Category: Chicago

🏴‍☠️ THIS WEEK IN “GARLANDING” — “What Me Worry” AG Attains “Verb Status,” Pisses Off WH, & More Tales Of Woe From The Land Where Justice Goes To Die!”

Alfred E. Neumann
Merrick Garland doesn’t worry about injustice in his courts! But, YOU should PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

THIS WEEK IN “GARLANDING” — True Tales From The “Twilight Zone” Of American Justice!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

February17, 2024

garland ( gar’ land) v.t. [garlanded, garlanding] [dv. USAG Merrick Garland via Prof. Laurence Tribe] m. inflict injustice by one in charge, often through inattention, inaction, or dithering. (Ex 1. I pray the judge won’t garland my case. Ex 2. My client was garlanded and deported to death. Ex 3. They will be garlanding asylum applicants at the U.S. border.)

I would love to take full credit for the above verb. But, that honor must go to the inspiring writing of Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, one of AG Merrick Garland’s former mentors. See https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/02/gross-abuse-merrick-garlands-former-constitutional-law-professor-is-now-blasting-him/.

By all accounts, President Biden and his White House were outraged this week when they were garlanded by the “Hur report.” Ironically, three years of complaining by some of Biden’s core supporters who helped elect him in 2020 about being systematically “garlanded” at EOIR brought not so much as a raised eyebrow from the WH. Indeed, they might now be viewed as just a preview of Biden’s “Miller Lite” dissing of his supporters and human lives at the border with his inanely enthusiastic support of an attempted human rights “fire sale” by Senate Dems! Obviously, it’s quite a different story when things come full circle and the “chickens finally come home to roost.”

But, enough of that. When we left our DOJ antihero last week he was fresh off paying out $1.2 million of your taxpayer dollars to settle a sexual harassment claim by one of his ex-EOIR employees! See https://immigrationcourtside.com/2024/02/09/%F0%9D%90%97%F0%9D%90%97%F0%9D%90%97%F0%9D%90%97%F0%9D%90%97-sex-the-courthouse-%F0%9F%A4%AF-a-tragicomic-%F0%9F%8E%AD-series-starring-judge-merrick-garland-dag-lisa-mo/.

You might think that’s hard to top! But, you would be wrong! Let’s get started on this week’s trip around “the land where due process and fundamental fairness fear to tread!” 

  1. No Due Process In The Omaha Immigration Court

The ACLU released it’s report condemning Garland’s Omaha Immigration Court for a plethora of due process abuses. See https://www.aclunebraska.org/en/press-releases/new-report-finds-omaha-immigration-judges-routinely-compromise-peoples-rights.

Among the “lowlights:”

  • The project focused on pretrial hearings that can encompass pleadings, scheduling and other technical matters. The average observed hearing ran under four minutes, a rapid-fire pace to cover all of a hearing’s required steps.

  • Judges advised people of their rights in only 18% of the observed hearings. Most often, this involved reading rights to everyone in a group instead of individually.

  • Immigration courts are required to provide interpretation in the preferred language of the individual appearing at a hearing at no cost to the individual. The court frequently failed to provide Central American Indigenous language interpretation. This impacted roughly four out of five individuals who preferred to speak in a Central American Indigenous language.

  • In about one in five observed hearings, the individual was not represented by an attorney.

Of course, one might wonder why it is the responsibility of the ACLU to ferret out things that Garland should have discovered and corrected himself. But, no matter. Those poor souls whose lives and future are in the hands of the Omaha Immigration Court can expect to be garlanded.

2) Shenanigans in Chicago

Dan Kowalski reports:

IJs hide the ball; find the secret list or lose your case

Friends,

Immigration court practitioners in many cities now face a new hurdle: find, and adhere to, a secret list of IJ procedural preferences (requirements, actually)…posted, in one case, in the “pro bono room” of one court.  NOT online anywhere.  Oh, and it changes frequently, and without warning.  See the attached sample from Chicago.

Practitioners have complained to EOIR, so let’s see what happens.

 

I have a funny feeling that PWS may have a thing or two to say about all this.

DPF!

2024.02.05 – EOIR Chicago IJ Hearing Preference Sheet

Indeed I do, my friend, indeed I do. This one hits “close to home.”

Back in 2006 my friend and Round Table colleague Judge John Gossart of Baltimore headed a group of IJs who took on the monumental task of writing the first Immigration Court Practice Manual (“ICPM”). Based on Judge Gossart’s own “local court rules and best judicial practices” developed over decades, the ICPM built on the success of the award- winning BIA Practice Manual, created and issued during my tenure as BIA Chair. 

One of the key features of the ICPM is that  It superseded and erased all then-existing “local rules.”

Those few of us IJs who did public education events — under the watchful eye of our HQ “handlers” — were encouraged to tout and promote the ICPM as the “definitive guide” to successful practice before the courts, which, of course I dutifully did as reflected in my speeches from those days. I believe we even had “Q&A” sessions with the local immigration bar to promote and explain the ICPM.

Now, after years of gross mismanagement under Trump and Biden, things have come full circle. The oft-conflicting, idiosyncratic, and frequently inaccessible or counterintuitive “local rules” that the ICPM was created to eliminate evidently have returned with a vengeance.

Meanwhile, the very substantial amount of time, resources, credibility, and effort that went into creating, distributing, and implementing the ICPM has been a colossal waste of taxpayer resources because the last two Administrations have failed in their duty to competently and professionally administer EOIR!

And let’s not leave out Congress! If ever there were a need for a new, independent, professional, expert Article I Court System it’s EOIR. Yet, although Dems have introduced bills, the GOP has expressed no interest in Article I, nor has it been a priority for Congressional leadership and the Administration. It wasn’t even “on the radar screen” during the failed Senate “debate” on the immigration system.

Both Chicago Immigration Court practitioners and those IJs, current and past, who devoted their professional time and energy to the ICPM have been garlanded.

3) ADR On Steroids In Virginia

A long-time DMV immigration lawyer told the “Courtside I-Team” this week:

I routinely have MCHs listed as “in person” that are actually by Webex (I had one today). I also have an Individual on Thursday listed as Webex, but I received an email at 4:00 PM today stating that this was an error, and it was actually in person. I replied that I could not attend in person, as I have too many other cases and family issues to rearrange my schedule at the last minute. We’ll see what happens, but all this is typical of an agency that could care less about applicants, practitioners or due process of law. Take care.

For decades, practitioners and experts had been begging DOJ and EOIR to enter the 21st century with automation. Dishearteningly, now that automation has belatedly arrived at EOIR, it’s being used to severely diminish customer service rather than improve it!

It seems that every whim, irrationality, inefficiency, and inconvenience that developed at EOIR over years has now been “automated” to maximize the trauma and stress inflicted on those appearing before these broken courts. As this example points out, that has led to “Aimless Docket Reshuffling (“ADR”) on steroids!”

And here’s why automated ADR is such a powerful tool! Some practitioners have told me that it allows EOIR to unilaterally schedule them to be in three or four different courts at the same time, with almost no notice. Then, it’s up to the lawyer to file individual  “motions to reschedule” to clean up EOIR’s mess. 

Sometimes they are granted, sometimes denied without any rationale. All of this leads to more work and case shuffling but, importantly, without ever getting to the merits of any case! 

Meanwhile, the backlog grows exponentially and the stress levels on the private bar and the staff ratchet up.

There might be surer ways to destroy a court system, but none come immediately to mind. This is garlanding at its best!

4) Another “F” In “Immigration Law 101” From The 3rd Circuit

This from Dan Kowalski at LexisNexis:

CA3 CAT Remand (Somalia) – Herrow v. Atty. Gen.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-02-12/pdf/2024-02829.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-cat-remand-somalia—herrow-v-atty-gen

“[W]e conclude that the BIA, in deciding his CAT claim, failed to consider evidence favorable to Herrow. For that reason, we will remand his petition as it applies to that claim. … Herrow claims that the BIA and IJ erred in denying his CAT claim and in finding that (1) he is unlikely to face torture and (2) the Somali government would not acquiesce in such torture. Because the BIA and IJ ignored evidence favorable to Herrow, we will grant his petition in part and remand for a more comprehensive review of the evidence. … To establish a likelihood of future torture, the record must demonstrate an aggregate risk of torture to the noncitizen that exceeds fifty percent. In making this determination, the IJ must address what is likely to happen to the petitioner if removed, and whether “what is likely to happen amount[s] to the legal definition of torture.” In answering these questions here, the BIA and IJ found that Herrow did not demonstrate a likelihood of torture. We conclude, however, that this determination could not have been made if all the evidence presented by Herrow had been properly considered.”

[Hats off to Christopher M. Casazza and Caitlin J. Costello!  Audio of the oral argument is here.]

—

Daniel M. Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin (LexisNexis)

Being wrongfully denied CAT is no small matter, particularly if the USG is threatening to send you to Somalia. Lets get a glimpse of what happens in Somalia, courtesy of the latest report from our State Department:

Government security forces, including NISA and the Puntland Intelligence Agency (PIA), detained boys and adult men in the same facility and threatened, beat, and forced them to confess to crimes, according to Human Rights Watch.  There were reports of rape and sexual abuse by government agents, primarily members of the security forces.  The Human Rights Center, a local nongovernmental organization (NGO), reported two Somaliland police officers, area commissioner Hassan Ismail and Mustafe Yusuf Dheere, raped Nimo Jama Hassan on June 4 in Caynabo (see sections 1.g. and 6).

Al-Shabaab imposed harsh treatment and punishment on persons in areas under its control (see section 1.g.).

Torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment at the hands of clan militias, some of which were government-affiliated, remained frequent.  A strong and widespread culture of impunity continued, due mainly to clan protection of perpetrators and weak government capacity to hold the guilty to account.

You might think that would lead Garland and his subordinates to take extra care to get these cases right. But, you would be wrong. Dead wrong in many cases. “Good enough for government work” is the touchstone of garlanding. 

By all accounts, Garland was a stellar student during his Harvard Law days. But, not so much some of his EOIR judges at the trial and appellate levels, particularly some of the “Sessions/Barr holdovers” who appear to have been appointed to the bench primarily because they were viewed as likely to deny protection without regard to law or facts. (I’ll concede that Barr and Sessions were wrong about some of their appointments who turned out, perhaps against  the odds, to be fair judges.)

Far too many EOIR judges receive “Fs” from the Courts of Appeals on the basics of immigration and asylum law, even though most mistakes never get to the Article III Courts or manage to otherwise wend their way through the system, thereby endangering lives.

Mr. Herrow was garlanded, but survived (at least for now) thanks to the work of his lawyers and the Third Circuit. 

Well, folks, that’s this week’s wrap from Gar-Land, “the land that justice forgot!” But, stay tuned to Courtside for future updates on garlanding and its victims! 

What’s on the horizon: In March, a final report expected from AILA Ohio on systemic racism at EOIR! Should be a great read!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-17-24

Related posts:

  1. 𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐗 “SEX & THE COURTHOUSE” 🤯 — A Tragicomic 🎭 Series Starring Judge Merrick Garland & DAG Lisa Monaco As Clueless Leaders Of A Failed Court System Where The Focus Is On Something Other Than Delivery Of Justice!
  2. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  3. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽NY TIMES EDITORIAL MAKES THE CASE FOR ARTICLE I — “It’s hard to imagine a more glaring conflict of interest than the nation’s top law-enforcement agency running a court system in which it regularly appears as a party.” — Garland’s Abject Failure To Fix EOIR, Bring In Experts Highlighted, As Constitutional Due Process, Ethical, Human Rights, Racial Justice, Gender Equity, Diversity, & Management Farce @ EOIR Continues Under His Disgraceful Lack Of Awareness & Failure Of Courageous, Progressive Leadership!  — Progressives Can’t Remain Silent, Must “Raise Hell” 👹With Biden Administration About Garland’s Lousy Performance @ EOIR, As He Continues To Stack Immigration “Judiciary” With “Miller Lite Holdovers” 🤮 To The Exclusion of Progressive Experts Who Helped Put Biden Administration In Office!
  4. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️

🇺🇸🗽⚖️😎 THERE’S STILL SOME INSPIRING NEWS TO REPORT: 1) CHICAGO PASTORS WELCOME BUSSES; 2) GW LAW CLINIC STUDENTS HELP NEW ARRIVALS; 3) W&M LAW CLINIC WINS 27 CASES; 4) NDPA STAR KIM WILLIAMS, ESQ, TRIUMPHS OVER GARLAND DOJ’S “NEXUS NONSENSE” IN 1ST CIR; 5) HRF’S ROBYN BARNARD CALLS OUT BIDEN’S THREAT TO TRASH ASYLUM; 6) CEO BILL PENZY LIKES & APPRECIATES IMMIGRANTS!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️😎 THERE’S STILL SOME INSPIRING NEWS TO REPORT: 1) CHICAGO PASTORS WELCOME BUSSES; 2) GW LAW CLINIC STUDENTS HELP NEW ARRIVALS; 3) W&M LAW CLINIC WINS 27 CASES; 4) NDPA STAR KIM WILLIAMS, ESQ, TRIUMPHS OVER GARLAND DOJ’S “NEXUS NONSENSE” IN 1ST CIR; 5) HRF’S ROBYN BARNARD CALLS OUT BIDEN’S THREAT TO TRASH ASYLUM; 6) CEO BILL PENZY LIKES & APPRECIATES IMMIGRANTS!

