Category: Children

U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS: FEINBLOOM, STEVENS, & SCHMIDT TAKE CASE FOR ARTICLE I IMMIGRATION COURT TO FBA’S 2019 CIVIL RIGHTS ENTOUFFEE IN NEW ORLEANS, LA, FEB. 16, 2019

 

“Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere. . . . Whatever Affects One Directly, Affects All Indirectly.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letters From the Birmingham Jail

New Orleans– Appearing before the Federal Bar Association’s 2019 Civil Rights Entouffee, Attorney Jeffrey Feinbloom of the FBA Civil Rights Section, FBA Immigration Section Chair Elizabeth “Betty” Stevens, and I made a powerful pitch to assembled Civil Rights Attorneys for their support for an Article I United States Immigration Court.

 

Our panel emphasized that the current Immigration Courts under the Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”), U.S. Department of Justice are a “failed system” threatening everyone’s civil rights. Notwithstanding more Immigration Judges, these “courts” have continued to build backlog at an astonishing and accelerating rate, now topping 1.1 million pending cases following the Government shutdown.

 

Worse yet, they have essentially become a “hostile environment” for migrants, their attorneys, and sometimes the Immigration Judges and court staff themselves. They also are an impediment to realistic, professional immigration enforcement by DHS. Perhaps worst of all, due process of law has become the apparent enemy of DOJ and EOIR, rather than the objective.

 

The only way out of this mess is the establishment of an independent Article I Immigration Court, administered in a professional and apolitical manner by sitting judges, not politicized bureaucrats in Washington. Section Chair Betty Stevens and other Section members have helped develop a non-partisan bill to create an Article I Court.  We urge everyone to ask their Congressional representatives to make Immigration Court reform an urgent national priority.

 

Schmidt’s Five Points On Why U.S. immigration Courts Are Unlike Any Other Court System in America

 

  • Judges are selected, directed, and “supervised” by the Attorney General, the chief prosecutor;
  • There is no right to appointed counsel, so young children and others without any understanding of the U.S. legal system, often in detention, are forced to “represent themselves” in life or death cases against experienced ICE Counsel;
  • The chief prosecutor, the Attorney General, can change any individual case result that he doesn’t like, and rewrite immigration law in the DHS’s favor through “certified precedents;”
  • There is a 1.1 million case backlog, resulting largely from “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” by the DOJ that continues to grow, despite an increase in judges, without any realistic plan for reducing it;
  • So-called “civil immigration detention” can be used by the Government to limit representation, and for coercion and deterrence of migrants with little or no effective judicial recourse in many cases.

 

PWS

02-21-19

Related posts:

  1. PACIFIC STANDARD: The Call For An Independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court Gets Louder! — Systemic Failure Of Due Process “At The Retail Level” Threatens Our Entire Justice System! — “Just one day observing in immigration court would highlight how inherently unfair the system can really be for someone fighting for their case.”
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. “THE 5-4-1 PLAN FOR DUE PROCESS IN IMMIGRATION COURT” — My Speech To The Association Of Deportation Defense Attorneys, NY City, March 21, 2019
  4. COURTS OF INJUSTICE: Lawyers’ Groups Rip Bias, “Asylum Free Zone” At El Paso Immigration Court!

MARIA SACCHETTI @ WASHPOST WITH A “SOFTER PORTRAIT” OF US BORDER PATROL: Despite The White Nationalist Lies, Fear Mongering, & False Narratives Hurled By Trump Politicos, At The Border, Reality, Kindness, & Simple Humanity Sometimes Win Out!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/you-want-a-cookie-as-families-arrive-en-masse-border-agents-offer-snacks-and-medical-checks/2019/02/19/1b334d5c-1dd7-11e9-9145-3f74070bbdb9_story.html

Maria writes

ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. — This cactus forest on the U.S.-Mexico border was quiet one recent day. No mass crossings of migrant families. No sprinters. Just two men caught sneaking into the Arizona desert.

Then U.S. Border Patrol Agent Daniel Hernandez spotted a youth alone under a juniper tree, dressed as if he were headed to church. When the agent approached, the boy quickly surrendered.

“Are you afraid?” Hernandez asked in Spanish. The youth nodded and said his name was Marco and that he was from Guatemala. He was 14 but looked small in an oversize jacket, pressed shirt and pants, and too-large black oxford shoes.

Hernandez lifted his sunglasses to appear less intimidating. He asked Marco who had left him, how he knew where the border was, and whether he carried food and water.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “When was the last time you ate? Yesterday? You want a cookie?”

The deaths of two Guatemalan children in December and the massive groups of Central American families crossing the border are increasingly transforming the Border Patrol’s role from national security to humanitarian relief, even as President Trump declares the situation a national emergency.

Well over half the people taken into custody in recent months have been parents and children, with hundreds surrendering at a time, often in isolated locations. In other cases, youths such as Marco are dropped off by themselves. More than 1,800 Central American parents and children, a record high, crossed illegally last week on the day Trump went to El Paso to tout the need for a border wall.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen promised “extraordinary protective measures” following the deaths of Jakelin Caal, 7, and Felipe Gómez Alonzo, 8, who crossed into the United States with their fathers. Since then, the federal government says it has dramatically increased its medical staff at the border.

A Mexican man detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection died this week at a medical facility, however. And advocacy groups warn that the remote areas where families are crossing, and the agency’s crowded detention facilities, still pose serious risks — especially for young children.

[Meet Felipe, the boy from Guatemala who died after crossing the U.S. border]

Medical teams from the Coast Guard, the Department of Health and Human Services, and new private contractors have been triaging and examining migrant children on the border. Border agents, hundreds of whom are also paramedics, are patrolling more far-flung areas, backed up by helicopters, buses and SUVs. The U.S. military has also helped with the evaluation and treatment of migrants.

“We’ve been adapting to these new realities,” said a senior adviser for Customs and Border Protection who was allowed to speak only on the condition of anonymity.

The deaths of Jakelin and Felipe remain under investigation, and the official said the Department of Homeland Security so far hasn’t found any sign of a widespread public health crisis on the border. The biggest challenge, Border Patrol agents say, are the large groups of migrants — 200 to 300 people at a time — crossing in distant locations, swamping the agency’s resources.


U.S. Border Patrol agents monitor the border Jan. 18 in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Border Patrol Agent Daniel Hernandez speaks with Marco, a 14-year-old from Guatemala, who was arrested after illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

A U.S. Border Patrol agent drags tires to ease the search for footprints of people crossing the border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Fifty-eight large groups crossed from October to January, compared with 13 groups over the same period last year.

Some migrants arrive with colds, sprained ankles, broken bones, chicken pox and “gripe,” otherwise known as the flu. A toddler who fell from a moving vehicle in Mexico was brought to the U.S. border in January with a possible broken arm. A teenage girl cracked several vertebrae after slipping from an 18-foot-high border wall in December.

CBP has given Border Patrol agents “enhanced” field guidance to check every child — including those arriving in large groups — and ask if they are sick, injured, dehydrated or hungry. Agents have also stocked up on baby formula, diapers and women’s sanitary supplies in sectors such as Yuma, where 90 percent of border crossers in January were family members and unaccompanied minors.

Migrants who are ill are sent to a hospital. The rest are taken to Border Patrol stations for more-comprehensive screenings. Doctors and nurses check their vital signs, take their medical histories and administer medicine.

In one instance, on Jan. 24, the DHS flew in a physician and other staff via helicopter to a Border Patrol station in the Tucson sector to examine 130 minors. Two youths with high fevers were taken to a hospital.

Still, the huge numbers of families arriving carry significant risk, officials say, because many cross into the United States in less-populated areas, with few agents and limited or no medical facilities.

The CBP official said the agency is deploying general-practitioner physicians who can treat a wide array of people — including children and pregnant women. But the American Academy of Pediatrics said it has urged CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to hire medics trained in pediatrics, or at least accept volunteer pediatricians, because children require more specialized care.

“Sick children are very different from adults,” said Colleen Kraft, the immediate past president of the academy, whose term ended Dec. 31. “If you don’t have the pediatric training . . . you’re going to miss those children who are becoming very, very ill.”

Doctors and advocates said young children should not be housed in cold and crowded processing cells, where migrants describe sleeping on mats on the floor under silver Mylar blankets.

[The ‘hielera’: A battle for control of thermostats at the U.S. border]

“It’s a law enforcement mentality,” said Marsha Griffin, a pediatrician who volunteers at a shelter in McAllen, Tex., and the co-chair of the academy’s special-interest group on immigrant health. “They are treating people as prisoners, not as children and families.”

On a tour of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector in January, agents did not allow a Washington Post reporter to visit the cells where migrants are held, citing privacy concerns. But some migrants recently released from those cells and dropped off in vanloads at a Tucson shelter praised the medical attention their children received in federal custody.

Julio, a schoolteacher from Guatemala, said his daughter Jakeline, 15, was taken to the hospital with the flu and had recovered.

“The care was excellent,” he said, speaking at Casa Alitas, a Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona shelter on a palm-tree-lined street. Shelter officials asked that the migrants be identified only by their first names to protect their privacy.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Maria’s excellent article at the above link.

Imagine what could be achieved if the Administration simply followed the law by getting enough Refugee Officers, Inspectors, Asylum Officers, Immigration Judges, Court Clerks, and Private Attorneys to process the cases fairly, efficiently, and in accordance with the law, our international obligations, and Due Process. Folks would be encouraged to apply abroad or at ports of entry. The Border Patrol could actually return to real law enforcement duties.

 

It wouldn’t cost anything close to $8 billion.  And it wouldn’t tie up the Federal Courts with avoidable litigation because of the Administration’s disrespect for the law, our Constitution, and Congressional intent.

 

It could happen.  But, not unless we change to a Non-White-Nationalist Regime. Essentially, everyone including the Border Patrol is being adversely affected by Trump’s bad, and ultimately unsustainable, restrictionist immigration policies.

