigration Courts (except for brief “credible fear reviews” before Immigration Judges);
  • The vast majority have a “credible fear” and should be referred to Immigration Court for full hearings on their claims in accordance with the law and our Constitution;
  • When matched with pro bono lawyers, given a clear understanding of the requirements, and time to prepare and document a claim, they appear for court hearings almost all the time;
  • Even with the Trump Administration’s “anti-asylum campaign” directed primarily at applicants from the Northern Triangle, and the lack of representation in approximately 25% of the cases, asylum claims from the Northern Triangle succeed at a rate of approximately 20%, https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3oo;
  • Undoubtedly, there is a “crisis” in our U.S. Immigration Courts — a Due Process and mismanagement crisis;
  • But, the Trump Administration with its often illegal actions and gross mismanagement, has actually managed to artificially increase the Immigration Court Backlog from just over 500,000 to more than 1.1 million in less than two years — despite having at least 100 additional Immigration Judges on duty, https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3qN;
  • Indeed, Trump’s shutdown is unnecessarily “ratcheting up” the Immigration Court backlog and initiating a new round of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” right now;
  • In addition to not understanding the true complexities of the immigration system, the Administration’s incompetent administration of the Immigration Courts is another reason why Trump might choose to shift attention elsewhere.;
  • Somebody will have to address the Due Process and administrative mess in the Immigration Courts in a constructive manner, starting with an independent, apolitical, court structure; but it won’t be the Trump Administration.

PWS

01-10-19

 

Related posts:

  1. THE HILL: NOLAN ON THE CURRENT BORDER CRISIS
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”

4th Cir. Finds No Nexus In Gang-Based Asylum Case – Cortez-Mendez v. Whitaker

162389.P

Cortez-Mendez v. Whitaker, 4th Cir., 01-07-19, Published

PANEL: WILKINSON and AGEE, Circuit Judges, and James P. JONES, United States District Judge for the Western District of Virginia, sitting by designation.

OPINION BY:  Judge Agee

KEY QUOTE:

Cortez-Mendez disputes the IJ and BIA’s conclusion that he was threatened because of “general criminal gang activity” in his hometown. A.R. 3; see A.R. 65–66. He asserts the gangs persecuted him because his father’s disabilities caused Cortez-Mendez to be poor, “vulnerable,” and “an easy mark [without] the backing and advice of a father.” A.R. 148. Cortez-Mendez argues his persecution was pointedly discriminatory because he “knew many of his persecutors[ ] and had heard them ridicule his father and the rest of his family.” Opening Br. 11; see A.R. 56. We find his arguments unpersuasive.

Cortez-Mendez presented no direct or circumstantial evidence that the gangs harassed him “on account of” his father’s disabilities as opposed to his own rejection of gang membership. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42). He provided no direct evidence that the gangs intimidated him because he was his father’s son. His only evidence of linkage to his father is that non-gang neighborhood harassers had “made fun of” him because of Marcial Cortez’s disabilities, A.R. 146–47, and the gang members who called his mother in 2005 “remembered [him] as a son of a mute and dumb person,” A.R. 176. Even if either of these groups of taunters knew about Marcial Cortez’s disabilities, it does not follow that they intimidated Cortez-Mendez because of his relation to his disabled father.See Hernandez-Avalos, 784 F.3d at 950 n.7 (“[N]ot . . . every threat that references a family member is made on account of family ties.”).

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Indeed, the circumstantial evidence in the record reflects a different reason for Cortez-Mendez’s harassment: he rejected the gangs’ recruitment efforts. Cortez-Mendez testified that he feared the gangs would harm him “if [he] did not become a gangster” or “if [he] did not [agree] to become part of the gangs.” A.R. 175. Substantial evidence supports the IJ’s and BIA’s conclusions that the “neighborhood gangs observed the family’s poverty and concluded they could easily recruit” Cortez-Mendez, A.R. 56, and that it was after Cortez-Mendez refused to join the gangs that they threatened him, A.R. 3–4, 66. Cortez-Mendez even admitted that he left El Salvador because had rejected gang membership: “they kept asking me to join them and be a member of the gang, and that is why I fled.” A.R. 140. At most, Cortez-Mendez demonstrated that the gangs may have targeted him because of his poverty but only threatened him because he would not join their ranks. Flight from gang recruitment is not a protected ground under the INA. See Zelaya v. Holder, 668 F.3d 159, 166–67 (4th Cir. 2012); Matter of S-E-G-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 579, 589 (B.I.A. 2008). Consequently, Cortez-Mendez’s own testimony of his circumstantial fears defeats his argument that a protected ground like his relation to his disabled father was “at least one central reason for” his treatment in El Salvador.Crespin-Valladares, 632 F.3d at 127.

Furthermore, while it is not dispositive, Cortez-Mendez testified that his father and other family members still live in El Salvador and have suffered no harm. Our decision relies on whether Cortez-Mendez—and not some other person—was persecuted because of his relation to his father, see Hernandez-Avalos, 784 F.3d at 950; Crespin-Valladares, 632 F.3d at 127 n.6, but a fact we may consider with the rest is whether other family

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members have been persecuted because of their identical family ties, see Mirisawo, 599 F.3d at 398 (“The fact that family members whose political opinions Mirisawo fears will be imputed to her have not themselves faced harm fatally undermines her claim that she will suffer persecution because of her association with them.”). The evidence in the record that Cortez-Mendez’s family—including his disabled father—remains unharmed suggests that Cortez-Mendez’s relation to his father is not the reason for the persecution he fears.

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Primarily a failure of proof. Had there been evidence that: (1) the gang’s threats were because of the respondent’s father’s disabled status; (2) his father or other members of the family had been harmed or threatened; or (3) gangs in El Salvador had a particular antipathy toward disabled individuals and their families, the result could have been different.

Still, the fact-based nature of this outcome, and the Fourth Circuit’s carefully articulated analysis, give lie to Session’s attempt to create a “de facto presumption” against the granting of asylum cases based on domestic violence and/or harm from gangs. Each case must be separately analyzed on its facts. That will take considerable time and careful analyses by U.S. immigration Judges and the BIA — the polar opposite of Sessions’s prejudicial “judicial quotas” and his urging that Immigration Judges cut corners by prejudging gang-related cases against respondents as he suggested in Matter of A-B-.

With the backlog growing exponentially by the day as a result of Trump’s mindless shutdown, the Immigration Courts can’t possibly carry out their mission consistently with Due Process as long as they are controlled by politicos like Sessions, Whitaker, and Trump.

HISTORICAL NOTE: Both Miriswano and Crespin-Valladares, cited by the Fourth Circuit cases were my cases when I was at the Arlington Immigration Court.

PWS

01-10-19

Related posts:

  1. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  2. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”