 

  1. Pastors Welcome Busses

Rebekah Barber reports for religionnews.com:

https://religionnews.com/2024/01/17/chicago-pastors-help-the-city-grapple-with-flood-of-migrants/

Chicago Pastors Welcome
Locals and migrants attend a banquet at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago on Nov. 30, 2023. (Photo by Max Li)

(RNS) — Chicago was already facing a homelessness crisis before Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, began directing thousands of migrants entering his state to Democratic bastions that had declared themselves migrant-friendly sanctuary cities.

Since the transfers began in April 2022, more than 20,000 migrants, many of them destitute Venezuelans, have arrived, and many Chicagoans have expressed concerns that the city’s resources are being drained and have accused government officials of failing to communicate about the migrants’ cost and their fates.

At the same time, advocates for the migrants, especially community organizers in more vulnerable neighborhoods, have pushed back against attempts to pit two marginalized groups against each other. These groups have stepped up to support the new arrivals and in many cases have found allies in local faith leaders.

. . . .

Black said the majority of community residents want to find a way to both support the migrants and build support for a part of Chicago that has been historically underserved and underresourced. At the banquet at First Presbyterian, a speaker from Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community organizing group, talked about what it means to have Black and brown unity.

“It’s basically founded on this idea that there’s no scarcity,” Black said. “Not only is there enough for everybody — for the asylum-seekers, and the historically disenfranchised populations of South Side Chicago.”

He added, “We have so much more to gain from our unity than from the division which is being manufactured and orchestrated by interests that don’t want these communities to get the resources they need.”

This article was produced as part of the RNS/Interfaith America Religion Journalism Fellowship.

2) GW Law Clinic Students Help New Arrivals

From Professor Alberto Benítez:

Newcomer Fair at Langdon Elementary for families who have recently arrived from Texas and Arkansas via bus

I report that today Immigration Clinic student-attorneys Raisa Shah, Jennifer Juang-Korol, and I participated in the Newcomer Fair that the District of Columbia Public Schools sponsored at Langdon Elementary for families who have recently arrived from Texas and Arkansas via bus, primarily Venezuelans living in DC shelters. We shared immigration and social services information, GW swag, and met lots of cute kids. We were the only law school that participated. Please see the attached. 

Professor Alberto Benitez
Professor Alberto Benítez & GW Immigration Clinic Student-Attorneys Raisa Shah & Jennifer Juang-Korol Staff The Table @ Newcomer Fair!

3) W&M Law Clinic Wins 27 Cases

Professor J. Nicole Medved reports on LinkedIn:

Over the holidays, the Immigration Clinic received approval notices in TWENTY-SEVEN applications that we’ve filed in the last calendar year. 🎉  Among those 27 approvals were approvals for #asylum, #lawfulpermanentresidency, #DACA, #TPS, and #workpermits. It has been so exciting to see–and share–the fantastic news with our clients, students, and alumni who worked on these cases!

Clinic students prepare Temporary Protected Status and work permit applications. (Spring 2023)
Clinic students prepare Temporary Protected Status and work permit applications. (Spring 2023)

4) NDPA Superstar Kim Williams Triumphs Over Garland DOJ’s “Nexus Nonsense” In 1st Cir

From Dan Kowalski @LexisNexis:

Major CA1 Victory: Pineda-Maldonado v. Garland

http://media.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/20-1912P-01A.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/major-ca1-victory-pineda-maldonado-v-garland

“Ricardo Jose Pineda-Maldonado (“Pineda-Maldonado”) is a native and citizen of El Salvador. He petitions for review of the decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) that denied his application for asylum and claims for withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). We grant the petition, vacate the BIA’s decision, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this decision.”

[Please read the entire 31-page decision.  It is a solid beat-down for the IJ and the BIA.  Hats way off to Kim Williams and team!  Listen to the oral argument here.]

Kim Williams
Kim Williams, Esquire
Rubin Pomerleau PC
PHOTO: LinkedIn

5) HRF’s Robyn Barnard Calls Out Biden’s Threat To Trash Asylum

Robyn Barnard
Robyn Barnard
Associate Director of Refugee Advocacy
Human Rights First
PHOTO: Linkedin

Robyn writes on LinkedIn:

Have been thinking a lot about this statement & questioning how we got here. Anyone who works in this space knows just how complicated our laws & system are, the challenges global crises present, all compounded by recent attempts to totally destroy our immigration system. We know this is hard. However, the President has had at his service very smart ppl, experts, not to mention those in NGO space w decades of experience who have provided him reams of recommendation papers from before he was elected President, all wanting to help him to succeed at making the immigration system more efficient, more fair, but I’d guess most also came out of 4 yrs of Trump wanting to ensure we treat ppl w dignity & respect their basic human rights. If only he would listen.

How did the President go from vowing to “restore asylum” & “stop kids in cages” to essentially trying to out-Trump Trump? I wish we had a President who had the political courage to stand by immigrants, to stand in public & declare why detention, border walls, & summary deportations don’t work, & to invest in humane & smart solutions. The truly enraging thing about this is he will never win in his gross political posturing despite throwing migrants under the bus, or more aptly–literally to the cartels–the Right will never be satisfied & now he has put himself on record as in favor of Trump’s policies. 

Shame. Shame on whoever had a hand in this hateful declaration and shame on the leader who put his name to it.

6) CEO Bill Penzy Likes & Appreciates Immigrants

Penzys Logo
Penzys Logo
FROM: Facebook

Penzy, CEO of Penzy’s Spices in Wauwatosa, WI (my home town — graduated from Tosa East in ‘66) writes:

And despite all the Republican anger, it really is okay to say you like what immigrants do and have always done for this country. So much hard work. So much tasty food. What’s not to like? They need somewhere their hard work can amount to something, and we have plenty of space, and more work to do than we can do ourselves..

Immigrants give us the chance to be kind, decent humans. Let’s be kind, decent humans.

Thanks for caring enough to cook and caring about so much more.

You are awesome,

Bill
bill@penzeys.com

 ************************

Even in a time of “politicos’ bipartisan national fear-mongering, irresponsibility, and trashing of human rights,” courageous NDPA “freedom fighters” still stand up for human dignity and the right to asylum! 

Three cheers for the good guys! 📣📣📣

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-28-24

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. 👏⚖️ TELLING IT LIKE IT IS! — Immigration Guru & Pundit Dan Kowalski Slams The Immorality & Intellectual Dishonesty Of The Viral “Border Debate” In Congress!
  3. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!
  4. 🗽⚖️ AS CONGRESS & ADMINISTRATION DITHER OVER GOP’S OUTRAGEOUS NATIVIST DEMANDS, LONG OVERDUE DUE PROCESS & STRUCTURAL REFORMS LANGUISH, LEAVING ASYLUM-SEEKING REFUGEES TWISTING IN THE WIND! — A Report On The Ever Growing EOIR Backlog From AP’s Giovanna Dell’Orto!

☠️⚰️🤯 MARY MEG McCARTHY @ CHI SUN TIMES:  Elected Officials Must Be Held Accountable 👎 For Unnecessary Migrant Deaths!

Mary Meg McCarthy
Mary Meg McCarthy
Executive Director
National Immigrant Justice Center
PHOTO: Linkedin
Remain in Mexico
A girl peers out from an encampment at the U.S.-Mexico border where she and several hundred people waited to present themselves to U.S. immigration to seek asylum. Politicos of both parties disgracefully treat the lives of asylum seekers as “collateral damage” and apparently expect no consequences from their deadly, inhumane, and often illegal actions against legal asylum seekers!  / Photo by David Maung

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/12/21/24007965/migrant-death-jean-carlos-martinez-rivero-immigration-chicago-city-council-israel-gaza

Elected officials must act to prevent more migrant deaths

The United States has the resources to welcome new neighbors, but it is going to take cooperation, from the White House to the mayor’s office, to prevent further loss of life and improve safety for migrants.

By  Letters to the Editor   Dec 21, 2023, 3:32pm CST

It was heartbreaking to learn of the death of 5-year-old Jean Carlos Martinez Rivero, who had been living with his family at a privately contracted Chicago migrant shelter. This tragedy must be a wakeup call for all levels of government to start working together to protect people’s basic human rights at a time of increasing global humanitarian displacement.

For months, community members raised concerns about conditions inside the city’s shelters and volunteered to help better meet migrants’ basic needs. The accounts of life inside the shelter now coming to light are disturbingly similar to those that my colleagues at the National Immigrant Justice Center hear from clients held in immigration detention centers.

The city and the companies profiting from shelter contracts must be held accountable.

No doubt, the city has been forced to face the unprecedented challenge of welcoming thousands of new neighbors with minimal support from the federal government. The Biden administration and Congress must also be held accountable to repair the broken immigration system, support cities like Chicago that are welcoming migrants, and provide legal pathways so new arrivals have access to employment, secure housing and safety.

Jean Carlos’ death occurred at the same time the Biden administration and some U.S. senators are considering signing off on extreme anti-immigrant legislation in exchange for military aid for Ukraine and Israel.

The proposals under negotiation would create permanent new barriers to asylum protection and put U.S. immigrant communities at heightened risk of mass deportations. The proposals are structured to put Black, Brown and Indigenous communities at most risk.

Biden seems to have lost sight of his prior promises to defend immigrants’ rights, not to mention the U.S. government’s obligations to uphold international human rights law. Chicagoans should be holding our own Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth accountable to loudly oppose these proposals.

The United States has the resources to welcome new neighbors, but it is going to take cooperation at every level — from the White House to the mayor’s office — to prevent further loss of life and improve access to safety for migrant communities.

Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director, National Immigrant Justice Center

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

Unfortunately, accountability seems unlikely unless it happens at the ballot box.  The GOP has become the party of inhumanity, irresponsibility, and immunity. And, although the Biden Administration and “wobbly” Dems tend to avoid overtly dehumanizing asylum seekers with their language, their actions and attitudes too often mirror those of Trump, Miller, and the GOP nativists. Indeed, quite disgustingly, politicos of both parties appear to expect to harvest political gains from the blood of migrants!   🤮

The Senate is basically engaging in “bipartisan” negations to knowingly and intentionally violate domestic and international protection laws, abrogate constitutional due process, and increase the number of unnecessary deaths of asylum seekers. That arrogant politicos, on both sides of the aisle, although primarily the GOP, openly advocate for such actions shows just how little fear of any type of accountability they have. 

In many ways, that’s precisely the message that Trump and his MAGAmaniacs have been pushing — intentionally hateful and inflammatory language, followed by horrible, sometimes deadly, actions with little or no fear of any type of accountability.  Sadly, the Dems seem to think that a program of cowardly acquiescence, rather than principled opposition, is the key to political success.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01–03-23

Related posts:

  1. 👏⚖️ TELLING IT LIKE IT IS! — Immigration Guru & Pundit Dan Kowalski Slams The Immorality & Intellectual Dishonesty Of The Viral “Border Debate” In Congress!
  2. 🤯 “DESPERATE PEOPLE DO DESPERATE THINGS!”
  3. ☠️🤯 HISTORIC SETTLEMENT OF FAMILY SEPARATION CASE SHOWS LEGAL & MORAL BANKRUPTCY OF TRUMP’S “OFFICIAL CHILD ABUSE PROGRAM!” — So Why Are Spineless Dems On The Hill & In The Biden Administration “Negotiating” With GOP Sponsors Of Even Worse “Crimes Against Humanity?”🤮 — “It does represent, in my view, one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw said!
  4. 😢 CRIES IN THE WILDERNESS: The Voices Of Experience & Reasonableness Are Being Drowned Out By Nativism, Butt-Covering, & Imagined Political Expediency In The One-Sided “Border Debate” Taking Place In The Senate!