 

PWS

02-20-19

Related posts:

  1. YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Trump, DHS Promise, “Reign Of Terror” Directed At Families In Ethnic Communities — “Orphaning” U.S. Citizen Children And/Or Feeding Them & Other Vulnerable Kids To MS-13 & Other Gangs As “Fresh Meat” America’s New Objectives! — But, The Law & Reality Could Be Problems For Trump & His Sycophants @ ICE!
  2. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  3. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  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! 

16 STATES SUE TRUMP ON BOGUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY — Nolan Says Trump Ultimately Likely To Prevail — “Slate 3” Appear To Agree!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/coalition-of-states-sues-trump-over-national-emergency-to-build-border-wall/2019/02/18/9da8019c-33a8-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html

Amy Goldstein reports for WashPost:

A coalition of 16 states filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block President Trump’s plan to build a border wall without permission from Congress, arguing that the president’s decision to declare a national emergency is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit, brought by states with Democratic governors — except one, Maryland — seeks a preliminary injunction that would prevent the president from acting on his emergency declaration while the case plays out in the courts.

The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, a San Francisco-based court whose judges have ruled against an array of other Trump administration policies, including on immigration and the environment.

Accusing the president of “an unconstitutional and unlawful scheme,” the suit says the states are trying “to protect their residents, natural resources, and economic interests from President Donald J. Trump’s flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution.”

. . . .

Read the rest of Amy’s article at the above link.

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But, over at The Hill, Nolan Rappaport predicts that Trump ultimately will prevail:

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer claim that President Donald Trump’s Southern Border National Emergency Proclamation is an unlawful declaration over a crisis that does not exist, and that it steals from urgently needed defense funds — that it is a power grab by a disappointed president who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve through the constitutional legislative process.
In fact, this isn’t about the Constitution or the bounds of the law, and — in fact — there is a very real crisis at the border, though not necessarily what Trump often describes. It helps to understand a bit of the history of “national emergencies.”
As of 1973, congress had passed more than 470 statutes granting national emergency powers to the president. National emergency declarations under those statutes were rarely challenged in court.
n Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, which was decided in 1952, the Supreme Court overturned President Harry S. Truman’s proclamation seizing privately owned steel mills to preempt a national steelworker strike during the Korean War. But Truman didn’t have congressional authority to declare a national emergency. He relied on inherent powers which were not spelled out in the Constitution.
Trump, however, is using specific statutory authority that congress created for the president.
In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA), which permits the president to declare a national emergency when he considers it appropriate to do so. The NEA does not provide any specific emergency authorities. It relies on emergency authorities provided in other statutes. The declaration must specifically identify the authorities that it is activating.
Published originally on The HIl.
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While many of us hope Nolan is wrong, his prediction finds support from perhaps an odd source: these three articles from Slate:

Nancy Pelosi Put Her Faith in the Courts to Stop Trump’s Emergency Wall

Big mistake.

By Daniel Hemel
**************************************************************

Trump Is Trying to Hollow Out the Constitutional System of Checks and Balances

The other two branches might let him.

By PETER M. SHANE

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

JURISPRUDENCE

Trump Isn’t Just Defying the Constitution. He’s Undermining SCOTUS.

The president defended his national emergency by boasting that he’ll win at the Supreme Court because it’s full of his judges.

By DAHLIA LITHWICK

********************************************
We’ll see what happens.  While the arguments made by Trump in support of his “Bogus National Emergency” were  totally frivolous (and, perhaps, intentionally so), the points made by Rappaport, Hemel, Shane, and Lithwick aren’t. That could spell big trouble for our country’s future!
Trump doesn’t have a “sure fire legal winner” here; he might or might not have the majority of the Supremes “in his pocket” as he often arrogantly and disrespectfully claims. Nevertheless, there may be a better legal defense for the national emergency than his opponents had counted on.
Certainly, Trump is likely to benefit from having a “real lawyer,” AG Bill Barr, advancing his White Nationalist agenda at the “Justice” Department rather than the transparently biased and incompetent Sessions. While Barr might be “Sessions at heart,” unlike Sessions he certainly had the high-level professional legal skills, respect, and the “human face” necessary to prosper in the Big Law/Corporate world for decades.
Big Law/Corporate America isn’t necessarily the most diverse place, even today. Nevertheless, during my 7-year tenure there decades ago I saw that overt racism and xenophobia generally were frowned upon as being “bad for business.” That’s particularly true if the “business” included representing some of the largest multinational corporations in the world.
Who knows, Barr might even choose to advance the Trump agenda without explicitly ordering the DOJ to use the demeaning, and dehumanizing term “illegals” to refer to fellow human beings, many of them actually here with Government permission, seeking to attain legal status, and often to save their own lives and those of family members, through our legal system.
Many of them perform relatively thankless, yet essential, jobs that are key to our national economic success. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that like the Trump Family and recently exposed former U.N Ambassador nominee Heather Nauert, almost all of us privileged and lucky enough to be U.S. citizens who have prospered from an expanding economy have been doing so on the backs of immigrants, both documented and undocumented. Additionally, migrants are some of the dwindling number of individuals in our country who actually believe in and trust the system to be fair and “do the right thing.”
But, a change in tone, even if welcome, should never be confused with a change in policy or actually respecting the due process rights of others and the rule of law as applied to those seeking legally available benefits in our immigration system. That’s just not part of the White Nationalist agenda that Barr so eagerly signed up to defend and advance
It’s likely to a long time, if ever, before “justice” reasserts itself in the mission of the Department of Justice.
PWS
02-19-19

NOTE: An earlier version of this post contained the wrong article from Dahlia Lithwick.  Sorry for any confusion.

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  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. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

IEVA JUSIONYTE @ LA TIMES: Border Walls, Fences, & Barriers Are, At Best, Marginal To Real Law Enforcement – But, They Are Absolutely Guaranteed To Cause Fractures, Trauma, & Amputations For Refugees Fleeing Persecution & Other Desperate People Just Looking For A Better Life!

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jusionyte-border-emergency-responders-20190217-story.html

Jusionyte writes in the LA Times:

We found her in a ditch a few steps away from the rusted border fence on the east side of Nogales, Ariz., an inch-and-a-half laceration on her swollen forehead. She came from Guerrero, one of the most violent states in Mexico, and could not remember how she landed on the rugged surface after her grip on the top of the barrier failed and she fell.

Six firefighters carried her to the ambulance, which took her to a helicopter bound for the regional trauma center in Tucson. Captain Lopez recorded the incident in the logbook when we returned to the firehouse: “1107 Medic 2, Engine 2: Dead End Freeport — Jumper/Head Injury.” This was two lines below an entry logged earlier that morning, for a teenage boy who had come down with a 102-degree fever while locked in a cell at the Border Patrol station after agents apprehended him in the desert: “0951 Medic 2: 1500 West La Quinta Rd — High Fever.”

Emergency responders are the first on the scene in any life-threatening situation: car accidents, drug overdoses, heart attacks, shootings. In the southern United States, the list of routine trauma scenarios includes border-related injuries.

For more than a year, while I was volunteering as an EMT and paramedic in Arizona, I witnessed ambulances pick up wounded border crossers so frequently that some of my peers were casually referring to the cement ledge abutting the fence as “the ankle alley.”

Such reinforcements don’t contribute to national security. Instead, they erode the foundations of public safety in communities on both sides of the border.

From EMTs to emergency room doctors, medical professionals see firsthand how, as the design of the barrier changes, so do the patterns of injury: While the previous, shorter fence, built in the 1990s and made of sharp corrugated sheet metal, amputated the fingers of those who tried to scale it, the current 20-foot-tall bollard barrier causes orthopedic fractures and multi-system trauma.

Emergency responders also see that, no matter its design, the fence does not deter unauthorized migrants. Even more often than ambulances are dispatched to “the ankle alley,” they are sent to help those choosing the dangerous journey across what the Border Patrol calls “hostile terrain,” where enforcement is outsourced to the extreme environment.

Migrants rescued in the desert are often severely dehydrated and face a life with permanent kidney damage. Lucky ones, nevertheless: In the last two decades, more than 7,000 people have died crossing the increasingly militarized Southwest border region, some of them from head trauma suffered when they fell off the fence in Nogales.

The border fence, now enhanced by spools of concertina wire, is a key component of “tactical infrastructure,” a term Customs and Border Protection uses to refer to the assemblage of materials and technologies that regulate movement in the name of national security. CBP doesn’t have metrics to assess whether fencing contributes to their border enforcement operations, as the Government Accountability Office noted in a report released last year.

The ineffectiveness of current fences has nothing to do with their size or their length. Barriers along the border have doubled in height since the 1990s and now cover nearly 700 miles, or about one-third of the length­ of the U.S. Southwest border. But they have failed to stop unauthorized migrants or illegal drugs.

Still, as we can see from the ongoing debate on border security among lawmakers, there are no plans to abandon this brutal and ineffective enforcement strategy.

The stubborn focus on barriers is shortsighted, and it obscures how the deployment of tactical infrastructure harms and threatens the safety of communities that straddle the international boundary, such as Nogales. The same emergency responders who splint broken legs and give IV fluids to wounded border crossers depend on partnerships with fire departments in Mexico. Wildfires and flash floods, air pollution and toxic spills spread from one country to another without regard for borders. Walls don’t stop them.

Arizona is downhill, downwind and downstream from the Mexican state of Sonora. Towns on both sides have their public utilities and transportation systems intermeshed. In Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora — together known as Ambos Nogales — an arroyo and a sewage pipeline cross the border through a drainage tunnel underneath the port of entry, where residents line up for passport control steps away from railcars carrying sulphuric acid. Aware of this intertwining, emergency managers and first responders have developed binational partnerships.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute »

The U.S. Forest Service and Mexico’s National Forestry Commission jointly fight wildfires within 10 miles of the border. Sister cities have mutual aid agreements, which allow them to share resources in cases of emergency on either side. While Americans push fire hoses through the gaps in the fence, supplying their peers in Mexico with water, Mexican volunteers come to the U.S. side to provide manpower in large structure fires and search-and-rescue operations. Such cooperation is more than a century old. It precedes the fence that divides the communities.

Building barriers undermines these achievements and imperils border residents. To speed up the construction of the wall after Sept. 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security was authorized to waive more than 30 environmental and other federal laws, including regulations preserving clean air and clean water. Tactical infrastructure, deployed at any human, social or ecological cost, exacerbates the potentially disastrous consequences of natural phenomena.

We saw it happen a decade ago, when the CBP installed a 5-foot concrete barrier inside the drainage tunnel under Nogales. The barrier formed a bottleneck. With heavy rain, water pressure kept rising, until about 1,000 feet of the tunnel collapsed and inundated the city. Mexican authorities declared the area a disaster zone, citing damage to hundreds of homes, while the CBP recovered two bodies, suspecting the drowned were unauthorized migrants. Despite calls for investigations and reparations, the U.S. government’s only concession was an offer to lower the barrier by a foot and a half.

Such reinforcements don’t contribute to national security. Instead, they erode the foundations of public safety in communities on both sides of the border. As U.S. soldiers added more concertina wire to the fence in Nogales earlier this month, an EMT told me he dreads the day he may be called to help someone entangled in its razor-sharp coils.

Ieva Jusionyte is an assistant professor of anthropology and social studies at Harvard University and the author of “Threshold: Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border.” She has volunteered as an emergency medical technician, paramedic and firefighter in Florida, Arizona and Massachusetts.

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On the “real border,” Trump’s lies and White Nationalist nonsense don’t just waste money and create artificial barrier to international cooperation; they actually harm folks on both sides every day. And, they most certainly bring us no closer to the rational solutions needed to manage a shared border and reasonably control and channel human migration.

PWS

02-18-19

 

Related posts:

  1. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  2. [BUREAU] ‘CRATS CONTINUE TO FLEE SINKING DHS SHIP AS ABUSES, LIES, COVER-UPS MOUNT — John Sanders Latest To Exit — Trump Taps Mark Morgan, Eager Architect Of Administration’s Temporarily Aborted “Community Reign of Terror” (A/K/A/ “Operation Wetback ‘19”) Program As Next Acting CBP Chief — Expect More Mindless Cruelty, Lies, False Narratives, White Nationalist Racism, Violations Of Law & Human Rights!
  3. IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!
  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! 

“LIES, DAMN LIES, & (BOGUS) STATISTICS” — That Sums Up Trump’s White Nationalist Immigration Agenda — America Needs To Stand Up Against This Would-Be Fascist Tyrant Who Threatens Our Country, Our Constitution, & Our Precious Democratic Institutions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-be-fooled-by-trumps-make-believe-crisis/2019/02/15/b66adc60-3158-11e9-8ad3-9a5b113ecd3c_story.html

From the Washington Post Editorial Board:

IT IS hard to single out any single event in Donald Trump’s presidency as the most untethered from truth and reality. Still, Friday’s news conference, in which Mr. Trump tried to defend his end run around Congress based on a make-believe emergency at the southern border, was, to use the president’s own words, a “big con game.”

Mr. Trump’s technique is to spin fiction as fact, secure in the knowledge that minds will reel as fact-checkers labor to deconstruct his ziggurat of falsehoods. So let’s stick to one big, basic truth: There is no crisis at the southern border.

There is no crisis, and there is no justification to specifically and surgically contravene the will of Congress, which just weighed and dismissed Mr. Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion to build a border wall, opting instead to grant him $1.375 billion.

Fact: Illegal crossings between ports of entry, as measured by Border Patrol arrests along the Mexican border, have plummeted since the turn of the century, falling to just below 400,000 in the most recent fiscal year, from more than 1.6 million in 2000. That nose-dive in illegal crossings coincides with better economic conditions in Mexico and a major increase in Border Patrol agents, technology and infrastructure along the southwest frontier.

Fact: Most illegal drugs that enter the country from Mexico are discovered by authorities at legal crossing points, not in remote areas where a wall would serve as a deterrent. That was the case, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for 90 percent of the heroin seized along the border. It’s not a Democratic talking point. Vice President Pence, in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today, noted that most seizures of illegal narcotics are “primarily at points of entry.”President Trump declares a national emergency at the U.S.- Mexico border during remarks about border security in the Rose Garden of the White House on Feb. 15. (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)

Fact: The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has been falling for more than a decade, and two-thirds of those who remain have been here for more than a decade. An estimated 10.7 million unauthorized migrants were in the country in 2016, about 1.5 million fewer than in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center.

Fact: Mr. Trump, having conjured a nonexistent crisis, simply could not countenance his failure to persuade Congress to pay for his border wall. The source for this assertion is the president himself, who acknowledged in his news conference Friday that “I didn’t need to do this” and “I just want to do it faster.”

The emergency for Mr. Trump is purely political, impelled by expectations inflated by his campaign promises to build a border wall and force Mexico to pay. Having conflated a political crisis with a national one, Mr. Trump chooses to dodge, dissemble and lie. A self-respecting Congress would not let stand this manufactured emergency.

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

We shouldn’t think that just because 1) the courts  likely will stop Trump; and 2) even if they don’t, he’s too incompetent to build much wall anyway, no matter how long his regime lasts, everything “will be OK.”

The real tragedy and shameful disgrace is that with the time, money, and resources being squandered on “Trump’s fraud on America,” a competent “real” Administration could actually solve the problem in less time using current legal procedures.

A “real government” with those resources could:

  • Hire more Asylum Officers to do “credible fear” interviews;
  • Hire more U.S. Immigration Judges and Court staff to hear asylum cases in accordance with Due Process;
  • Provide lawyers for all asylum applicants; and
  • Hire more CBP Inspectors for Ports of Entry.

It’s not “rocket science;” it’s just using common sense to solve problems in accordance with the law, the (not alternative) facts, and without racist bias.

With competent apolitical professional management, which is undoubtedly available but unsought by this Administration, it could happen in the foreseeable future. And, unlike the “wall hoax,” a solution consistent with the law and due process actually would be as “durable” as anything can be in the 21st Century!

The 2020 elections will be a critical opportunity to use our existing democratic institutions to stop the perverted regime of this pathetic, yet dangerous, self-styled “Knockoff American Mussolini” and to end the “minority rule” that has allowed him and his party to assume power against the will and in disregard for the best interests of the majority of Americans. For the sake of our nation’s future and that of our world, we can’t afford to blow it!

PWS

02-16-19

Related posts:

  1. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  3. SPRINT TO THE BOTTOM: Trump Administration Trashes Refugees & Human Rights In A Despicable Return To “1939-Style Fascism Lite!” — America’s Rancid Conduct & Negative Leadership Presages Another Worldwide Refugee Tragedy — This Time The Blood Will Be Directly On Our Hands!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

COLBY KING @ WASHPOST: The “Original Dreamers” Were Disenfranchised African Americans! — “That fight must continue on behalf of today’s dreamers, the disenfranchised, the demeaned and left out, and all freedom-loving people in this nation.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-black-men-of-the-civil-war-were-americas-original-dreamers/2019/02/15/8c00088e-30a8-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html

Colby King writes in WashPost:

Today, a wall looms large in my thoughts. It isn’t the structure President Trump has in mind for our southern border. I’m thinking of the Wall of Honor at the African American Civil War Memorial, located at Vermont Avenue and U Street NW.

Listed on the wall are the names of 209,145 U.S. Colored Troops who fought during the Civil War. One of those names is that of Isaiah King, my great-grandfather.

I think of those courageous black men as America’s original “dreamers.”

Today’s dreamers are in their teens and 20s, having arrived in this country as children. King’s generation of dreamers were former slaves or descendants of slaves brought to these shores against their will.

However, the black men who fought in the Civil War had the same status as today’s dreamers: noncitizens without a discernable path to citizenship.

My great-grandfather was born in the slave-holding city of Washington in 1848, but his mother was a freed woman. She moved the family to New Bedford, Mass., when he was 4. Around the time of his 17th birthday, Isaiah King enlistedin the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry (Colored), thinking, “I would have it easier riding than walking,” he told the New Bedford Evening Standard in an interview on the eve of Memorial Day services in 1932.

Black men such as my great-grandfather signed on to fight for a Union in which the right to citizenship was reserved for white people. The Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford, in 1857, that black people were not citizens of the United States. Putting it bluntly, the high court said black people were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

In his book “The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry in the Civil War,” Steven M. LaBarre cited the first disparity: It was enshrined in the Second Confiscation and Militia Act of July 17, 1862, which authorized recruitment of black men into the Union army. The law stated that a “person of African descent [of any rank] . . . shall receive ten dollars per month . . . three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing.” White privates at the time received $13 per month plus a $3.50 clothing allowance. It wasn’t until July 15, 1864, that Congress granted equal pay to black soldiers.

Yet, serve they did.

As evidence of the regard in which they were held, LaBarre quoted Massachusetts Gov. John Albion Andrew’s commendation of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry when it was launched: “In this hour of hope for our common country and for themselves; at a time when they hold the destiny of their race in their own grasp; and when its certain emancipation from prejudice, as well as slavery, is in the hands of those now invited to unite in the final blow which will annihilate the rebel power, let no brave and strong man hesitate. One cannot exaggerate the call sounding in the ears of all men, in whose veins flows the blood of Africa, and whose color has been the badge of slavery. It offers the opportunity of years, crowded into an hour.”

According to National Archives, by the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men were serving as soldiers — 10 percent of the Union army — and 19,000 served in the Union navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war — 30,000 of infection or disease. By war’s end, 16 black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor .

King came back to the capital in May 1864 as a private with the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry to defend the city against attack by Confederate troops. His unit participated in the Siege of Petersburg. They guarded Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, Md. And his unit was among the first Union regiments to enter Richmond, capital of the dying Confederacy, on April 3, 1865.

The Civil War ended, but not his service. Three months later, the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry was sent to Texas to defend against threats from Mexico. (Sound familiar?) He was mustered out of service on Oct. 31, 1865, at Clarksville, Tex. — still not a citizen of the United States.