⚖️🗽👏 ESTHER NIEVES OF WICKER PARK, IL “GETS” THE MESSAGE OF CHRISTMAS 😇 & THE HUMANITY OF ASYLUM SEEKERS, EVEN IF OUR LEADERS (AND TOO MANY “FOLLOWERS”) DO NOT!🤯☹️👎

Description Immigrants & Refugees Welcome - Banner on Facade - Pilsen - Chicago - Illinois - USA Date Taken on 18 February 2017, 10:55 Source Immigrants & Refugees Welcome - Banner on Facade - Pilsen - Chicago - Illinois - USA Author Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada

Description Immigrants & Refugees Welcome – Banner on Facade – Pilsen – Chicago – Illinois – USA
Date Taken on 18 February 2017, 10:55
Source Immigrants & Refugees Welcome – Banner on Facade – Pilsen – Chicago – Illinois – USA
Author Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada
Creative Commons License

From the Chicago Sun Times:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/11/30/23982579/migrants-families-racism-venezuela-chicago-tents-nuclear-power-plant-war-letters

Migrants are cut from the same cloth as the rest of us

One of the words I have not heard to describe migrants — but is a more accurate than the negative portrayals — is “families.”

By  Letters to the Editor   Nov 30, 2023, 5:11pm EST

With the holidays upon us, there will undoubtedly be plenty of work parties, shopping sprees with kids in tow and the ubiquitous family gatherings. The coming months will also challenge us to wear layers of clothes and wrap ourselves and our loved ones in blanket-like coats. I am fortunate to have plenty of gloves, scarves, coats and boots.

Others are less fortunate. The unfortunate ones include the “new arrivals,” most of whom have never experienced a Chicago winter. Since the migrants’ arrival, critics have taken to the airwaves offering their comments about the tents, buses, use of police stations, encroachment on city streets, and, what they believe is the destruction of the city’s social and economic fabric. Descriptions of migrants are also disconcerting: liars, troublemakers, thieves, wayward parents using their kids to manipulate the immigration system and outsiders trying to live off the municipal dough.

One of the words I have not heard but is a more accurate depiction of the new arrivals is families. The buses full of people reflect a multi-generational exit from countries steeped in turmoil and unrest: infants, children, parents, or other caretakers. Describing those who arrive as families could lead us to consider them fully human, more like us. Instead, we use words that create a chasm that places the migrants at an arm’s distance from us, society and our city.

Throughout the next month, love, joy, harmony and peace will be words we will likely hear daily in songs, written in holiday cards and celebrated in plays and movies that bring friends and families together. Some will celebrate the season by remembering the birth of a unique child. Warned to flee to ensure the safety of his wife and newborn child, the family patriarch left for other lands. Wouldn’t it be remarkable if we could see the face of this child in the faces of the children we see coming here? Perhaps we can take the first step by using words that remove the stigma and distance between us and the “new arrivals.” The words? Families, of course.

Esther Nieves, Wicker Park

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

Yup, contrary to the absolute, hateful, BS from Trump, Johnson, and the rest of the MAGA right, and the disgraceful indifference of too many Dems, most migrants want: 1) security, 2) opportunity, and 3) a better future, particularly for family. That’s what I found over more than 13 years on the trial bench at the Immigration Court. Basically, what all of us want from life!

Migrants deserve fair, humane, dignified treatment from the U.S. and our legal system, regardless of whether they ultimately are able to meet the legal criteria to remain!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-24-23

Related posts:

  1. 🤯 “DESPERATE PEOPLE DO DESPERATE THINGS!”
  2. 👏⚖️ TELLING IT LIKE IT IS! — Immigration Guru & Pundit Dan Kowalski Slams The Immorality & Intellectual Dishonesty Of The Viral “Border Debate” In Congress!
  3. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  4. ⚖️🗽🇺🇸 SPEAKING OUT: “MATTHEW AT THE BORDER: ACTING ON THE MESSAGE OF CHAPTER 25”

🇺🇸🗽⚖️😇 THE STORY THE “MAINSTREAM MEDIA” IGNORES: Faith Commnities In Chicago Continue To Aid Forced Migrants Despite GOP Stunts & Feds’ Indifference!

Rev. Craig Mousin
Rev. Craig Mousin
PHOTO: DePaul University Website

From Rev. Craig Mousin:

Dear Paul,

I trust you are well.  You might be interested in the 2023 Annual meeting of Chicago’s Community Renewal Society as it focused on the bussing of asylum-seekers to Chicago and the response of faith communities and community-based organizations:

Although many reports in the media critique Chicago and other major cities response to southern governors who bus asylum-seekers and newcomers from the southern border to Chicago, we have not heard as much about the outpouring of support and hospitality offered by Chicagoans through faith communities, community-based organizations, and volunteers.  The held its 2023 Virtual Meeting on November 9, 2023, to highlight some of that hospitality and welcome.  You can view the entire meeting at the link below.  You will hear some great preaching about Chicago faith communities’ responses from Rev. Dr. Waltrina Middleton, CRS Executive Director, (starting at 0.15), and Rev. Dr. Beth Brown, Pastor at Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church (starting at 30.16).  Fasika Alem, Programs Director of the United African Organization described their work as part of the Sanctuary Working Group (starting at 7:56).  I provided a brief review of the Refugee Act of 1980 and a description of former Mayor Harold Washington’s first Executive Order banning city cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents (starting at 44:30).  You can view the entire meeting at: https://www.communityrenewalsociety.org/videos/v/2023ama  #CRSAMA2023

Please share this resource regarding CRS and Chicago faith communities’ responses to migrants arriving in Chicago. If you would like more information about Mayor Harold Washington’s first Executive Order and the coalition that supported the welcome of immigrants and refugees to Chicago, see my article in the Southern Illinois Law Journal: “A Clear View from the Prairie: Harold Washington and the People of Illinois Respond to Federal Encroachment of Human Rights,” 29 S. Ill. L. J. 285 (Fall, 2004/Winter, 2005):   https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2997657

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Best wishes for a blessed and Happy Thanksgiving.

Craig

 

Craig B. Mousin

 

You can find some of my publications at either:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=667812or

https://works.bepress.com/craig_mousin/

You can find my digital story at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9VTkjhzIcI

You can follow the podcast Lawful Assembly at:https://lawfulassembly.buzzsprout.com

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

Thanks, Craig! 

Human migration is inevitable and has huge benefits to societies that learn how to deal with it in a robust, legal, humane, realistic manner, rather than exhibiting “fear and loathing.” See, e.g., https://www.forbes.com/sites/andyjsemotiuk/2023/11/15/new-report-details-huge-contribution-immigrants-are-making-to-america/.

Yet, the so-called “mainstream media” exhibits little interest in the realities and benefits of migration. Instead they prefer to uncritically repeat White Nationalist “talking points” about “invasions,”  “burdens,”  “costs,” and “unprecedented crises.”

They also regularly blur the distinction between “unauthorized entrants” and the many asylum seekers who are screened and allowed into the U.S. to exercise their legal rights to apply for protection under U.S. and international laws (in, I might add, a legal system intentionally stacked against them). Such individuals are here with official permission; they are “NOT” “illegal entrants” as White Nationalists like to incorrectly characterize them. Indeed, the “scofflaws” here are actually those who seek to deny both the humanity and the legal rights of asylum seekers!

The Administration aggravates this situation by failing to speak out forcibly in favor of immigrants’ rights and the realities and benefits of immigration. They also have not developed a coordinated reception and resettlement approach to combat the shenanigans of GOP nativist governors and politicos. The Dems thus have mistakenly turned the initiative on human rights and immigration over to haters, nativists, and fabricators — folks with no interest whatsoever in instituting humanity, efficiency, and the rule of law at the border!

Thus, the truth about immigration and its benefits as well as humane, realistic ways of improving our immigration system (including the process for accepting refugees and asylees) remains largely hidden “beneath the radar screen.”

 

Jorge Gonzalez, Esquire
Jorge Gonzalez, Esquire
Senior Counsel, Patent Litigation
AbbVie
PHOTO: Linkedin

In a recent post, Attorney Jorge Gonzalez stated his actual experience helping asylum seekers at the southern border:

I interviewed many migrants awaiting their credible fear interview. All of them suffered persecution during their time in Mexico, whether they were robbed by police, cartel members, or ordinary citizens. Many were kidnapped and held for ransom. Some had group members that did not finish the journey.

⚖️🗽🇺🇸 AT THE BORDER: AS WHITE NATIONALIST CANDIDATE TAKES CAMPAIGN OF HATE, LIES, & RACISM TO THE BORDER, JORGE GONZALEZ, ESQUIRE, REFLECTS ON A WEEK OF HELPING PEOPLE STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE & ASSERT LEGAL RIGHTS ROUTINELY DENIED TO THEM!

This speaks loudly about those, from both parties, who seek to impose “gimmicks” and  “further restrictions” at our already over-militarized border that would “deter” legal asylum seekers by forcing them to remain in Mexico or denying them fair hearings on their applications. The question of “right or wrong” here is not fairly debatable! Intentionally mistreating asylum seekers is wrong from both a legal and a moral standpoint! Yet, one sure wouldn’t know that from listening to the “mainstream media!”

The GOP prefers demagoguery to truth. Meanwhile, the Dems are scared to embrace the truth about immigration. 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-21-23

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  2. ⚖️🗽🇺🇸 SPEAKING OUT: “MATTHEW AT THE BORDER: ACTING ON THE MESSAGE OF CHAPTER 25”
  3. ⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼🗽DEAN KEVIN JOHNSON’S SUCCINCT RESPONSE TO GREG ABBOTT’S PREDICTABLE SOUTHERN BORDER BS IS WORTH A READ! — PLUS: ARELIS HERNANDEZ OF WASHPOST WITH SOME MUCH-NEEDED TRUTH & PERSPECTIVE FROM THOSE ACTUALLY LIVING ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER: “We need more lawyers and judges, not more troops or technology.”
  4. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”

🏈 BUTKUS DIES @ 80 — Bears’ 🐻 Hall of  Famer Was The Ultimate Tough Guy In A Grittier Age of The NFL!

Richard “Dick” Butkus
Richard “Dick” Butkus
1942-2023
Hall of Fame Middle Linebacker
Chicago Bears
PHOTO: Milwaukee Journal Sentinal Archives

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Sports Special

Oct. 7, 2023

It was a different football era. Powerful running backs like Jim Brown (Browns), Jim Taylor (Packers), and Gayle Sayers (Bears) dominated the offenses. Quarterbacks threw strategically and relatively sparingly, by today’s standards. (Packer Hall of Famer, Bart Starr, one of the best ever to play the position, averaged fewer than 20 pass attempts/game during his career. Some of today’s top QBs throw more than that by halftime!) 300 pounders were almost unheard of, on either side of the ball (today, most major college teams average over 300 pounds “up front.”)

The defenses were dominated by tough middle linebackers. Guys with names like Ray Nitschke (Packers), Sam Huff (Giants/Washington), and “Cousin Joe” (actually no relation) Schmidt (Lions). Today, most fans probably can’t name their own team’s starting middle linebacker, let alone their opponent’s. There’s really no current NFL counterpart, on either side of the ball, to the “fearsome, dominant middle linebacker” of the circa 1960’s NFL!

There was one middle linebacker that every fan knew: Dick Butkus of the Bears — the toughest of the tough, the meanest of the mean, the nastiest of the nasty, the baddest of the bad! 

Growing up as a Wisconsin kid steeped in the Packers-Bears rivalry, the NFL’s oldest, Butkus was the “villain you loved to hate.” But, there was no denying his greatness and his impact on the game. The legendary Packer coach Vince Lombardi and his team had great respect for Butkus. “Butkus, hell, we used to put three people on him and still couldn’t block him,” said former Packer Dave “Hawg” Hanner. https://www.packers.com/news/packers-had-total-respect-for-the-legendary-dick-butkus.

Known on the field for his brawn, Butkus was also brainy. Although slowed by injuries at the end of his career, he retired young with his marbles and most of his essential body parts still intact. Like his great rival Jim Brown, Butkus went on to a successful career as an actor and tv personality. He became symbolic of the Bears’ franchise and the city of Chicago.

Farewell to Butkus — “Da baddest of da big bad Bears!” Thanks for the rivalries, memories, and excellence! 

You can read Mike Freeman’s retrospective on Butkus’s life and career in USA Today here:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/mike-freeman/2023/10/05/dick-butkus-ferocious-legacy-chicago-bears/71077657007/

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-07-23

Related posts:

  1. 🏈R.I.P. HERB ADDERLEY 1939 – 2020 — Packer Hall Of Fame Cornerback Played On Six NFL Championship Teams!
  2. SPORTS: WILLIE WOOD (1936-2020): Packer Great, NFL Hall of Famer, DC Native Helped Break The “Color Barrier!”
  3. IN MEMORIAM: BART STARR (1934 – 2019): Packer All-Time Great Was A Winner On & Off The Field — Fierce Competitor, One Of The Most “Cerebral” NFL QBs Ever, Remembered As Respectful, Humble, Generous!
  4. 🏈PACKERS’ “GOLDEN BOY” (& SOMETIMES “BAD BOY”) DIES AT 84! — Paul Hornung Was One Of NFL’s “Greatest Ever” All-Around Offensive Stars!

⚖️🤯 BIA SEEKS AMICUS INPUT ON HOW THEY CAN HELP DHS “REMEDY” ITS OWN MISTAKES!

Jeff Sessions
Former AG Jeff Sessions openly despised immigrants and their attorneys and encouraged “his judges” at EOIR to help out their “partners at DHS Enforcement.” That attitude lives on even under AG Merrick Garland!
This caricature of Jeff Sessions was adapted from a Creative Commons licensed photo from Gage Skidmore’s Flickr’s photostream.
DonkeyHotey
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1592111/download

Amicus Invitation No. 23-01-08

AMICUS INVITATION (NOTICE TO APPEAR) DUE August 31, 2023

AUGUST 1, 2023

The Board of Immigration Appeals welcomes interested members of the public to file amicus curiae briefs discussing the below issue(s):

ISSUE(S) PRESENTED:

Pursuant to Matter of Fernandes, 28 I&N Dec. 605 (BIA 2022):

1. Should an Immigration Judge allow DHS to remedy a non-compliant Notice to Appear?

2. To remedy a non-compliant Notice to Appear, is either (1) issuing an I-261, or (2) amending the Notice to Appear, permitted by the regulations, and would either comport with the single document requirement emphasized by the United States Supreme Court in Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 141 S. Ct. 1474 (2021)? If not, how can a non-compliant Notice to Appear be remedied?

Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae: Members of the public who wish to appear as amicus curiae before the Board must submit a written request labeled “REQUEST TO APPEAR AS AMICUS CURIAE” pursuant to Chapter 2.10, Appendix A (Directory), and Appendix E (Cover Pages) of the Board of Immigration Appeals Practice Manual. The Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae must explicitly identify that it is responding to Amicus Invitation No. 23-01-08. The decision to accept or deny a Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae is within the sole discretion of the Board. Please see Chapter 2.10 of the Board of Immigration Appeals Practice Manual.

Filing a Brief: Please file your amicus brief in conjunction with your Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae pursuant to Chapter 2.10 of the Board of Immigration Appeals Practice Manual. The brief accompanying the Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae must explicitly identify that it is responding to Amicus Invitation No. 23-01-08. An amicus curiae brief is helpful to the Board if it presents relevant legal arguments that the parties have not already addressed. However, an amicus brief must be limited to a legal discussion of the issue(s) presented. The decision to accept or deny an amicus brief is within the sole discretion of the Board. The Board will not consider an amicus brief that exceeds the scope of the amicus invitation.

Request for Case Information: Additional information about the case, including the parties’ contact information, may be available. Please contact the Clerk’s Office at the below address for this information prior to filing your Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae and amicus brief.

Page Limit: The Board asks that amicus curiae briefs be limited to 25 double-spaced pages.

Deadline: Please file a Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae and amicus brief with the Clerk’s Office at the address below by August 31, 2023. Your request must be received at the Clerk’s Office within the prescribed time limit. Motions to extend the time for filing a Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae and amicus brief may not be entertained. It is not sufficient simply to mail the documents on time. We strongly urge the use of an overnight courier service to ensure the timely filing of your brief.

Service: Please mail three copies of your Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae and amicus brief to the Clerk’s Office at the address below. If the Clerk’s Office accepts your brief, it will then serve a copy on the parties and provide parties time to respond.

Joint Requests: The filing of parallel and identical or similarly worded briefs from multiple amici is disfavored. Rather, collaborating amici should submit a joint Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae and amicus brief. See generally Chapter 2.10 (Amicus Curiae) and Chapter 4.6(i) (Amicus Curiae Briefs) of the Board of Immigration Appeals Practice Manual.

Notice: A Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae may only be filed by an attorney, accredited representative, or an organization represented by an attorney registered to practice before the Board pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1292.1(d). A Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae filed by a person specified under 8 U.S.C. § 1367(a)(1) will not be considered.

Attribution: Where more than three attorneys or representatives sign an amicus brief or filing, the Board will name only the first three individuals in the published case. If you wish a different set of three names or have a preference on the order of the three names, please specify the three names in your Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae and amicus brief.

Clerk’s Office Contact and Filing Address:

To send by courier or overnight delivery service, or to deliver in person:

Amicus Clerk

Board of Immigration Appeals Clerk’s Office

5107 Leesburg Pike, Suite 2000 Falls Church, VA 22041

Business hours: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Fee: A fee is not required for the filing of a Request to Appear as Amicus Curiae and amicus brief.

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

Seems like the obvious “remedy” would be to require that DHS issue a new compliant NTA! 

Respondents don’t get to “remedy” all mistakes, even inadvertent ones! Why should the USG be allowed to weasel its way out of a situation they intentionally created in a misguided effort (aided and abetted by EOIR “management”) to cut corners and generate statistics to please their political masters?

Ever since the “Ashcroft purge,” the BIA has functioned less and less as an independent quasi adjudicative body and more and more as an apologist for, enabler, or justifier of each Administration’s immigration enforcement agenda! In other words, the BIA’s role has become largely to slap a “quasi-judicial veneer” on DHS enforcement policies and priorities so that OIL can argue Chevron deference or even “Brand X” in the Article IIIs!

Of course, using EOIR as a “deterrent” and “enforcer” over the past two decades has been a spectacular failure! It has led to “Aimless Docket Reshuffling on Steroids,” absurdly insurmountable backlogs, and frequent rebukes from the Article IIIs. 

Indeed, having helped create and magnify exponentially the mess at EOIR, many of the Trump and Biden Administration’s “gimmicks” appear aimed at avoiding or sidestepping the EOIR process altogether. 

It’s the height of disingenuousness! At the urging of the White House, DOJ and DHS “break” the fair hearing system at EOIR. They then use their own misconduct and mismanagement as an excuse to deny asylum seekers and others access to the fair and impartial adjudication system to which they are legally entitled!

And, while the Article IIIs, even the Supremes, have “called out” EOIR on frequent, particularized errors, they have been happy to sweep the obvious “big problem” under the rug in a monumental exercise of “judicial task avoidance!” 

That problem is that as currently operated, the EOIR system is a clear violation of the Constitutional principle that individuals facing removal, an often irreparable, even deadly, loss, are entitled to a reasonable decision from a fair and impartial decision-maker. See, e.g., Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970). While justice is served in some EOIR decisions, the systemic failures push in the exact opposite direction. 

Without the necessary systemic safeguards in place, life and death decisions are largely an arbitrary and capricious “crap shoot” where wildly inconsistent results on the same or similar facts too often depend on the attitude of the judge, the whimsical decisions by “management” on whether to interfere in decision-making, and the location and circumstances of the hearing.

This is NOT the way to run a legitimate court system in compliance with due process and fundamental fairness!

For now, advocates should continue to vocalize their strong opposition to “how can we help our partners at DHS Enforcement” adjudication passing for justice at EOIR!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-02-23

Related posts:

  1. 🆘🤮IS 11TH CIR. GROWING WEARY OF GARLAND’S SCOFFLAW BIA? —Two Trips To The Circuit, & The BIA Still Violates Own Regulations, Ignores Precedent, Spouts Gibberish While OIL’s Defense Of This Nonsense & Malfeasance By EOIR Raises Serious Ethical Questions! — THAMOTAR v. U.S. ATT’Y GEN. — Garland’s Dysfunctional & Systematically Unjust Courts Undermine OUR Democracy☠️ — Demand An IMMEDIATE End To The Scofflaw Nonsense🤡 🧹 At OUR Justice Department! 🏴‍☠️
  2. ⚖️🤯🤮GARLAND’S OHIO JUDICIAL MELTDOWN — “High-Asylum-Denying” Immigration Judges Appointed By Barr & Sessions Remain On Garland’s Bench In Cleveland Despite Referring To Migrants As “Illegals” & “Pretty Virgins!” — EOIR Disciplinary System Remains As Opaque As Ever Under Garland!🏴‍☠️ Yulin Cheng Reports @ Columbus Dispatch!
  3. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!
  4. 🗽⚖️ “COURTSIDE” IN THE NEWS: BOTH NOLAN @ THE HILL & KEVIN @ IMMIGRATIONPROF BLOG HIGHLIGHT MY BLISTERING ANALYSIS OF BIDEN’S FIRST-YEAR IMMIGRATION POLICIES! — Garland’s Monumental EOIR Fail Writ Large Among “Underreported News” Of 2021 — Mishandling Of Immigration Courts Creates Key “Enthusiasm Gap” Among Progressives Heading Into 2022 Midterms!

☹️ WORLD REFUGEE DAY 2023  (JUNE 20) IN AMERICA: More Asylum Seekers Denied Access; Flubbed Resettlement; Kids Face Court Alone; NGOs Left To Pick Up Slack!

 

Starving ChildrenKids are among the many groups of refugees and asylum seekers ill-served by the Biden Administration’s policies and performance. “World Refugee Day 2023” is a rather grim reminder of America’s failure to live up to its obligations to the world’s most vulnerable!
Creative Commons License

ACCESS DENIED

Hamed Aleaziz reports for the LA Times:

https://apple.news/AnR6bRRRoSxm4nMAHyNOLXQ

A new Biden administration policy has dramatically lowered the percentage of migrants at the southern border who enter the United States and are allowed to apply for asylum, according to numbers revealed in legal documents obtained by The Times. Without these new limits to asylum, border crossings could overwhelm local towns and resources, a Department of Homeland Security official warned a federal court in a filing this month.

The new asylum policy is the centerpiece of the Biden administration’s border efforts. 

Under the new rules, people who cross through a third country on the way to the U.S. and fail to seek protections there are presumed ineligible for asylum. Only people who enter the U.S. without authorization are subject to this new restriction.

The number of single-adult migrants who are able to pass initial screenings at the border has dropped from 83% to 46% under the new policy, the Biden administration said in the court filing. The 83% rate refers to initial asylum screenings between 2014 and 2019; the new data cover the period from May 12, the first full day the new policy was in place, through June 13.

Since the expiration of Title 42 rules that allowed border agents to quickly turn back migrants at the border without offering them access to asylum, the administration has pointed to a drop in border crossings as proof that its policies are working.

But immigrant advocates and legal groups have blasted Biden’s new asylum policy, arguing that it is a repurposed version of a Trump-era effort that made people in similar circumstances ineligible for asylum. (Under Biden’s policy, certain migrants can overcome the presumption that they are ineligible for asylum.) The ACLU and other groups have sought to block the rule in federal court in San Francisco, in front of the same judge who stopped the Trump policy years ago.

The new filing provides the first look at how the Biden administration’s asylum policy is affecting migrants who have ignored the government’s warnings not to cross the border. 

“This newly released data confirms that the new asylum restrictions are as harsh as advocates warned,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “The data contradicts conservative attacks on the rule for being too lenient. Less than 1 in 10 people subject to the rule have been able to rebut its presumption against asylum eligibility.”