The men with names on the African American Civil War Memorial’s Wall of Honor fought and died to end two centuries of slavery, without being able to count democracy as their own.

For their descendants, the fight for full rights, for full participation in every part of our democracy, goes on.

That fight must continue on behalf of today’s dreamers, the disenfranchised, the demeaned and left out, and all freedom-loving people in this nation.

Read more from Colbert King’s archive.

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

Thanks, Colby, for putting the current plight of “Dreamers” (and I might add refugees and other migrants who are serving, contributing, and building our society despite their disenfranchisement and the government-sponsored dehumanization being inflicted upon them) in the historical context of the fight for civil rights and human dignity in America.

That’s why the “21st Century Jim Crows” like Trump, Sessions, Stephen Miller, Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Steve King, and others (largely associated with the GOP) are so pernicious. Like the “Jim Crows of the past,” these guys use degrading racial stereotypes, intentionally false narratives, and bogus “rule of law” arguments to generate hate and bias, sow division, and use the law to suppress and violate rights rather than advancing them.

While sycophant DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen does not appear to be an “ideological racist,” her mindless and disingenuous parroting of the Trump White Nationalist “party lies” and “enforcement” (read “de-humanization”) agenda certainly makes her a “functional racist.”

It’s quite outrageous and dangerous that individuals with these types of views have been elevated to powerful public offices in the modern era, after the death of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?

PWS

02-16-19

Related posts:

  1. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  2. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  3. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  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! 

“’DUH’ ARTICLE OF DA DAY” – Former FBI Acting Director McCabe Says “then–Attorney General Sessions [was] a Trump-like idiot and racist” – Gee, Seems Like That Was What Liz, Corey, & The Black Caucus Told Us – But McConnell Silenced The Truth & He & His GOP Cronies Subjected America To Perhaps The Worst & Least Qualified Attorney General In U.S. History!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/andrew-mccabe-book-jeff-sessions-irishmen.html

Molly Olmstead reports for Slate:

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book, which details his frustrations with President’s Trump administration, has made it clear that his “disdain for Trump is rivaled only by his contempt for [Jeff] Sessions,” according to an assessment from Washington Post reporter Greg Miller.

According to Miller’s review of the book, McCabe saw then–Attorney General Sessions as a Trump-like idiot and racist who had “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues,” failed to read intelligence reports, and jumbled classified material with publicly reported news.

The strangest detail from the book, though, had to do with Sessions’ thoughts on the FBI’s hiring practices. According to the Post:

The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”

According to a Wall Street Journal review of the book, McCabe wrote in his book that Sessions was only interested in immigration issues. He obsessed over the connection between crime and immigration, and he believed that Islam was an inherently violent religion, according to the Post. When presented with a counterterrorism case, he would first ask where the suspect was born or where the suspect’s parents were from. “He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness,” Miller concluded from McCabe’s book.

McCabe’s assessment is surprising in only that it comes so bluntly from a man who once was acting head of the FBI but now seems intent on speaking out against the men who made his professional and personal life so difficult for 10 months (before he was fired just hours before his planned retirement, blocking him from receiving his full pension benefits). Sessions has a long, long history of making racist and anti-immigrant comments, while also implementing racist and anti-immigrant policies. A non-exhaustive list includes: allegedly warning a black lawyer to “be careful how you talk to white folks”; calling the NAACP “un-American”; reportedly joking that he used to think the KKK was “OK” until he discovered some smoked marijuana; praising an 1924 immigration act promoted by Nazi-style eugenics; denigrating a judge in Hawaii as “sitting on an island in the Pacific”; fondly remembered George Wallace, America’s most famous segregationist politician, as “one of the most formidable third-party candidates in this century; and lauding “the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.”

As for actions, in Alabama, Sessions punished black activists, defended voter suppression tactics, and kept black judges off the federal bench. He opposed sentencing reform over the crack-cocaine disparity. He has opposed hate crime protections and defended the official display of the Confederate flag. He has regularly attended events hosted by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, which he maintains a close relationship with. He touted falsehoods about DACA and immigrants in general. And of course, he pushed, relentlessly, for deportations and prosecutions of undocumented immigrants and even refugees fleeing domestic and gang violence.

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

Sessions is a living example of how someone can spend a lifetime “on the dole” as a so-called “public servant” without providing any meaningful positive service or contributions to the public good.

Compare this “life not so well lived” with the “real world” contributions of the many decent, hard-working, honest, and dedicated civil servants who were screwed over by Trump’s shutdown. Or, compare Sessions’s squandered, anti-social life with the significant “real life” contributions of many of the immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who came before me in Immigration Court over 13 years.

I’m not sure even the worst of the aggravated felons that I ordered deported did as much lasting damage to our nation and its future as did Sessions! He was a child abuser on a grand scale, and someone who used knowingly false narratives to send deserving refugees, particularly abused women, back to torture or even death in the countries from which they had fled. He was the architect of both family separation and the unbridled expansion of the “New American Gulag.”

He promoted hate, intellectual dishonesty, ignorance, bias, and intolerance of all kinds, and was an avowed enemy of kindness and human compassion. He even had the absolute audacity to cite the Christian Bible, the compassionate, merciful, inclusive, and forgiving teachings of one of the world’s greatest “outcasts,” in support of his own perverted, bias-driven, and totally un-Christian world view.

Oh yeah, and he had no management qualifications going into the job and proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. Seldom in modern times has there been a more demoralized, mission-less, and dysfunctional mess than today’s Department of Justice. Even Watergate didn’t do as much institutional damage.

Sessions’s only real contribution to justice, due process, and the public good was the day he walked out of the U.S. Department of Justice for the last time. But, it will take years, if not generations, to repair the damage he has inflicted on the rule of law, our Constitution, honest government, and humane values.

Truly, Liz was right! This was one supremely unqualified dude!

PWS

02-16-19

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. “KILLER ON THE ROAD” – EMBOLDENED BY THE COMPLICITY OF THE “ROBERTS’ COURT,” GOP ABDICATION OF LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT, & BREAKDOWN OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND VALUES, REGIME APPARENTLY PLANNING EXTRALEGAL MOVE TO KILL MORE OF THE MOST VULNERABLE REFUGEES – Refugee Women, Children, LGBTQ Community, Victims Of Government-Enabled Gangs Said To Among Targets of Miller/Trump White Nationalist “American Death Squads!”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

HEIDI ALTMAN @ HEARTLAND ALLIANCE: How EOIR & Other Trump Toadies Lie & Distort “Statistics” To Support A White Nationalist Immigration Agenda!

https://immigrantjustice.org/sites/default/files/content-type/research-item/documents/2019-01/NIJC-Policy-Brief_Trump-Data-Manipulation_Jan2019.pdf

The Trump Administration’s Manipulation of Data to Perpetuate Anti-Immigrant Policies

The Trump administration regularly manipulates data to support its anti-immigrant agenda. Two weeks after President Trump shut down the federal government because Congress refused to approve funding to build a wall on the southern border, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen presented a slideshow to the president’s Cabinet that was widely publicized for relying on inaccurate and heavily inflated numbers to create a sense of crisis in the border region.1 But it has long been a tried and true strategy for this administration’s agencies and government officials to misrepresent facts and figures and implement policy changes intentionally developed to gin up data points that prove a pre-established nativist narrative.

This policy brief describes how the administration has corrupted immigration data to fuel its anti- immigrant policy agenda. Particularly alarming examples include its manipulation of information and data to (I) undermine access to asylum; (II) exacerbate the due process crisis in the immigration courts; and (III) escalate the criminalization of migrants.

I. Crippling Asylum Access, then Touting Low Approval Rates

as Evidence of Fraud

The Trump administration made it nearly impossible for many people to get asylum, and now cites low grant rates to claim there are no legitimate asylum seekers.

The administration’s campaign to close the
border to asylum seekers began almost on
day one. President Trump’s February 2017
Executive Order on border security called for
higher standards for screening asylum
seekers’ fear of return.2 At the border,
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has
intentionally reduced the processing of
asylum seekers at ports of entry3 and
doubled down on a so-called “metering”
system that numerically limits the number of
asylum seekers processed.4 Within the
immigration court system, Department of
Justice (DOJ) leadership has upended
longstanding case law to make it even more
difficult for survivors of gang-related and domestic violence to establish eligibility for asylum.5Unsurprisingly, these policies have shut off asylum protections for many applicants in need:

January 2019 immigrantjustice.org

page1image3823581328

under the Trump administration, denial rates for asylum applicants rose from 54.6 percent in fiscal year (FY) 2016 to 60.2 percent in FY 2017 and to 65 percent in FY 2018.6

The president and his Cabinet officials, after imposing such arbitrary obstacles to asylum, now claim that the resulting low asylum grant rates mean that most asylum seekers are here to “game the system,” as Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker recently stated after asserting that “only 20 percent of aliens have been granted asylum after a hearing before an immigration judge.”7 In his presidential proclamation attempting to ban certain migrants from asylum eligibility, President Trump stated that “only a fraction” of claimants at the southern border “ultimately qualify for asylum.”8

The fault in the president’s logic is so simple it’s easy to miss: the Trump administration made it nearly impossible for even the most bona fide refugee to obtain asylum, and now claims that applicants’ failures to win protection proves they filed applications for nefarious reasons. The administration is cynically using its own cruel policies to create facts designed to further more cruelty.

II. Distorting Immigration Court Representation and Appearance Data

The administration downplays the access to counsel crisis in our nation’s immigration courts, especially for children, and lies about the prevalence of non-appearance rates in immigration court.

Trump’s appointed officials frequently mislead Congress through incomplete and conflated data that obfuscates the due process crisis playing out every day in U.S. immigration courts. Most frequently, these misrepresentations downplay the critical importance of legal representation in immigration court proceedings and falsely suggest that the majority of immigrants do not appear for their scheduled immigration court hearings.