. . . .

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

Read Hamed’s full story at the link.

None of the statistics cited in the article actually give a full picture, since the don’t account for 1) families, 2) children, and 3) those processed at ports of entry using the highly controversial “CBP One App.” Nor do they give insights into what happens to those denied access to the asylum adjudication system.

As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick points out, increased rejections of legal access are exactly what experts, including our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, predicted in vigorously opposing the Administration’s ill-advised regulatory changes. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/03/27/⚔️🛡-round-table-joins-chorus-of-human-rights-experts-slamming-biden-administrations-abominable-death-to-asylum-seekers-☠️-proposed/.

In the article, DHS official Blas Nuñez-Neto babbles on about the wonders of mindless extralegal enforcement as a “deterrent.” In a classic example of disingenuous misdirection, Nuñez-Neto appears to suggest that “success” in implementing asylum laws should be measured in terms of the number of individuals denied access or discouraged from applying. 

Actually, success in implementing asylum laws should be measured solely by whether 1) all asylum applicants regardless of status or where they apply are treated fairly and humanely; and 2) those eligible for asylum under a properly generous, protection-focused application of asylum laws are actually granted asylum in a timely manner complying with due process. By those measures, there is zero (O) evidence that the Biden Administration’s approach is “successful.” 

Moreover, Nuñez-Neto’s comments and much of the media focus skirt the real issue here. Border apprehensions have decreased because asylum seekers in Northern Mexico appear to be “waiting to see” if the “CBP One App System” at ports of entry actually offers them a fair, viable, orderly way of applying for asylum. In other words, does the Biden Administration’s legal asylum processing system have “street credibility?” 

So far, CBP One and DHS appear determined to “flunk” that test; the App continues to be plagued with technical and access glitches, and the numbers of appointments available is grossly inadequate to meet the well-known and largely predictable demand.

If the border lurches out of control in the future, it probably will be not the fault of legal asylum seekers. Rather, it will be caused by poorly-conceived and legally questionable Biden “deterrence policies” and the restrictionist politicians (in both parties, but primarily the GOP) who are “egging them on.”  That is, an Administration unable to distinguish its friends from its enemies and unwilling to develop a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the inevitably of refugee flows by creatively and positively using and “leveraging” the ample (if imperfect) existing tools under our legal system. 

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

ADMINISTRATION’S FLUBBED RESETTLEMENT (NON) EFFORT EMPOWERS GOP WHITE NATIONALISTS, VEXES PROGRESSIVE DEMS

Nick Miroff & Joanna Slater report for WashPost:

NEW YORK — On the fourth day of his new life in New York City, Antony Reyes set out from the opulent lobby of Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotelwith an empty wallet and the address of a juice bar on Broadway possibly offering some work.

Reyes had been staying at the crowded hotel-turned-emergency service center, hunting odd jobs during the day along with other newly arrived Venezuelans who navigated the streets of midtown using “Las Pantallas”— the Screens (a.k.a. Times Square) as a landmark.

“I just want to work,” Reyes said in Spanish. “I didn’t come here to be a burden on anyone.”

Reyes, 23, was among the tens of thousands of migrants who rushed to cross the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of May 11, when the Biden administration lifted the pandemic policy known as Title 42. The largest group were Venezuelans, who have been arriving to the United States in record numbers since 2021.

Unlike previous waves of Latin American immigrants who gravitated to communities where friends and family could receive them, the most recent Venezuelan newcomers tend to lack those networks in the United States. Many have headed straight to New York, whose shelter system guarantees a bed to anyone regardless of immigration status.

City officials say they are housing more than 48,000 migrants across an array of hotels, dormitories and makeshift shelters that now spans 169 emergency sites.

New York has spent $1.2 billion on the relief effort since last summer. The ballooning costs have left Mayor Eric Adams feuding with local leaders upstate over who should take responsibility for the migrants, and he has also called out President Biden, a fellow Democrat, for not sending more aid.

Other U.S. cities are struggling with the influx too. Denver, Philadelphia and Washington — all cities with Democratic mayors — have received migrants bused from Texas as part of a campaign by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to denounce Biden administration border policies. In Chicago, migrants have slept in police stations while awaiting shelter beds.

Officials in those cities are scrambling to find bed space and clamoring for more federal assistance. But the ad hoc nature of the humanitarian effort raises questions about the ability of New York City and other jurisdictions to receive and resettle so many newcomers.

The flow of Venezuelans crossing the southern border has dropped since the Title 42 policy ended, even as many continue arriving in cities in northern Mexico in hopes of reaching the United States. The Biden administration is tightening border controls and urging Venezuelans and others to apply for legal U.S. entry using a mobile app, while expanding the number of slots available for asylum seekers to make an appointment at an official border crossing.

The number of people requesting appointments, however, far outstrips supply.

The influx of migrants in New York has pushed the city’s total shelter population to 95,000, up from 45,000 when Adams took office in January 2022.

“We have reached a point where the system is buckling,” Anne Williams-Isom, deputy mayor for health and human services, told reporters at a news conference in late May.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Nick’s & Joanna’s article at the link.

This Administration has been in office more than two years, with knowledge of the inevitable flow of asylum seekers, particularly from Venezuela and access to some of the best and most innovative human rights experts in the private sector.

Yet, this Administration has failed to 1) put in place an orderly nationwide resettlement system in partnership with the many NGOs and some localities “already in the business;” 2) construct “regional reception centers” to provide food, shelter, representation, and support to asylum seekers during the legal process, as recommended by many experts, and 3)  restore functionality and timeliness to the legal asylum systems at USCIS and EOIR by a) cleaning out the “deadwood” (or worse) accumulated during the Trump Administration, and b) hiring experts, not afraid to properly use asylum and other laws to “protect rather than reject” and to replace the anti-asylum culture and legal regimes installed and encouraged at DHS and EOIR under Tump.

Additionally, most Venezuelans can’t be returned anyway, and the Administration’s apparent hope to “orbit” many of them to Mexico, a country far less able to absorb them than than the U.S., is ill-advised at best. 

Consequently, updating TPS for Venezuelans and others, thus providing employment authorization and keeping them out of the already dysfunctional asylum system, should have been a “no brainer” for this Administration.

This is a truly miserable absence of creative, practical problems-solving by a group that ran on promises to do better. Given the shortage of affordable housing in NY and other areas, why not “replicate and update” the CCC, WPA, and other public works projects from FDR’s “New Deal?” 

Give those arriving individuals with the skill sets opportunities to construct affordable housing for anyone in need, with an chance to live in the finished product as an added incentive! Let migrants be contributors and view their presence as an opportunity to be built upon rather than as a  “problem” that can’t be solved. 

Not rocket science! 🚀 But, evidently “above the pay grade” for Biden Administration immigration policy wonks!

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

CONSTITUTION MOCKED BY ALL THREE BRANCHES AS KIDS CONTINUE TO FACE IMMIGRATION COURT ALONE!

https://documentedny.com/2023/06/20/unaccompanied-minors-immigration-court-asylum/

GIULIA MCDONNELL NIETO DEL RIO reports for Documented:

The 10-year-old boy sat in a chair that was too big for him and he asked the immigration judge in Spanish if he could speak to the court.

“Please, don’t deport me,” the boy, Dominick Rodriguez-Herrera, pleaded into the microphone. “I want to stay with my brother.”

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Then he buried his head into his mother’s stomach as they embraced, tears welling in both their eyes. “Don’t cry,” his mother told him softly, with one arm around Dominick, and the other holding her two-month-old son who whined on her shoulder.

Also Read: The Central American Minors Program Struggles to Get Back on Its Feet

The family, from Guatemala, was at the Broadway immigration court in Lower Manhattan last week for an initial hearing in Dominick’s immigration case. Dominick had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone in March of 2022, and was designated as an unaccompanied minor. 

Dominick’s mother, Nelly Herrera, told Documented the ordeal began when they were both  kidnapped in Mexico and separated. She said Dominick escaped their captors and reached the U.S. border. Malnourished and thin from weeks of little food, he managed to squeeze through a wall into California, although she’s not sure where. He was only eight years old, and had no idea where his mother was.

“He doesn’t talk about all that a lot because he says it’s something he doesn’t want to be reminded of anymore,” she said.

After authorities helped Herrera escape her captors in Mexico, she and Dominick were reunited last year. Now, without a lawyer, they are fighting for a chance for Dominick to stay with her in the U.S.

At a time when immigration courts are struggling to manage the high volume of migrants coming to New York City, another section of the system is facing a high volume of deportation cases: those of unaccompanied minors – children who entered the U.S. when they were under the age of 18, without a parent. Many of them show up to court without an attorney, and advocates are concerned that there aren’t enough resources to reach all of them.

“We are definitely seeing an uptick in the numbers,” said Sierra Kraft, executive director of a coalition called the Immigrant Children Advocates Relief Effort (ICARE).

Kraft said she observed the juvenile docket several times this year and found hundreds of children had come to court without legal representation.

“There was a little two year old that was sitting there with a sponsor, and they had no representation and really no idea what to do next. So it’s a real crisis,” Kraft said.

. . . .

At a Senate hearing on the safety of unaccompanied migrant children in Congress last week, Lorie Davidson, Vice President of Children and Family Services at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, testified that most unaccompanied children do not have an attorney to represent them.

“I do not know of any other circumstances in which a three-year-old would have to represent themselves in court. It is indefensible,” Davidson said at the hearing.

. . . .

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

Read Giulia’s complete article at the link.

Administrations of both parties have employed and disgracefully defended this clearly unconstitutional, due-process-denying process. The “low point” was probably during the Obama Administration when an EOIR Assistant Chief Immigration Judge infamously claimed that he could “teach asylum law to toddlers” — touching off an avalanche of internet satire. See https://www.aclu.org/video/can-toddlers-really-represent-themselves-immigration-court.

But, the Executive has had plenty of help from Congress and the Article III Courts, who both have failed to end this mockery of constitutional due process as well as common sense. It’s hard to imagine a more glaring, depressing example of failure of public officials to take their oaths of office seriously!

On the other hand, NY Immigration Judge Olivia Cassin, mentioned in the full article, is the right person for the job of handling the so-called “juvenile docket” at EOIR. A true expert in immigration and human rights laws, she came to the job several decades ago with deep experience and understanding gained from representing individuals pro bono in Immigration Court. 

She is a model of what should be the rule, not the exception, for those sitting on the Immigration Bench at both the trial and appellate levels. Although AG Garland has done somewhat better than his predecessors in “balancing” his appointments, EOIR still skews far too much toward those with only prosecutorial experience or lacking ANY previous immigration and human rights qualifications.  

Consequently, poor, inconsistent, and uneven judicial performance remains endemic at EOIR and not sufficiently addressed by Garland in his two plus years in office. Just another reason why Garland’s failing courts are running a 2 million case backlog and are unable to provide the nationwide due process, guidance, leadership, and consistency that EOIR was supposedly created to furnish.

Brilliant, well-qualified, and committed as individuals like Judge Cassin are, they are not going to be able to solve this problem without some help and leadership from above. Sadly, this doesn’t appear got be on the horizon.

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

UPHOLDING THE RULE OF LAW & HUMAN DECENCY FOR REFUGEES HAS BEEN LEFT LARGELY TO NGOs IN LIGHT OF THE USG’S SYSTEMIC FAILURE 

Jenell Scarborough, Pathway to Citizenship Coordinator at EL CENTRO HISPANO INC, reports on Linkedin on a on a more optimistic note about the activities of those who actually are working to preserve and extend the rule of law and human decency to refugees:

What a way to celebrate World Refugee Day, with a community listening section where we meet community leaders who every day make extraordinary efforts to join forces and serve Immigrants and Refugees. We’re not just hearing from Eva A. Millona Chief, USCIS Office of Citizenship, Partnership and Engagement and the Chief of Foreign Affairs for Foster America.
 Thanks to Cristina España for keeping us connected with local government agencies and making visible the work of grassroots organizations, where El Centro Hispano works tirelessly. Without a doubt a great night!

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

Way to go, Jenell. Encouraging to know that you are taking our legal obligations to refugees seriously, even if too many USG officials in all three branches aren’t! (Eva A. Millona of USCIS, mentioned in the post appears to be a rare exception among those in leadership positions within this Administration).