The DOJ Executive Office for Immigration Review’s (EOIR) own data shows that at least 60 percent of immigrant families in deportation proceedings appear for hearings, a statistic that rockets up to 98 percent when families are represented by counsel who can help them understand the court process.9 Among unaccompanied children, 67.6 percent overall and over 95 percent of minors with legal representation appear for their hearings.10

But in one recent hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, EOIR Director James McHenry put forward several problematic representations of immigration statistics that

page2image3824653344

2

subverted this reality.11 At one point, McHenry cited statistics from a program whose scope is limited to providing children’s parents or sponsors a basic legal orientation to argue that providing full legal representation is ineffective in ensuring children’s appearance in court.12During the same hearing, McHenry also blatantly misrepresented court appearance data, testifying without evidence that children in immigration court proceedings appear in court only 53 percent of the time.13

The president’s mischaracterization of this data has been even further removed from reality, including unsubstantiated claims that immigrants “never show up [to court], it’s like a level of 3 percent. They never show up for the trial.”14

Obfuscation about representation and appearance rates in immigration court is particularly harmful given how powerfully the deck is already stacked against immigrants in deportation proceedings. Although U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is represented in each proceeding by its own federal counsel, there is no right to counsel for indigent immigrants who cannot afford private representation. Nationally, only 37 percent of all immigrants and only 14 percent of detained immigrants are represented in their immigration court proceedings.15Representation is a particularly critical due process safeguard in immigration court, where people face life-altering consequences and need an expert in the law by their side to ensure they understand how to comply with complex court processes.16 Immigrants with attorneys are five times more likely to win their cases than those without attorneys.17 For detained immigrants, it can be nearly impossible to even present a case without counsel; those with attorneys are 11 times more likely to be able to seek a defense to deportation.18

III. Increasing Prosecutions to Inflate the Number of So-Called

“Criminal” Immigrants

The administration employs both the criminal justice and deportation systems to target immigrants, using its discretion to increase already sky-high prosecutions of immigrants and subsequently touting increased convictions to demonize immigrants.

The Trump administration is quite literally creating its own crime statistics by making it impossible for asylum seekers to present lawfully at ports and then choosing to prosecute as many people as possible for crossing the border elsewhere to request protection. In April 2017, the DOJ announced it would prioritize the prosecution of migration-related offenses,19a jarring announcement in light of the fact that migration-related prosecutions already constituted more than half of all federal prosecutions when the Trump administration took office.20 A year later, DOJ established a

page3image3821741856

3

“zero-tolerance” policy, whereby U.S. Attorneys Offices at the southwest border were instructed to prosecute all migrants entering between ports of entry under 8 U.S.C. § 1325, improper entry.21

Zero tolerance led to a spike of prosecutions along the southwest border, with a 30 percent increase from the month prior to the announcement of the policy.22 As Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker recently noted, in FY 2018, DOJ charged 85 percent more immigrants with unlawful entry than in FY 2017, and increased felony reentry prosecutions by over 38 percent.23Fueling the zero-tolerance policy was the administration’s concerted blockading of the southern border through illegal turnbacks and so-called “metering” of asylum seekers at ports of entry, both still ongoing, forcing many asylum seekers desperate to reach the safety of the United States to attempt to enter between ports.24

The administration utilizes the statistics resulting from these policies to conflate notions of criminality and immigration status in its policy and rhetoric. ICE routinely touts the high percentage of immigration-related criminal arrests and deportations that involve immigrants who enter outside a port of entry, yet increasingly these statistics reveal the extent to which the administration is cooking the books by driving up the rates of migration-related offenses. Most recently, in ICE’s FY 2018 data release, the agency specifically highlighted arrests of immigrants by “Criminality,” arguing that “the largest percentage of aliens arrested by ICE are convicted criminals (66 percent).” Of the categories of underlying criminal conduct, however, immigration-related offenses ranked as third with 51,249 immigrants.25 Similarly, CBP highlights immigrants convicted of both entry and reentry offenses, with statistics as of August 2018 demonstrating they were the leading type of convictions for so-called “criminal aliens,” representing 41 percent in FY 2017 and 47 percent of all convictions in the first eight months of FY 2018.26 While the administration frames these statistics to argue that migrants have become a greater threat, the story they really tell is of a federal agency that has become obsessed with punishing people for crossing the border.

Conclusion

The use of official government resources to paint groups of people as undesirable or criminal mirrors strategies employed by authoritarian regimes throughout world history who have sought to consolidate power, effectuate anti-democratic agendas, and provide a pretext for persecution. During World War II, the Nazi regime published a list of supposed crimes committed by the Jewish population.27 Russia’s current authoritarian regime regularly employs the criminal justice system to prosecute and convict LGBTQ individuals.28 Scapegoating minorities is one of the time-tested tools for dictators.29

Through data manipulation, the Trump administration is deftly employing the various levers of government to implement inherently flawed policy that criminalizes immigrants, subsequently touting that criminalization to vilify them. Collaterally, the administration manipulates or misrepresents data to impugn immigrants and their families as criminals who are undeserving of protection. The endgame is apparent—to build a foundation to enact policies that erode due process, increase incarceration of communities of color, and strip legal protections from immigrants. Congress and other stakeholders must hold this administration accountable and

4

ensure that its anti-immigrant policies are not justified through the use of data or policy inherently designed to undermine basic human and civil rights.

Acknowledgments

This policy brief was authored by Jose Magaña-Salgado for the National Immigrant Justice Center. NIJC’s Heidi Altman and Tara Tidwell Cullen contributed to the report.

For questions, contact NIJC Director of Policy Heidi Altman at (312) 718-5021 orhaltman@heartlandalliance.org.

Endnotes

1 Philip Bump, “The administration is using heavily inflated numbers to argue for a border wall,” Washington Post, Jan. 4, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/04/administration-is-using-heavily-inflated-numbers- argue-border-wall/?utm_term=.c72735337b9c.
2 Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, Exec. Order No. 13,767, 82 Fed. Reg. 8793, Jan. 25, 2017, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/30/2017-02095/border-security-and-immigration- enforcement-improvements.
3 Hamed Aleaziz, “The Trump Administration is Slowing the Asylum Process to Discourage Applicants, an Official Told Congress,” BuzzFeed, Dec. 17, 2018, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/the-trump- administration-is-slowing-the-asylum-process-to.
4 Human Rights First, Refugee Blockade: The Trump Administration’s Obstruction of Asylum Claims at the Border, Dec. 11, 2018, https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/refugee-blockade-trump-administration-s-obstruction- asylum-claims-border.
5 Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1070866/download. This opinion is currently subject to litigation, with a preliminary, nationwide injunction in place as of December of 2018. Lauren Pearle, “Judge blocks Trump administration efforts to restrict asylum for migrants fleeing domestic and gang violence,” ABC News, Dec. 20, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judge-blocks-trump-administration-efforts- restrict-asylum-migrants/story?id=59913629; Grace, et al., v. Whitaker, No. 18-CV-01853 EGS (D.D.C. Dec. 19, 2018), available at https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/grace-v-whitaker-opinion. See also Matter of E-F-H-L-, 27 I&N Dec. 226 (A.G. 2018), https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1040936/download (undermining the right to an evidentiary hearing for asylum applicants).
6 TRAC Immigration, Asylum Decisions and Denials Jump in 2018, Nov. 29, 2018,http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/539/.
7 Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Delivers Remarks on the Importance of a Lawful Immigration System, Dec. 11, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/acting- attorney-general-matthew-whitaker-delivers-remarks-importance-lawful-immigration. Asylum denials often have life and death consequences for individuals, with deported asylum seekers facing persecution and even death in their home countries. See Jaya Ramji-Nogales , Andrew I. Schoenholtz and Philip G. Schrag, Refugee Roulette, Disparities in Asylum Adjudication and Proposals for Reform, 2009; Sarah Stillman, “When Deportation is a Death Sentence,” The New Yorker, Jan. 15, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/when-deportation-is-a- death-sentence (documenting the harms awaiting immigrants deported back to their home countries, including violent deaths).
8 Proclamation No. 9822, 83 Fed. Reg. 57,661, Nov. 15, 2018,https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/11/15/2018-25117/addressing-mass-migration-through-the- southern-border-of-the-united-states.
9 Human Rights First, Myth v. Fact: Immigrant Families’ Appearance Rates in Immigration Court, July 31, 2016,https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/myth-vs-fact-immigrant-families-appearance-rates-immigration-court.
10 American Immigration Council, Children in Immigration Court: Over 95 Percent Represented by an Attorney Appear in Court, May 16, 2016, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/children-immigration-court-over-95- percent-represented-attorney-appear-court.
11 Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate,Oversight of Efforts to Protect Unaccompanied Alien Children from Human Trafficking and Abuse, Aug. 16, 2018,https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/oversight-of-efforts-to-protect-unaccompanied- alien-children-from-human-trafficking-and-abuse.

12 Id. (exchange begins at 1:36:40). In this same hearing, Director McHenry also cited an EOIR-produced statistic that the “representation rate for UACs [unaccompanied immigrant children] in proceedings . . . whose proceedings have been pending for over a year is already 75 percent.” By focusing on representation for unaccompanied minors with cases pending for a year or more, Director McHenry excluded representation rates for cases completed in less than a year, namely cases where a judge ordered a minor deported in absentia (e.g. without the minor’s presence in the court) precisely because the minor did not have representation. See Denied a Day in Court: The Government’s Use of In Absentia Removal Orders Against Families Seeking Asylum 15, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, 2018, https://cliniclegal.org/sites/default/files/Denied-a-Day-in-Court.pdf. Looking at impartial data regarding representation rates provides a more sobering picture; as of November 2018, only 48 percent of unaccompanied minors had representation, regardless of how long their case had been pending. See Juveniles — Immigration Court Deportation Proceedings, TRAC Immigration, Nov. 2018,http://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/juvenile.