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

🇺🇸 MAKE EVERY DAY WORLD REFUGEE DAY, & Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-23

 

 

Related posts:

  1. WOW, HERE’S A SURPRISE: MANY KIDS FLEEING VIOLENCE IN THE NORTHERN TRIANGLE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BIDEN BORDER POLICIES — They Are Just Trying To Save Their Lives!
  2. ⚖️🗽MORE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUTHERN BORDER FROM ONE OF AMERICA’S 🇺🇸 LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERTS: “Real Needs, Not Fictitious Crises Account For The Situation at US-Mexico Border,” By Donald Kerwin Center For Migration Studies
  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. ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

🇺🇸🗽⚖️ INSPIRING AMERICA: From Tortured Dissident, To Refugee, To DePaul Law Grad! — The Saga Of Emad Mahou!

How he made it_ Syrian torture survivor becomes DePaul Law grad

Zareen Syed
Zareen Syed
Reporter
Chicago Tribune
PHOTO: Chicago Tribune website

Zareen Syed writes in the Chicago Tribune:

He says he can’t really describe torture or the night terrors that still creep up on him years later, but he’ll try. He starts out with a picture: a prison cell the size of a rug and a creaky door that he couldn’t help but stare at. Every time it opened, he knew he’d either be released or tortured once again.

When Emad Mahou tells the story of being imprisoned in Syria during the 2011 revolution, his voice has a heaviness, unlike the joy he exhibits when talking about not knowing how to order a Subway sandwich when he arrived in Chicago as a refugee.

Emad Mahou
Emad Mahoud 
PHOTO: DePaul Law

With his hands he demonstrates the ups and downs of the last 12 years — from being released and offered refuge in America to graduating from the DePaul University School of Law. As his wife, 8-year-old daughter and his father stood in the stands, he walked across the stage with hopes of practicing human rights law to help other refugees coming into the country.

 

Mahou’s father, Shirkou Mahou, flew in from Lebanon to attend the May 20 ceremony on a visit visa.

“I’m seeing a part of my dad I didn’t see before,” Mahou said. “He’s an old man. When I left he was much stronger, much younger.”

On a May afternoon, days before the graduation ceremony, Mahou’s dad was sitting next to him on a couch in one of DePaul’s Loop campus law buildings, wearing a brown suit, white shirt and a prayer hat on his head.

It’s his first time in America. His first time seeing his son’s new life up close — so different from the life he left at age 21.

He cried audibly every now and then, especially when Mahou would translate for him into Arabic parts of what he was sharing about the Syria of his childhood versus the Syria he left behind.

. . . .

Mahou’s memories of some of his arrests are blurry, except for one in which he was detained and tortured for three months. In June 2011, he said he spent 100 days in an underground cell the size of a rug. He didn’t know it when he was thrown in, but this would also be the last time he’d be imprisoned.

“The torture was really over the limit at that point. I was really struggling with the pain,” Mahou said. “It was daily, continuous, degrading. One day in particular, they took turns urinating on me. It got to a point where mentally I was broken. You smell yourself and I felt really, really bad. I am used to a nice life. I showered daily. I was in college to be an architect.”

Mahou stops and reminds himself that he had a full life in Zabadani, Syria, before the revolution. They all did.

“At that point, I was almost done with college and I had a whole future ahead of me. And I just looked at where I am now. That day was my weakest day mentally. I was shattered. The humiliation went too far — like they’re using you as a toilet … so I banged my head on the wall.”

. . . .

He started attending community college at Harry Truman toward a degree in computer science in the fall of 2013, before transferring to DeVry. In 2017, he got a job as a web developer for the board of trustees at DePaul University. There he met law professor Craig Mousin, who sat in an office across from Mahou.

Rev. Craig Mousin
Rev. Craig Mousin
Ombudsperson
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Grace School of Applied Diplomacy
DePaul University
PHOTO: DePaul Website

Mousin said when Mahou realized that he taught at the law school and that his specific area of teaching was asylum and refugee law, it piqued his interest.

“Emad has intimate knowledge of how governments can use all the power and authority they have to stifle dissent,” Mousin said. “And sometimes in doing asylum and human rights cases, there’s this built-in assumption that governments would not hurt their own citizens. And sometimes it’s very difficult for people in the United States who live with relative freedom to understand that. Emad’s felt the brunt of that failure.”

With Mousin’s guidance, Mahou tapped into his experience of standing up for freedom in Syria and what he calls “a rebel mentality” to figure out that what he actually wants to do isn’t web development, but rather become a lawyer. On May 20, he earned his juris doctorate.

“I really want to learn about other people’s experiences in the system,” said Mahou, who now lives in Oak Park. “People who are fleeing persecution, traveling through dangerous paths to seek refuge, those are the people I want to help.”

Mahou said he’s now studying for the bar exam but was fortunate to get a taste of the kind of cases he would like to work on when he enrolled in DePaul’s Asylum and Immigration Law Clinic, where he helped put together an asylum petition for a family.

As Mahou recounts his tale, he shares that he’s seen his parents for a total of 20 days since 2011, during short visits to Lebanon. And now he was making up for lost time.

. . . .

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

Refugees have been making America great since before there was an America!

Thanks to my friend Processor Craig Mousin at DePaul Law for passing this along.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️ Due Process Forever!

PWS

6-12-23

Related posts:

  1. ⚒️👩🏾‍🌾🌾🇺🇸🗽 AN INSPIRING LABOR DAY MESSAGE FROM REV. CRAIG MOUSIN: Migrants Are The Backbone Of America & Those Who Fight For Migrant Justice Are Not Alone — A Special Podcast With Links To Music By John McCutcheon & Emma’s Revolution!
  2. ⚖️🗽SOCIAL JUSTICE SUNDAY @ COURTSIDE WITH PROF/REV CRAIG MOUSIN OF DEPAUL LAW — 1) Restore The Refugee Act Of 1980 To Functionality; 2) Let Young People Read — Enforce the 1st Amendment Against Far-Right Book Burners!🔥📚👩‍🚒
  3. 🇺🇸 NATIVISTS’ SPITE STUNT CREATES OPPORTUNITY FOR AMERICAN HUMANITARIANS TO SHINE!🗽😎 As Biden Administration Bumbles & Fumbles On Resettlement, NGOs Step Up To Save The Day!
  4. 🤯⚠️ REV. CRAIG MOUSIN: NEW YEAR, SAME PROBLEMS, AS BIDEN’S REFUSAL TO FOLLOW REFUGEE & ASYLUM LAWS SOWS CHAOS, TRAUMA — (I’m cited)

🇺🇸 NATIVISTS’ SPITE STUNT CREATES OPPORTUNITY FOR AMERICAN HUMANITARIANS TO SHINE!🗽😎 As Biden Administration Bumbles & Fumbles On Resettlement, NGOs Step Up To Save The Day!

Theresa Vargas
Theresa Vargas
Reporter
Washington Post

Theresa Vargas @ WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/15/migrant-buses-year-later/

A year after Texas sent the first buses, this is clear: From a political stunt grew a network that now coordinates welcoming efforts across state lines

. . . .

When Abbot announced that he was sending the buses, many people across the country saw it for what it was: a political stunt. In a statement at the time, Abbot criticized the Biden administration as turning “a blind eye to the border crisis” and said, “Texas should not have to bear the burden of the Biden administration’s failure to secure our border.”

We can debate Abbot’s actions, and some of us undoubtedly will see a show of strength where others of us see a show of cruelty, but what is not debatable is what happened after those buses started arriving. People stepped up. From a political stunt grew a network of dedicated community members in D.C., New York and elsewhere who now coordinate across state lines to help migrants.

“What started it was no one else was going to do it,” said Madhvi Bahl, an organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, a group of community members and organizations in the D.C. region dedicated to welcoming migrants. She said that because the city didn’t get involved until months after the buses started arriving, volunteers were on their own to greet arrivals, collect supplies and raise money to provide temporary housing.

. . . .

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

Read Theresa’s complete article at the link.

Once again, the Biden Administration failed to take leadership and to plan for the obvious. Some have suggested that leaving asylum seekers to be political pawns for GOP nativist governors was part of the Administration’s cruel and inept “border deterrence program” which they have substituted for competently administering asylum laws.

Not for the first time, NGOs and advocates have been left to pick up the pieces from the Administration’s failed immigration policies. Fortunately, these NGOs are more talented,  creative, and motivated than Administration politicos and bureaucrats. 

Rev. Craig Mousin
Rev. Craig Mousin
Ombudsperson
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Grace School of Applied Diplomacy
DePaul University
PHOTO: DePaul Website

Along the same lines as Theresa’s article, my friend and NDPA stalwart Rev. Craig Mousin reports similar successful responses in Chicago:  

I forgot to add one more item of good news that your talk suggested.  You mention the nativist driven bus rides from Arizona, Florida, and Texas.  We have had something remarkable happen in Chicago.  A group of five or six faith-based individuals and NGOS had been meeting prior to the bus trips to try and find housing for asylum-seekers.  That group, the Chicago Sanctuary Working Group (SWG) meets weekly.  It remains an informal group, but it now includes over 30 organizations and individuals.  It has found private housing for over 100 families or individuals along with case management for the social service needs while attempting to link them to attorneys from NIJC, CLINIC, other Chicago based groups as well in some cases helping to find funding to pay low bono AILA attorneys.   Housing has included individual families welcoming asylum-seekers into their homes for varied amounts of time, some temporary financial support, and some churches opening their doors.   In addition, it has received a grant and now rents a building housing about 15 families along with in premise social workers.  The national United Church of Christ gave it a small grant and they are hosting a Chicago-area breakfast on May 3 to encourage more congregations to open their doors or recruit individual families to offer asylum-seekers a room in their homes.   Almost completely volunteer-driven, it has been an amazing response to this difficult problem.  Full disclosure, my wife is on the steering committee, but the stories have been inspirational as a citizen-driven response to bad federal and state policies.

Think what could be accomplished with better Federal leadership and coordination! Why can’t the Biden Administration get its act together on social justice? 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-18-23

Related posts:

  1. 🏴‍☠️CLOSING THE BORDER TO LEGAL ASYLUM SEEKERS IS A VIOLATION OF BOTH DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL LAW — It’s Neither Something To Tout (Biden Administration) Nor A Solution (GOP) (Except, Perhaps, In The “Hitlerian” Sense) — Our Inability To Solve A Humanitarian Situation By Acting Lawfully, Sensibly, & Humanely Is A Sign Of Gross National Weakness Spurred By Unwillingness To See The Human Tragedies We Are Promoting! — And The Lousy, Misleading, & Tone-Deaf Reporting By The Some Of The “Mainstream Media” Is Making It Worse! — Leon Krauze & Suzanne Gamboa With Simple Truths About Human Migration That Neither Pols Nor Nativists Want You To Hear! — PLUS BONUS COVERAGE: Friday Mini-Essay: “Degrading Ourselves As A Nation Won’t Stop Human Migration”
  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. EOIR TARGETS UNACCOMPANIED KIDS FOR DEPORATION RAILROAD!
  4. U.S. JUDGE THWARTS (FOR NOW) TRUMP REGIME’S PERSECUTION/PROSECUTION OF HUMANITARIAN AID WORKERS – Regime’s Religious Hypocrisy Runs Deep!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽 THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE: PROGRESSIVES WIN KEY RACES IN WISCONSIN & CHICAGO!😎 — Instead Of “Running Away” From The Humanitarian Values That Got Them Elected, Biden, Harris, & So-Called “Centrist Dems” Should Be Embracing The Practical, Universal Values Of Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, Equal Justice Under Law & The Human Dignity Of All!

Equal Justice
Equal Justice
FROM: United Nations, Creative Commons LIcense

From HuffPost:

Liberals Take Control Of Wisconsin Supreme Court

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/janet-protasiewicz-wins-wisconsin-supreme-court-race_n_642c7201e4b0ba5d603c81ed

Brandon Johnson, Progressive Union Organizer, Elected Mayor Of Chicago

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brandon-johnson-elected-chicago-mayor_n_642caf1be4b0ba5d603cc31a

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

It’s also remarkable, if not surprising, that 33,000 of us, many representing larger groups, filed written comments OPPOSING Biden’s tone-deaf, anti-due-process, anti-rule-of-law, racially-targeted, designed-to-fail, Stephen-Miller-inspired “death to asylum (and asylum seekers)” proposed regulations!  https://default.salsalabs.org/Ta42828aa-7c89-4fca-a530-ab64d55d9cdf/e9c83407-de3b-4bcf-a318-704cbcd599a2. As someone who spent considerable time analyzing public comments on regulations during my career, that’s an astounding show of unified opposition.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Biden, Harris, Garland, Mayorkas, or anyone else in the Administration will listen. But, they should! 

Unfortunately, the ridiculously short 30-day comment period and that this major reversal of the positions and values that Biden and Harris campaigned upon, without meaningful input and discussion with experts who actually understand the borders and have been present there, indicates that the the comments are likely to be largely ignored. That’s going to lead to big time litigation — from both progressives and GOP nativist/restrictionists. 

But, discouragingly, the Biden Administration has shown itself to be willing to tie up time and resources insanely (and not necessarily successfully) doing battle with its own would-be supporters rather than fighting the right! Just who they think is going to be the “winner” here — other than, perhaps, Donald Trump and Jim Crow  — is beyond me!

James “Jim” Crow
James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism. Biden’s ill-advised and tone-deaf nativist asylum policies appear designed to appease this guy rather than to please those who actually voted for him and other Democratic candidates!

Instead of “running away” in the face of the GOP’s scurrilous “Anti-Woke Campaign:” targeting immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Jews, Muslims, women’s reproductive rights, teachers, free speech, libraries, public education, medical science, the environment, social justice, the Federal Government, voting rights, unions, the working poor, and just about all “mainstream American” individual freedoms, the Biden Administration and Dems in general should stand up for what’s actually great about America and against the GOP’s vile, ignorant, hateful “culture warriors” and “Jim Crow racists and misogynists. Defending the legal rights and humanity of asylum seekers and other migrants would be a good place to start a real defense of American values and democracy! That is, if someone in power were really interested in those things!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-05-23

Related posts:

  1. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”
  2. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻
  3. CRIME BLOTTER: CHILD ABUSE🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿‍♀️: DOJ IG REPORT CONFIRMS WHAT COURTSIDE & OTHERS KNEW FROM THE START: Trump, Sessions, Miller, Rosenstein, Hamilton Are Cowards🐓, Lying 🤥 Criminals, Child Abusers🦹🏿‍♀️, Who Belong Behind Bars For Intentionally Abusing Asylum Seeking Families & Kids & Then Having Their Sleazy DOJ Lawyers Lie To Federal Judges! — What Happened To “Due Diligence” As An Ethical Requirement For Government Lawyers?
  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! 

🗽⚖️🇺🇸👍🏼 NDPA WINS AGAIN: CARLA ESPINOZA CRUSHES GARLAND ON CAT IN 5TH — Conservative Circuit Wearies Of BIA’s Lawless Approach: “Complete Lack of Discussion of…Evidence”

 

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA5 Blasts BIA for “Complete Lack of Discussion of…Evidence” in Mexican CAT Case

Aguado-Cuevas v. Garland (unpub.)

https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/21/21-60574.0.pdf

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca5-blasts-bia-for-complete-lack-of-discussion-of-evidence-in-mexican-cat-case#

“Oscar Aguado-Cuevas, a Mexican national, petitions for review of the BIA’s decision affirming a denial of his application for relief under the Convention Against Torture. For the reasons below, we GRANT the petition, VACATE the BIA’s decision, and REMAND this case for further consideration of Aguado-Cuevas’s petition for CAT protection. … Aguado-Cuevas filed an application for relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”), arguing that his uncles and cousins in Mexico were cartel members who would kill him if he returned. In September 2020, Aguado-Cuevas, his father, and an expert witness testified in support of Aguado-Cuevas’s CAT application. … Aguado-Cuevas signed a cooperation agreement and began cooperating with federal authorities. Aguado-Cuevas’s cooperation, including his agreement to testify against Adolfo Jr. and CJNG, was leaked to the media and publicized online. … [A]n expert witness testified that Aguado-Cuevas’s chances of potential risk or torture upon returning to Mexico were “[e]xtremely high to [a] near certainty” due to his informant and debtor status. … [T]he BIA erred by not applying the correct legal framework in which it must show that it meaningfully considered “relevant substantial evidence supporting the alien’s claims.” … Although we remand primarily for the BIA to reconsider the state involvement prong of the CAT analysis, we note that both parties acknowledge that the BIA’s likelihood of torture analysis suffers from similar deficiencies. Accordingly, to the extent that the BIA finds that Aguado-Cuevas has shown the requisite level of state involvement upon remand, we order the BIA to also consider the likelihood of torture prong under the proper legal framework. … Aguado-Cuevas claims that he will be murdered by CJNG as punishment for being an informant and debtor following his drug-related activities in the U.S. Concerning the likelihood of torture, Aguado-Cuevas argues—and the Government agrees—that the BIA should have more closely considered evidence of Aguado-Cuevas’s actions in the U.S. that could characterize him to CJNG as an informant and debtor. Specifically, the BIA did not properly consider evidence that (1) Aguado-Cuevas owed CJNG $120,000 after his botched deal; (2) Aguado-Cuevas was identified by the media as an informant in the prosecution of a CJNG member; (3) a text message identified Aguado-Cuevas as a potential target of the CJNG; (4) a residence where Aguado-Cuevas stayed was ransacked; and (5) CJNG routinely kills debtors and informants. Such evidence goes directly to Aguado-Cuevas’s arguments of likelihood of torture as an informant and debtor; such a theory hinges not on events in Mexico but on his actions in the U.S., making him a particular target for torture by CJNG. The BIA failed to properly consider these pieces of evidence. … The complete lack of discussion of the aforementioned evidence suggests that the BIA has not met this standard. As before, the BIA should remand to the IJ for additional factfinding if necessary.”

[Hats way off to Superlawyer Carla Espinoza!]

Carla Espinoza
Carla Espinoza ESQUIRE
Chicago Immigration Advocates Law Offices

—

Daniel M. Kowalski

Editor-in-Chief

Bender’s Immigration Bulletin (LexisNexis)

cell/text/Signal (512) 826-0323

@dkbib on Twitter

dan@cenizo.com

Free Daily Blog: www.bibdaily.com

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

Many congrats and thanks Carla! There is an”epidemic” of botched CAT cases being “outed” by the Circuits. This one was so horribly mishandled, that even OIL couldn’t defend it!

Yet, the “downbeat goes on” as Garland feigns ignorance of the institutionalized injustice @ EOIR being carried out in his name! On his watch, the BIA has gone from “any reason to deny” to “no reason whatsoever for denying.” 

Apparently, as long as the BIA staff attorney drafts the decision so the individual loses, it really doesn’t matter to the “signatory appellate judge” at the BIA what goes above the “bottom line.” 

It’s a heck of a way to “run the railroad” 🚂 with human lives at stake and an ever growing, out of control, 2 million case backlog! After 2.5 years bouncing around the EOIR system, this particular case is headed back to the IJ in a never ending quest for competent judging, due process, and fundamental fairness. All three of the foregoing are elusive qualities at Garland’s EOIR! 

Garland’s  so-called “dedicated dockets” gimmick has been a total failure from a due process and fundamental fairness standpoint. See, e.g., https://trac.syr.edu/reports/704.

The only “dedicated docket” that Garland REALLY needs at EOIR is one dedicated to getting the results right in the first instance! But, that readily achievable objective (although  NOT without major, long over due personnel changes in “management,” the BIA, and among some IJs) appears of little interest to Garland or the Biden Administration. Thus, the latest Dem Administration appears content to let the dysfunctional EOIR system limp on spewing injustice, bad law, and insurmountable backlogs on its downward spiral!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-13-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️JUDICIAL REVIEW — C.A. 2 — Brace Of Bad BIA Bobbles On Basics Brings “Culture Of Denial” Into Focus — Justice Will Continue To Be Illusive @ EOIR 👎🏽 Until Garland Steps Up & Replaces His Fatally Flawed BIA With Real Judges Who Are Progressive Practical Scholars In Immigration, Due Process, Human Rights, With A Firm Commitment To Bringing Racial & Gender Equity To Now-Disgraced Immigration Courts!🤮
  2. 😎WIN ONE, LOSE ONE☹️:  9TH CIR. ANNIHILATES MATTER OF ARMENDAREZ-MENDEZ (SUA SPONTE REOPENING), WHILE 11TH  CIR. WOODENLY ENDORSES 👎🏻 MATTER OF L-E-A- (NEXUS)!☠️⚰️
  3. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!
  4. ⚖️🗽🇺🇸🦸‍♂️ NDPA SUPERLITIGATOR RAED GONZALEZ DRUBS GARLAND AGAIN! — “Who else could persuade CA5 to agree with CA9, and get an award of costs,” asks Dan Kowalski of LexisNexis Immigration Community? — When will the unconscionable failure of immigrant justice at Garland’s Department of “Justice” finally end? When our nation’s democracy goes down in flames?🔥 ♨️

🤯 “HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUILDING BACKLOG” — Latest BIA Miscue On Retroactivity in 7th Cir. Sure To Generate Re-openings, Remands, & Other Forms Of Backlog Enhancing, Due Process Denying “Aimless Docket Reshuffling!” — Garland’s Inexcusable Mis-Management Of EOIR Is Boiling Over Among Dem Base!

 

From Dan Kowalski @ LexisNexis Immigration Community:

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Daniel M. Kowalski

8 Nov 2022

CA7 on CIMT, Retroactivity: Zaragoza v. Garland

Zaragoza v. Garland

“Dulce Zaragoza, a native and citizen of Mexico and a lawful permanent resident of the United States, pleaded guilty to the Indiana offense of criminal neglect of a dependent after locking her six-year-old son in a closet for six hours. She was sentenced to one year in jail suspended to time served plus 30 days, with the remainder of the sentence to be served on probation. After completing her sentence, she traveled abroad and presented herself for admission when she returned. The Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) found her inadmissible based on the neglect conviction, which the agency classified as a “crime involving moral turpitude.” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i)(I). She was placed in removal proceedings. Zaragoza fought removal on several grounds, with her arguments expanding as the proceedings progressed. Before the immigration judge, she argued that the Indiana neglect offense does not qualify as a crime involving moral turpitude. The judge disagreed and entered a removal order, and Zaragoza appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA” or “the Board”). In the meantime, she petitioned the state court to modify her sentence. Her purpose was to bring herself within the so-called “petty offense” exception to inadmissibility, which is available to first-time offenders sentenced to six months or less. Id. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(ii)(II). The state court obliged and reduced her one-year sentence to 179 days. With that order in hand, Zaragoza argued before the BIA that Indiana’s neglect offense is not a crime involving moral turpitude, and regardless, the petty-offense exception applies. The BIA rejected both arguments, agreeing with the immigration judge that the Indiana offense is categorically a crime involving moral turpitude, and further holding that the sentence-modification order was not effective to establish Zaragoza’s eligibility for the petty-offense exception. For the latter conclusion, the Board relied on a recent decision of the Attorney General declaring that state-court sentence modification orders are effective for immigration purposes only if based on a legal defect in the underlying criminal proceeding. Matter of Thomas & Thompson (“Thomas”), 27 I. & N. Dec. 674, 690 (Att’y Gen. 2019). Zaragoza sought reconsideration, this time adding two more arguments: (1) the phrase “crime involving moral turpitude” is unconstitutionally vague; and (2) the Attorney General’s decision in Thomas is impermissibly retroactive as applied to her. The BIA disagreed on both counts. Zaragoza petitioned for review in this court, reprising the entire array of arguments she presented to the Board. We agree with the BIA’s resolution of all issues but one: applying Thomas in Zaragoza’s case is an impermissibly retroactive application of a new rule. We therefore remand to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

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

Commentary from Kevin A. Gregg, ESQ:

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Kevin A. Gregg

• 1st

Partner at Kurzban Kurzban Tetzeli & Pratt P.A. & Host of Immigration Review Podcast

2d • Edited •

2 days ago

Crimmigration attorneys, get your motions ready.

At least in Chicago! Matter of Thomas and Thompson CANNOT be applied retroactively in the Seventh Circuit!

Sentence modifications/clarifications/European vacations obtained pre-T&T and that comply with Matter of Cota Vargas/Song/Estrada must be recognized for immigration purposes!