13 McHenry Testimony, supra note 11, at 1:47:10.
14 Linda Qiu, “Trump’s Falsehood-Laden Speech on Immigration,” The New York Times, Nov. 1, 2018,https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/politics/fact-check-trump-immigration-.html.
15 Ingrid Eagly and Steven Shafer, Access to Counsel in Immigration Court, American Immigration Council, Sept. 28, 2016, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/access-counsel-immigration-court.
16 Id.
17 Id.
18 Id.
19 Office of the U.S. Attorney General, Memorandum for all Federal Prosecutors, “Renewed Commitment to Criminal Immigration Enforcement,” Apr. 11, 2017, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/956841/download.
20 TRAC Immigration, Immigration Prosecutions for December 2016, June 4, 2018,http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/bulletins/immigration/monthlydec16/fil/; Cristobal Ramon, Federal Prosecutions of Illegal Immigrants, Bipartisan Policy Center, Mar. 27, 2018, https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/the-prosecution-pipeline/.
21 Office of the U.S. Attorney General, Memorandum for Federal Prosecutors along Southwest Border, “Zero- Tolerance for Offenses Under 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a),” Apr. 6, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press- release/file/1049751/download.
22 TRAC Immigration, Criminal Prosecutions for Illegal Border Crossers Jump Sharply in April, June 4, 2018,http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/515/.
23 Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Delivers Remarks on the Importance of a Lawful Immigration System, Dec. 11, 2018, https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/acting- attorney-general-matthew-whitaker-delivers-remarks-importance-lawful-immigration.
24 Human Rights First, Refugee Blockade: The Trump Administration’s Obstruction of Asylum Claims at the Border, Dec. 11, 2018, https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/refugee-blockade-trump-administration-s-obstruction- asylum-claims-border.
25 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Fiscal Year 2018 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report , Dec. 14, 2018,https://www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/ero/pdf/eroFY2018Report.pdf.
26 U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Criminal Alien Statistics – FY 2018(Oct. 23, 2018), https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/criminal-alien-statistics.
27 Amanda Erickson, “Adolf Hitler also published a list of crimes committed by groups he didn’t like,” The Washington Post, Mar. 2, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/02/adolf-hitler-also-published-a- list-of-crimes-committed-by-groups-he-didnt-like/ (“There’s a reason Trump’s opponents are so worried. This strategy — one designed to single out a particular group of people, suggesting that there’s something particularly sinister about how they behave — was employed to great effect by Adolf Hitler and his allies. In the 1930s, the Nazis used a similar tactic to stir up anger and hatred toward Jews.”).
28 The Council for Global Equality, The Facts on LGBT Rights in Russia, accessed Jan. 2, 2019,www.globalequality.org/component/content/article/1-in-the-news/186-the-facts-on-lgbt-rights-in-russia.
29 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, 2012.

Images from The Noun Project. Credits: Robbe de Clerck, Adrien Coquet, Luis Prado, and SBTS

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

It’s time for some House Oversight of the ridiculous mess at EOIR and the lies, fabrications, and intentional distortions that support the restrictionist enforcement agenda of what once purported to be a “court system” but now is a “CINO” (“Court in Name Only”) — an unapologetic adjunct of DHS Enforcement (their “partner” according to the now departed Sessions). Amazingly, it’s actually much worse than the dysfunction that led to the removal of the Immigration Courts from the “Legacy INS’ and establishment of a supposedly “independent” EOIR within DOJ in the first place, in 1983.

 

Then, I don’t think INS was intentionally falsifying anything or carrying out a political agenda in the Immigration Courts. Honestly, the “Legacy INS’ was simply ethically and administratively incompetent to run a due process court system.

 

But, to the credit of all involved during the Reagan Administration, including then Commissioner Al Nelson and General Counsel “Iron Mike” Inman, we recognized the problem and acted to solve it. We also saw that a “level playing field” and a more independent Immigration Court would gain credibility with the Article III courts, which would benefit INS enforcement. We even got then Associate Attorney General Rudy Giuliani to endorse the “divestiture program.”

 

Although the first Director of EOIR, David Milhollan, who was also the BIA Chair, and the first Chief Immigration, Judge William R. Robie, were both stalwart Republicans, neither brooked interference from “Main Justice” with their operations. They were particularly proud and assertive of their independence from INS. Indeed “we’re not INS” became the “mantra” of the “early EOIR.”

 

Milhollan, having moved EOIR Headquarters across the river to Falls Church, VA more or less hoped that at some point DOJ would forget that EOIR every existed. He occasionally sent a little “excess money downtown” to ensure that the “Main DOJ” and the Attorney General would have only “kind thoughts” about EOIR and would otherwise leave him alone. Up to a certain point, it worked.

 

Sadly, for all of its original promise and development during its first two decades, the “EOIR Experiment” has turned out to be a disastrous failure. It’s quite painful for those of us who devoted large chunks of our professional lives and emotionally invested in the effort to make EOIR a “real” court.

 

The idea that a court system can operate independently and provide fairness, impartiality, and due process within the now thoroughly politicized DOJ is simply a non-starter. It’s basically a “return to the Nixon Administration” which is where I came in, with the hope of “learning the ropes” and eventually being able to help in some small way to create “good government” and a better America.

 

Unfortunately, a divided Congress and an Administration bent on destroying our Constitution and democratic institutions are unwilling and/or unable to put “Eyore” out of its misery. That means that innocent lives will continue to be wrongfully destroyed and Constitutional Due Process mocked until the next generation can put the “malicious incompetence” of Trumpism behind us and advance our nation and the world to a better, fairer, more realistic and inclusive future. That’s what the “New Due Process Army” is all about!

 

PWS

 

02-15-19

 

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TAL @ SF CHRON WITH SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT WHAT’S IN THE “BORDER SECURITY” BILL THAT TRUMP (APPARENTLY) WILL SIGN BEFORE DECLARING HIS TOTALLY BOGUS “NATIONAL EMERGENCY!”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Funding-deal-blocks-ICE-from-arresting-adults-13617721.php

Funding deal blocks ICE from arresting adults taking in undocumented children

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — A government funding deal on the verge of congressional passage would block federal officers from arresting undocumented immigrants solely because they come forward to take in migrant children.

The constraint on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency comes after The Chronicle reported that the government had made scores of such arrests — including more than 100 people who were taken into custody from July through November despite having no criminal record. Immigrant and child welfare advocates had assailed the practice as endangering young people by keeping them in detention longer and by giving immigrants an incentive to conceal potential sponsors’ true identities.

The population of undocumented children in government custody skyrocketed to record levels as immigration officials investigated the potential sponsors.

The ban on arresting sponsors with no criminal record is included in a bill to fund roughly one-quarter of the government through September. The appropriations legislation is the product of weeks of intense negotiations to avert a repeat of the partial shutdown that began Dec. 22 and lasted 35 days.

The Senate passed the bill Thursday and the House was expected to follow suit before government funding runs out Friday. The White House said President Trump would sign it.

House Democrats pushed strongly for the provision during negotiations over the funding package, said a Democratic aide who was not authorized to speak publicly about the talks. Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz offered the specific legislative language.

“Arresting potential sponsors only ensures that children who flee dangerous circumstances will languish longer in overly crowded detention facilities,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Democrats agree, this cruel, immoral Trump trap does nothing to make America safer.”

At issue is the process of finding homes for undocumented immigrant children who come to the U.S. by themselves or are separated from an adult at the border.

Those children end up detained in a national network of shelters until they can be released to an adult, usually a relative. The shelters are designed to be a temporary bridge for often-traumatized children to more stable homes, in which they can pursue their case to stay in the country legally.

To sponsor a child, adults have long had to go through background checks for any criminal history or other red flags that might endanger the child. Immigration status is not weighed as a risk factor.

But last year the Trump administration added additional layers of review, including working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run fingerprints of potential sponsors. That caused concern within the immigrant community that sponsors, many of whom are undocumented themselves, could be ensnared in the administration’s no-limits immigration enforcement. The revelation that ICE had in turn used that information to arrest potential sponsors, most of whom had no criminal record, confirmed that fear.

Under the administration’s policies, the number of children in custody reached nearly 15,000, breaking records even after the government halted the practice it implemented in spring 2018 of separating families at the border. In December, the Department of Health and Human Services stopped requiring that every additional adult in a sponsor’s home be fingerprinted, a practice that had greatly slowed the process, keeping children detained longer. Since then, the number of children in custody has dropped to 11,500.

The government funding bill bars the administration from detaining or moving to deport undocumented immigrants based solely on information provided by Health and Human Services, which runs the unaccompanied children program, unless it provides evidence of a past child abuse-related felony or potential human trafficking.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan

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

Thanks, Tal, for putting the Chron “on top” of this grotesque mistreatment of children by the Trump Administration. Obviously, your courageous and timely reporting of abuses of human rights that DHS was trying to hide from public view has had a “real life” impact on legislation and people’s lives.

The intentional abuses of children and families that the Trump Administration is perpetrating in the name of our country is simply outrageous! Bad things happen to countries that make child abuse a national policy!

It also shows that the Democrats are right in challenging funding for abusive, wasteful, and unnecessary DHS detention. While they lacked the votes to succeed this time around, the battle certainly will continue, on both legislative and litigation fronts. As it does so, the full range of abuses, corruption, and unethical behavior by the Administration and DHS will be exposed and recorded for posterity.

As I’ve said before, it’s time for Article III Judges who have been lied to by Administration officials and whose orders to reunite families have been arrogantly ignored by the Trump Administration to put some of the Administration officials who have planned and carried out these gross human right abuses and thumbed their noses at court orders in jail for contempt.

Again, Tal, thanks for all you do for “truth, justice, and the American way!” And, thanks to conscientious legislators of both parties who helped put these restrictions on anti-social behavior in place. When the system works for the greater good, everyone benefits.

PWS

02-15-19

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JUDICIAL BRAIN DRAIN: As Outlaw Administration Attacks Due Process & Attempts To Institutionalize Xenophobic Bias, Experienced, Conscientious U.S. Immigration Judges Head For The Exits – Abandonment Of Scholarship, Fairness, Commitment To Due Process Threatens Entire U.S. Justice System!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/immigration-policy-judge-resign-trump

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

Being An Immigration Judge Was Their Dream. Under Trump, It Became Untenable.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Hamed AleazizBuzzFeed News Reporter

Map of San Francisco, California

Reporting From

San Francisco, California

Posted on February 13, 2019, at 6:15 p.m. ET

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil in Fremont, California, on Dec. 28, 2018.