Also, when will A.G. Garland weigh in on Matter of Thomas and Thompson? The time is now.

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

When the BIA starts not with the correct legal concept that retroactivity is disfavored in the law, but rather with “how can we best help DHS Enforcement and/or curry favor and job security from our political ‘handlers’ at DOJ,” “bad things are going to happen.” And, they do, over and over!

There are plenty of well-qualified “practical scholars” out here who understand retroactivity in the immigration context and would get these basic questions right in the first instance without bothering the Courts of Appeals or generating disorder, inconsistency, and unnecessary backlog! Why hasn’t Garland recruited them to be the “New and Improved BIA” that would actually be driven by legal expertise, practical scholarship, due process, and fundamental fairness? The latter are qualities that EOIR and DOJ claims it seeks in Immigration Judges. But, it’s not the reality that practitioners too often actually face in todays dysfunctional, inefficient, and hopelessly backlogged EOIR. 

The public and those subject to substandard judging and often dehumanizing treatment by EOIR are suffering — amazingly, now more than ever! When will Garland do his job and reform his courts to conform to due process, fundamental fairness, best interpretations of law, and best practices? 

The latter desirable qualities, actually necessary for any legitimate judiciary, are certainly NOT descriptive of today’s broken EOIR! Garland and his lieutenants might consider themselves “above the fray!” 

But, my already over-stuffed e-mailbox is “lighting up” with EOIR horror stories from experienced, long-time practitioners who are questioning whether they can continue practicing in the hostile, lawless, “no due process,” “no customer service,” “no common sense,” “blame the victim” environment that Garland has allowed to mushroom, and sometimes even encouraged, at EOIR. 

I mentioned the term “Dedicated Docket” at an Executive Session of a major NGO recently. The anger and disgust that it provoked from those actually “doing the job” of fighting for justice in Garland’s broken system was palpable! 

Why is a Democratic Administration that is, despite beating expectations in the midterms, still hanging on by a thread, inflicting this type of disrespect, pain, and suffering on its own loyal supporters? How will this self-created legal, Constitutional, human rights disaster play out moving toward 2024!

“The EOIR HQ Tower” needs a complete shake-up and replacement of  those who have demonstrated their inability to get the job done with those who can! The latter are out here. But, the worse Garland lets his system get, the harder and most costly (dollars and lives) it will be to fix it!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-11-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  2. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!
  3. ⚖️🗽🇺🇸🦸‍♂️ NDPA SUPERLITIGATOR RAED GONZALEZ DRUBS GARLAND AGAIN! — “Who else could persuade CA5 to agree with CA9, and get an award of costs,” asks Dan Kowalski of LexisNexis Immigration Community? — When will the unconscionable failure of immigrant justice at Garland’s Department of “Justice” finally end? When our nation’s democracy goes down in flames?🔥 ♨️
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻ERROR SUPPLY: EOIR’s Anti-Asylum Bias, Failure To Apply Precedents, Earns Yet Another Rebuke From 3d Cir.  — Blanco v. AG

🤮 INDEFENSIBLE: 7th Cir. Schools BIA On Briefing Schedules, Own Regs, Fabricated “Facts” — Oluwajana v. Garland

 

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis:

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca7-on-bia-abuse-of-discretion-oluwajana-v-garland

CA7 on BIA Abuse of Discretion: Oluwajana v. Garland

Oluwajana v. Garland

“After an immigration judge ordered him removed from the United States, Olawole Oluwajana appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals and retained counsel to represent him. But the government was slow in providing a copy of Oluwajana’s immigration file, without which his attorney could not prepare a brief. The Board granted one extension but denied a second, suggesting that Oluwajana instead submit his brief with a motion seeking leave to file it late. When he did so, less than two weeks after the submission deadline, the Board denied the motion in a cursory—and factually erroneous—footnote. And having rejected the brief, the Board upheld the removal order without considering Oluwajana’s allegations of error by the immigration judge. Based on the undisputed circumstances of this case, we conclude that the Board abused its discretion by unreasonably rejecting Oluwajana’s brief. We therefore grant the petition for review, vacate the Board’s order, and remand for further proceedings.”

[Hats off to Chicago Superlawyer Scott Pollock and Christina J. Murdoch!]

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Here, the BIA took 7 months to set a briefing schedule, didn’t get the file to counsel in a timely manner, then “dinged” the R’s counsel for being 12 days late in filing a brief on a complex issue where input from legal counsel would likely be “outcome determinative!”

But, along the way, “Garland’s Clown Show” 🤡 fabricated a 33 day “late period.” And, to add insult to injury, they ignored their own regulations and instructions to counsel.

Even OIL couldn’t defend this one! But, Garland nevertheless retains the “Miller Lite” Clowns from his predecessors’ “whatever it takes to deny and deport assembly line!”  No quality, no fairness, no accountability! Just “anything goes” when it’s “only immigrants of color!”

Briefing schedules aren’t “rocket science.” But Garland’s “Miller Lite” holdover gang can’t even get the simple stuff right!

How is this “expert judging” entitled to “deference?” 

How is having the Circuit spend time cleaning up Garland’s messes an acceptable use of Article III resources? 

What happens to the many human victims of Garland’s unjust and unprofessional system who don’t have Scott Pollock & Co. to take Garland to the Court of Appeals? 

What happens to Garland’s victims when the CA is on “autopilot,” which often happens?

Is it any wonder that “judges” who would rather fight with attorneys than read their briefs are running an astounding 1.6 million case backlog and an appellate backlog of 82,000, up approximately 7 times from just four years ago?

Wonder why an AG running a “second (or perhaps third or fourth) class justice system” for people of color isn’t a very effective leader or force for racial justice in America?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-11-22

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️COURTS OF APPEALS CONTINUE TO THROW ROTTEN TOMATOES 🍅 @ BIA’S ANTI-ASYLUM BIAS — Basic Analytical, Legal Errors Continue From Weaponized, Non-Expert “Star Chamber” ☠️ Posing As ”Tribunal!” — Judge Garland Must Fix This Inexcusable, Unnecessary, Systemic Failure Now! — Justice For Persons Of Color & Migrants Can’t “Wait For Godot!”
  2. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻ERROR SUPPLY: EOIR’s Anti-Asylum Bias, Failure To Apply Precedents, Earns Yet Another Rebuke From 3d Cir.  — Blanco v. AG
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  4. 🏴‍☠️👎🏽🤮 AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING (“ADR”) ON STEROIDS! — EOIR Dysfunction Shows What Happens When “Captive Court System” Kowtows To Political Handlers Rather Than Serving The Public! — Jason Dzubow, The Asylumist, Reports!

⚖️“THERE’S A BIGGER CHALLENGE FACING THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION!” — Broken Immigration Courts 👎🏻⚖️ — It’s Not Just Dumb & Inhumane Rules Imposed By The Trump Regime — It’s A Toxic “Mindset” Among Some EOIR Judges That Mirrors & Reinforces The Dehumanizing Actions Of ICE Enforcement!☠️

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-immigration-deportation-biden-20210304-ftq7zit5j5altchueuwm3rjxny-story.html

Stephen Franklin in the Chicago Tribune;

. . . .

The Biden administration has signaled that it would like to narrow arrests and deportations to those persons convicted of national security threats and other serious felonies. That would keep many of those, like the fast-food worker in Indianapolis, from immigrant court.

But there’s a bigger challenge facing the Biden administration.

Can it wipe away rules that have fed into a mindset that seemed to take root nationally among some court and immigration enforcement officials?

The rules were meant to erase an immigrant presence in the U.S. And they came to life far away from the nation’s borders in the daily grind of the immigration courts. For well over two years, I sat in Chicago’s immigration court watching, reporting and wondering how his could be happening.

Day by day I watched as the crowds huddled anxiously in the Chicago court’s major waiting room grew. Judges’ caseloads, as listed on the waiting room walls, eventually doubled for some to as many as 100 a day.

Why?

When Trump took office there were 542,411 deportation cases in the nation’s immigration courts. When he left, the number was 1.29 million. The backlog grew as arrests grew, as more were detained, as bonds went up, and new rules raised new hurdles for immigrants in the courts. The average wait for a case in Chicago’s court was 945 days in 2016, and that grew to 1,014 in 2021, 14% higher than the national average.

The long wait perplexed a judge one day as she scanned her computer looking to schedule a new hearing. The best she could find, she told an Iraqi woman in her 80s, was a date four years down the road. The long delay was not lost on the woman’s lawyer’s face. The woman’s husband was not in court because he was facing brain surgery.

A series of canceled hearings left a middle-age Palestinian’s life dangling in the court for seven years. The long delay left him anxious and panicked about the fate of his family back home, where they faced the threat of violence that had already taken several relatives’ lives. He won asylum but several months later, and before he could bring his family to the U.S., his teenage son was killed, a targeted victim of the violence that had haunted him and his relatives.

I took note after the Trump administration said in August 2019 it would push older cases back in 10 courts across the U.S., including Chicago, so that cases involving newly arrived immigrant families could move more rapidly through the courts. It was a clear warning that the U.S. would deal quickly with immigrants arriving at its borders.

. . . .

**********

Read the complete op-ed at the link.

The solutions are not rocket science. As many of us have suggested they include:

  • New leadership at EOIR firmly committed to judicial independence, due process, best practices and competent judicial Administration;
  • New judges at the BIA — “practical experts” in asylum and immigration laws committed to due process, fair application of the law, and humane treatment of individuals;
  • Slash the docket immediately to manageable levels by removing aged cases that would fit the legalization proposals in the Biden Bill or where relief could be granted by USCIS;
  • Get recent arrivals represented and decide their cases on a fair, reasonable, timely, predictable schedule (e.g., end “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”);
  • Establish and implement merit-based criteria for recruitment and retention of judges.

It won’t happen without new personnel and different attitudes. There’s plenty of talent out here to rebuild a high-quality, expert, due-process oriented immigration judiciary. Judge Garland and his team just have to move out those who have created and furthered dysfunction and replace them with better-qualified pros who can get the job done for American justice and the millions of individuals whose lives, hopes, and futures are tied up in the EOIR mess !

Article I is the ultimate solution! But, Judge Garland can start making long overdue changes the day he is sworn in as AG (probably later this week). The only question: Will he?

A Better EOIR For A Better America!🇺🇸It’s not rocket science!🚀

🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-08-21

Related posts:

  1. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️COURTS OF APPEALS CONTINUE TO THROW ROTTEN TOMATOES 🍅 @ BIA’S ANTI-ASYLUM BIAS — Basic Analytical, Legal Errors Continue From Weaponized, Non-Expert “Star Chamber” ☠️ Posing As ”Tribunal!” — Judge Garland Must Fix This Inexcusable, Unnecessary, Systemic Failure Now! — Justice For Persons Of Color & Migrants Can’t “Wait For Godot!”
  2. CLOGGING 🪠💩🧻 🚽 PROBLEM @ FORMER HOME OF JUSTICE: “Team Garland” Needs Roto-Rooter* On Call To Clean Up The Toxic BS 💩 Spewing From EOIR & Root Out The Ethics Challenged DOJ “Attorneys” Clogging The Federal Courts With Their Frivolous Defenses Of This White Nationalist, Nativist Garbage Coming From Falls Church Kakistocracy In The Waning Days! — Another Lawless EOIR Attack On Due Process, Humanity, Lawyers Blocked By Federal Judge! — Will There Be Accountability For The “Perps” Of These Continuing “Crimes Against Humanity?”
  3. ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️”MEDLEY OF INJUSTICE” — CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO LOWER HAMMER 🔨 ON BIA: Anti-Asylum Misogyny; Illegal & Incredibly Stupid “Policies;” “Perplexing” Lack Of Legal Knowledge Highlighted In Latest Batch Of Reversals! — “Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim.”
  4. 🇺🇸⚖️🗽HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: UNETHICAL, 🏴‍☠️WHITE NATIONALIST,⚰️ MISOGYNIST 🤮“WAR CRIMINAL” ☠️JEFFREY ROSEN TAKES COWARDLY🐓 PARTING SHOT AT REFUGEE🦸🏻 WOMEN! — DOJ Clean-Out, 🧹🪠🧻Fumigation, & Restaffing With Ethical Attorneys Can’t Begin Soon Enough!