SAN FRANCISCO — Rebecca Jamil was sitting in a nondescript hotel ballroom in suburban Virginia when she realized that her dream job — being an immigration judge — was no longer tenable. It was June 11, 2018, and then–attorney general Jeff Sessions, her boss, was speaking to a room packed with immigration judges, running through his list of usual complaints over what was, in his estimation, a broken asylum system.

Toward the end of the speech, Sessions let slip some big news: He had decided whether domestic abuse and gang victims could be granted asylum in the US. Advocates, attorneys, and judges had been waiting months to see what Sessions, who in his role as attorney general had the power to review cases, would do. After all, it would determine the fate of thousands of asylum-seekers, many fleeing dangerous situations in Central America.

Sessions didn’t reveal to the room the details of his ruling but Jamil, based in San Francisco since she was appointed in 2016, learned later that day that the attorney general had decided to dramatically restrict asylum protections for domestic abuse victims.

“I’d seen the faces of these families,” the 43-year-old judge said. “They weren’t abstractions to me.”

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Eric Risberg / AP

Hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a US immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco.

Jamil, a mother of two young daughters, had been shaken by the images and sounds that came as a result of the Trump administration’s policy to separate families at the border. As a judge who oversaw primarily cases of women and children fleeing abuse and dangers abroad, this was the last straw.

Soon after, she stepped down from the court.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she told friends. “I felt that I couldn’t be ‘Rebecca Jamil, representative of the attorney general’ while these things were going on.”

In many ways, her resignation underscores the tenuous position of immigration judges, who are overseen by the attorney general and susceptible to the shifting winds of each administration. To avoid potential conflicts, the union that represents the judges has long called for its court to be an independent body, separate from the Department of Justice.

The Trump administration has undertaken a monumental overhaul of the way immigration judges, which total around 400 across the country, work: placing quotas on the number of cases they should complete every year, ending their ability to indefinitely suspend certain cases, restricting when asylum can be granted, and pouring thousands of previously closed cases back into court dockets.

In the meantime, the case backlog has jumped to more than 800,000 under the administration and wait times have continued to skyrocket to hundreds of days.

The quotas in particular have made judges feel as if they were cogs in a deportation machine, as opposed to neutral arbiters given time to thoughtfully analyze the merits of each case.

“The job has become exceedingly more difficult as the court has veered even farther away from being administered as a court rather than a law enforcement bureaucracy,” said Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge who heads the National Association of Immigration Judges, a union representing around 350 judges.

And it’s not just Jamil who has departed because of the massive changes to the court undertaken by the Trump administration, according to observers within the Department of Justice and those on the outside. While some, like Jamil, have resigned, others have retired early in large part because of the policies instituted under Trump, they said.

For those remaining at the immigration court, the mood is bleak.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during a news conference on Oct. 16, 2018.

“It has become so emotionally brutal and exhausting that many people I know are leaving or talking about finding an exit strategy,” said one immigration judge who declined to be named. “Morale has never, ever been lower.”

Another Justice Department official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told BuzzFeed News, “It is exhausting when you feel undervalued by the people at the top of your organization, especially when they are motivated by partisanship and have not spent their careers doing the job that you do.”

Tabaddor, the head of the union, said that her group has noticed a higher rate of retirements and resignations than in the past because of the way judges have been treated under Trump.

Some have been bold in their timing. John Richardson, a former immigration judge in Phoenix, stepped down on Sep. 30, 2018 — the day before the administration instituted a quota for the number of cases to be completed by judges.

“The timing of my retirement was a direct result of the draconian policies of the Administration, the relegation of [judges] to the status of ‘action officers’ who deport as many people as possible as soon as possible with only token due process, and blaming [judges] for the immigration crisis caused by decades of neglect and under funding of the Immigration Courts,” he said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Another judge who resigned from the bench in September told staff members in a goodbye email, “I know things are getting difficult for you at [the Executive Office for Immigration Review], but I believe all you will ‘ride through the storm’ and ‘come out with a smile.’”

There have long been work challenges for immigration judges, including heavy caseloads and assignments, leading to comparatively high burnout rates. Justice Department officials told BuzzFeed News that concerns over retirements were nothing new.

According to the agency, from the beginning of fiscal year 2014 through Feb. 12, 2019, 94 immigration judges have retired, separated, or died. More than a third of those judges, 32, have left since Oct. 1, 2017. The agency does not track why judges leave their positions.

To those within the court and others who have recently retired, the situation has worsened to an unprecedented level. Richardson, the former judge in Phoenix, said he would have continued presiding over immigration cases if the status quo had remained.

“Yes, I was 75 years old with over 50 years of honorable federal service with the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, but had no plans for retirement as long as I was treated with respect, appreciated, and provided adequate support,” he said. “I had 28 years as an IJ and very much enjoyed my job, even with the poor funding and lack of support by Congress and the White House during that 28 years.”

Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge who stepped down years ago and who speaks regularly with others who’ve left the bench, was blunt in his characterization.

“The fastest growth industry is former immigration judges,” Chase said. Those still on the bench have told him, “It’s horrible. Whatever you think it is, it is much, much worse.”

In the meantime, the Trump administration has hired more than 100 judges to not only fill the vacancies of those who’ve retired but to add numbers to the bench. It’s a rehauling of the courts that could “have a drastic impact,” according to Chase.

Many of the judges retiring in recent months are experienced jurists, hired by the Clinton administration in the mid to late ’90s, he said. These judges, Chase said, were more willing to push back on claims made in court by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or to allow immigrants extended time to make their cases in what could otherwise be a rushed procedure.

In their place, Chase said, are judges hired by the new administration with case completion quotas, a two-year probation period, and a mandate to avoid showing sympathy for the people appearing before them.

“Even if it doesn’t show up on the sheet, just the level of humanity, that makes a huge difference — that’s what this administration is trying to remove from the immigration judge corps,” he said.

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

Constanza Hevia for BuzzFeed News

Rebecca Jamil holds her immigration judge certificate.

For her part, Jamil wanted to become an immigration judge from the earliest moments of her legal career. After working as a staff attorney at the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, she joined the government as a prosecutor with ICE in 2011, where she was able to use discretion to focus deportation efforts on those with serious criminal backgrounds. Under the Trump administration, ICE attorneys have been told that nearly all undocumented immigrants are priorities for deportation.

In 2014, Jamil took a chance to fulfill her dream: She applied to become an immigration judge. It was a 17-month process, full of drawn-out interviews in Washington, DC, but finally, in 2015 she received a phone call informing her that she got the job.

“I thought, and I must have told most people I know, that this is the last job that I would ever have. It’s all I wanted to do,” she said.

Jamil dedicated herself to the exhausting career. She oversaw a docket made up primarily of families and regularly heard cases in which women and children applied for asylum based on abuse that they had experienced by partners and family members abroad.

Day in and day out, Jamil heard intense testimony of physical and sexual violence against women and children.

“You’re sitting in a windowless room and people tell you the very worst parts of their life and you have to decide if it is enough to stay in the US,” she said. “That is very tiring day after day to be the person who makes that decision.”

Then, under the Trump administration, things started to change. In 2018, Sessions instituted a new policy, severely limiting when judges could suspend certain cases. Suddenly, her docket expanded and she wasn’t allowed to decide which cases deserved to remain in court and which didn’t.

Jamil and fellow immigration judges were in attendance at the Virginia conference where Sessions spoke for annual trainings on courtroom procedure. The year before, jurists heard substantive legal updates and trainings on bias in the courtroom.

This version of the training, however, felt different.

“The entire conference was profoundly disturbing. Do things as fast as possible. There was an overarching theme of disbelieving aliens and their claims and how to remove people faster,” Jamil said. “That is not what I saw my job as an immigration judge to be. I was not trained to do that.”

Soon after she returned home, Jamil put in her resignation. Her colleagues fretted, probing her about whether she had considered the type of judge that could fill her spot on the bench and the impact that could have.

She didn’t have an answer, but she knew that she couldn’t do it any longer.

“Family separations; Sessions making his own case law on asylum; when we could continue cases — I could no longer sit below the seal of the Department of Justice and represent the Department of Justice at that point,” Jamil said. “They just chipped away at our authority on a daily basis. It felt like we weren’t really judges. It was frustrating and demoralizing.”

A former colleague, Laura Ramirez, worked for years as an immigration judge in San Francisco. In December, she retired at the earliest date possible, five days after she turned 60.

The changes put in place by the Trump administration, especially the case quotas, and the politicization of her job, became too much to handle.

The loss of judges like Jamil and others could be immeasurable to both immigrants and Department of Homeland Security attorneys, Ramirez said.

“For the system of justice, there’s these highly qualified, fair, thoughtful people who are being squeezed out of the system for political reasons, basically,” she said. “If people like her are squeezed out, it’s a loss to people who appear before her. The system can’t be fair if good people like her are pushed out.”

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

Forcing the “best, brightest, and fairest” out. Reinforcing “worst practices.” Enabling judges with well-established records of anti-asylum, nationality-based, and misogynistic bias. Attacking those private attorneys who steadfastly defended legal and Constitutional rights that were being systematically undermined by the Administration. Blaming others for his own incompetence and lack of scholarship. That’s what the “Sessions program” was all about.

The only good news: folks like Judge Jamil, Judge Ramirez, Judge Richardson, and Judge Chase are now part of the ever-growing “Our Gang” of retired Immigraton Judges helping others to fight the injustices and destruction of Due Process being pushed by the Trump Administration and a DOJ that has abandoned its mission in favor of a White Nationalist political agenda. Our voices are being heard in support of the efforts of the “New Due Process Army.”

And, while I doubt that anyone outside of Trump and Miller can match the viscous lies, racism, and knowingly false narratives of Sessions, I wouldn’t expect much improvement under Barr. Barr thought Sessions was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” That, more than the Mueller investigation, should have caused all Democrats to vote against his confirmation. He’ll just “lose” some of the overtly racist and inflammatory lingo of the White Nationalist restrictionists and attack immigrants on the basis of bogus “strict enforcement” platitudes.

Every American who believes in our Constitution and thinks that America is different from the “Banana Republics” we often criticize will be threatened by this development. Malicious harm to the most vulnerable among us is harm to all; and the collapse of one of the “building blocks” at the “retail level” of the American justice system will adversely affect everybody’s ability to get justice with fairness and impartiality.

Many of us don’t think we will need fair, independent, and impartial courts until we do. Once the Trump Administration destroys them, they won’t easily be rebuilt.

Who will defend your rights when the time comes if you stand by and watch the rights of others being trampled?

PWS

02-14-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: RECENT ARTICLES SHOW HOW SESSIONS’S SHOCKINGLY INAPPROPRIATE REMARKS TO NEW IMMIGRATION JUDGES VIOLATED EOIR CODE OF JUDICIAL ETHICS, SHOWED DISRESPECT FOR THE LAW, AND VIOLATED THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF GOOD IMMIGRATION JUDGING BY DIRECTING JUDGES NOT TO BE SYMPATHETIC TO REFUGEES! – TURNING REFUGEE LAW AND HISTORY ON ITS HEAD!
  3. HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY: Opaque & Biased Politicized Judicial Hiring Denies Migrants The Fair & Impartial Adjudication To Which They Are Constitutionally Entitled – Given The Generous Legal Standards, A Worldwide Refugee Crisis, & Asylum Officers’ Positive Findings In Most Cases, Asylum Seekers Should Be Winning The Vast Majority Of Immigration Court Cases — Instead, They Are Being “Railroaded” By A Biased System & Complicit Article III Courts!
  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! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Eli Stokols

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

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Molly Hennessy-Fiske

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

02-12-19

Related posts:

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

HON JEFFREY S. CHASE: Trump’s Disingenuously Named “Migrant Protection Protocols” Are Anti-American – “As the late Arthur Helton wrote more than 25 years ago, ‘A basic measure of a civilized society is the way it treats strangers.’”

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/2/10/wait-in-mexico-policy-access-to-counsel-amp-crime

Feb 10 Wait in Mexico Policy, Access to Counsel, & Crime

A February 1, 2019 article in the L.A. Timesreported that two American attorneys who work for the immigrant rights organization Al Otro Lado, which has sent attorneys to Tijuana to offer advice to Central American refugees seeking to apply for asylum in the U.S., were stopped by Mexican immigration officials while attempting to enter that country.  The attorneys were detained and questioned, and eventually denied entry because their passports had been “flagged.” One of the lawyers was actually traveling to Mexico on a family vacation, and was separated from her husband and 7-year-old daughter at the airport and taken to a separate room where she was interrogated.  Her crying daughter was eventually allowed to join her; the two were held for 9 hours and forced to sleep on a cold floor without food or water before being sent back to the U.S. Two journalists who had been covering the issue of refugees seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border suffered the same experience. The Mexican government denied responsibility for the “flagging;” one of the journalists was told “the Americans” were responsible.

One of my first reactionsto the remain in Mexico policy was the impact it would have on access to counsel.  I have heard disturbing first-hand reports from individuals who have traveled to Tijuana to provide legal assistance to refugees there.  When crossing back to the U.S., American citizens identified by Customs and Border Patrol officers as “activists” have been harassed by being sent to secondary inspection, where they have been questioned and, remarkably, have had the contents of their electronic devices accessed by DHS agents.  A means of avoiding such treatment was to fly directly to Mexico. However, the reported policy of flagging the passports of attorneys engaged in such work has undermined that route as well. Thus, attorneys are being treated like criminals for the “crime” of doing their job of providing legal assistance to asylum seekers.

While DHS focuses on such imaginary “crime,” it willfully ignores the actual crime to which those asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico are exposed.  In a letterto DHS Secretary Kirsjen M. Nielsen, the American Immigration Council, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Catholic Legal Immigration Network reported that 90.3% of asylum seekers surveyed said that do not feel safe in Mexico; 46% stated that either themself or their child had suffered harm in Mexico, and 38.1% reported mistreatment at the hands of the Mexican police.  Female asylum seekers accompanied by their minor children reported suffering crimes in Mexico including rape, sexual assault, kidnaping, extortion, and death threats.

Keep in mind that the Administration has shamelessly named its wait-in-Mexico policy the “Migrant Protection Protocols.”  Instead, the policy exposes asylum seekers (including vulnerable unaccompanied children and families) to crime and police harassment, while restricting their access to counsel.

Access to counsel is increasingly critical to Central American asylum seekers, many of whose claims require proving that their fear is on account of their membership in a particular social group.  Where fear is of non-governmental persecutors, applicants must further establish that the government is unable or unwilling to control such actors, and that internal relocation to another part of the country was not reasonable.  Meeting these criteria requires an applicant to offer complex legal theories, and to support such claims with affidavits, reports, and articles from one or more experts. Without legal assistance, this is a daunting task for refugees (some of whom are families or children) living under difficult conditions (including the above-mentioned exposure to crime and government harassment) on the Mexico side of the border.  Under present BIA precedent, an asylum seeker who is just a little off in formulating their particular social group (even if they included one word too many or too few) is stuck with such formulation, and may not amend it should they be fortunate enough to obtain counsel to assist them with their appeal. See Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 189 (BIA 2018).

The Trump Administration’s policies towards Central American asylum seekers has consistently run counter to our country’s international treaty obligations.  The Administration has tried to argue that those fleeing to our country are not truly refugees, falsely painting them (in the words of a Human Rights First release) as “frauds, security threats, and dangerous criminals.”

By undertaking efforts on so many fronts to make it increasingly more difficult for such claimants to succeed in their asylum applications, the Administration seeks to paint the resulting drop in grant rates as “proof” that such claims are “fraudulent.”  In criminally prosecuting those who eventually try to cross the border when they are no longer to endure the conditions under which refugees are forced to wait in Mexico, the Administration cites such convictions as “proof” that the refugees are “criminals.”  The Administration seems to view the flight to the U.S. as a choice, and believes that its deterrence policies might convince refugees to simply return to their home countries.

Such view is at odds with reality.  This December articleby Prof. Karen Musalo in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminismadds further corroboration to the many reports detailing the horrible violence Central American refugees are fleeing.   And the World Migration Project at the Columbia Univ. School of Journalism continues to track those who have suffered harm (including death) following their deportation from the U.S.; its findings also counter the Administration’s position that those fleeing are not truly refugees, and that repatriation is a viable option.

As the late Arthur Helton wrote more than 25 years ago, “A basic measure of a civilized society is the way it treats strangers.”  Similarly, Jorge Ramosrecently wrote in Timemagazine that “countries are judged by the way they treat the most vulnerable, not the rich and powerful.”  Our government’s policies towards asylum seekers (including its most recent efforts to interfere with that population’s ability to retain counsel), and its willingness to expose such a vulnerable population to harm (including murder and rape) shames us all.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

 

JEFF CHASE

Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City.  Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge, senior legal advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals, and volunteer staff attorney at Human Rights First.  He is a past recipient of AILA’s annual Pro Bono Award, and previously chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.

 

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Feb 10 All The World’s A Stage (including the 2d Cir.!)

 

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As Jeffrey and I have pointed out a number of times before, a “bona fide Administration” could resolve the “self-created non-crisis” at the Southern Border simply by:

  • Following existing asylum laws;
  • Generously granting asylum in accordance with the Refugee Act of 1980, the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, the BIA’s precedent in Matter of Mogharrabi, and the Handbook;
  • Working with NGOs, pro bono groups, bar associations, “Big Law,” the religious community, and affected states and localities to provide easy access to counsel and achieve universal representation of asylum seekers, which, in turn:
    • has a proven strong correlation to court appearances;
    • makes most detention unnecessary, and most important,
    • safeguards Due Process and the rule of law.

Clearly, these measures could be accomplished more quickly and for far less than the $5.7 billion that Trump so desperately wants to waste on his Wall. And, other than perhaps a few “tweaks” to allow some U.S. Government funding of pro bono and “low bono” representation projects, they would not require a major rewrite of current statues.

By sharply reducing unnecessary and wasteful “civil immigration detention” (a/k/a the “New American Gulag” or “NAG”) and the many legal challenges it generates, the  money and litigation time, on both sides, could be redirected at actually solving the problems, rather than making them worse.

 

PWS

 

02-11-19

 

 

 

 

 

J

 

 

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  3. “SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were THEIR Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?  
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

THE HILL: Nolan’s Take On Intelligence Report

Family Pictures
Nolan writes:
On January 29, 2019, Coats presented the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The assessment is based on the collective insights of the intelligence community.
Although Coats arguably contradicted President Donald Trump in some areas, such as the state of North Korea’s nuclear program, he supported Trump’s claim that the flood of migrants from Central America is causing a security crisis. The assessment includes migration from Central America as one of the threats to national security.
This is not the first time the intelligence community has identified migration from Central America as a security threat. The same finding was included in the Worldwide Threat Assessment that former DNI James R. Clapper’s presented to congress in 2016, which was during the Obama Administration.
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PWS
02-09-19

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. 16 STATES SUE TRUMP ON BOGUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY — Nolan Says Trump Ultimately Likely To Prevail — “Slate 3” Appear To Agree!
  3. THE HILL: NOLAN ON THE CURRENT BORDER CRISIS
  4. CRUEL, YET REALLY STUPID: TRUMP’S “REMAIN IN MEXICO POLICY” DENIES DUE PROCESS WHILE CREATING COURT CHAOS — Enfeebled Judges Fume As “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” Bloats Backlogs! — Article IIIs Complicit! — “The policy’s name is migrant protection, but they send you to the most dangerous city in Mexico.”

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

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

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

. . . ..

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

. . . .

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

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

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

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

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

PWS

02-04-19

 

 

Related posts:

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

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

Angelina Chaplin reports for HuffPost:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can there be justice without any morality or accountability?

PWS

02-02-19

 

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