Children – Page 34 – immigrationcourtside.com

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-plan-would-force-asylum-seekers-to-wait-in-mexico-as-cases-are-processed-a-major-break-with-current-policy/2018/11/21/5ad47e82-ede8-11e8-9236-bb94154151d2_story.html?utm_term=.4059c5192c0c

Nick MIroff, Joshua Partlow, and Josh Dawsey report for the WashPost:

November 21 at 10:18 PM

Central Americans who arrive at U.S. border crossings seeking asylum in the United States will have to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed under sweeping new measures the Trump administration is preparing to implement, according to internal planning documents and three Department of Homeland Security officials familiar with the initiative.

According to DHS memos obtained by The Washington Post on Wednesday, Central American asylum seekers who cannot establish a “reasonable fear” of persecution in Mexico will not be allowed to enter the United States and would be turned around at the border.

The plan, called “Remain in Mexico,” amounts to a major break with current screening procedures, which generally allow those who establish a fear of return to their home countries to avoid immediate deportation and remain in the United States until they can get a hearing with an immigration judge. Trump despises this system, which he calls “catch and release,” and has vowed to end it.

Among the thousands of Central American migrants traveling by caravan across Mexico, many hope to apply for asylum due to threats of gang violence or other persecution in their home countries. They had expected to be able to stay in the United States while their claims move through immigration court. The new rules would disrupt those plans, and the hopes of other Central Americans who seek asylum in the United States each year.

[Trump lashes out at judge after order to allow illegal border crossers to seek asylum]

Trump remains furious about the caravan and the legal setbacks his administration has suffered in federal court, demanding hard-line policy ideas from aides. Senior adviser Stephen Miller has pushed to implement the Remain in Mexico plan immediately, though other senior officials have expressed concern about implementing it amid sensitive negotiations with the Mexican government, according to two DHS officials and a White House adviser with knowledge of the plan, which was discussed at the White House on Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the administration’s new plan, if a migrant does not specifically fear persecution in Mexico, that is where they will stay. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is sending teams of asylum officers from field offices in San Francisco, Washington, and Los Angeles to the ports of entry in the San Diego area to implement the new screening procedures, according to a USCIS official.

To cross into the United States, asylum seekers would have to meet a relatively higher bar in the screening procedure to establish that their fears of being in Mexico are enough to require immediate admission, the documents say.

“If you are determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will be permitted to remain in the United States while you await your hearing before an immigration judge,” the asylum officers will now tell those who arrive seeking humanitarian refuge, according to the DHS memos. “If you are not determined to have a reasonable fear of remaining in Mexico, you will remain in Mexico.”

Mexican border cities are among the most violent in the country, as drug cartels battle over access to smuggling routes into the United States. In the state of Baja California, which includes Tijuana, the State Department warns that “criminal activity and violence, including homicide, remain a primary concern throughout the state.”

The new rules will take effect as soon as Friday, according to two DHS officials familiar with the plans.

Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for DHS, issued a statement late Wednesday saying there are no immediate plans to implement these new measures.

“The President has made clear — every single legal option is on the table to secure our nation and to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants at our borders,” the statement says. “DHS is not implementing such a new enforcement program this week. Reporting on policies that do not exist creates uncertainty and confusion along our borders and has a negative real world impact. We will ensure — as always — that any new program or policy will comply with humanitarian obligations, uphold our national security and sovereignty, and is implemented with notice to the public and well coordinated with partners.”

A Mexican official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that current Mexican immigration law does not allow those seeking asylum in another country to stay in Mexico.

On Dec. 1, a new Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will be sworn in, and it’s also unclear whether his transition team was consulted on the new asylum screening procedures.

The possibility that thousands of U.S.-bound asylum seekers would have to wait in Mexico for months, even years, could produce a significant financial burden for the government there, especially if the migrants remain in camps and shelters on a long-term basis.

[At the U.S. border, migrant caravan will slow to a crawl]

There are currently 6,000 migrants in the Tijuana area, many of them camped at a baseball field along the border, seeking to enter the United States. Several thousand more are en route to the city as part of caravan groups, according to Homeland Security estimates.

U.S. border officials have allowed about 60 to 100 asylum seekers to approach the San Ysidro port of entry each day for processing.

Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that U.S. and Mexican officials were discussing such a plan.

Mexico also appears to be taking a less-permissive attitude toward the new migrant caravans now entering the country.

Authorities detained more than 200 people, or nearly all of the latest caravan, who recently crossed Mexico’s southern border on their way to the United States. This is at least the fourth large group of migrants to cross into Mexico and attempt to walk to the U.S. border. They were picked up not long after crossing. The vast majority of the migrants were from El Salvador, according to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.

After the first caravan this fall entered Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration offered migrants the chance to live and work in Mexico as long as they stayed in the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. Most chose not to accept this deal, because they wanted to travel to the United States.

nick.miroff@washpost.com

joshua.partlow@washpost.com

josh.dawsey@washpost.com

Partlow reported from Mexico City. Dawsey reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.

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Let’s see, Trump shrugs off the murder of a Washington Post journalist by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, downplays Putin’s overt interference in our elections, promotes mindless nationalism of the exact type responsible for two World Wars and tens of millions of avoidable deaths, and praises massive human rights violator and murderer Kim even as the latter is duping him on nukes. So, he’s scared to stand up to anyone powerful or for ideals and values that take courage to promote and advance.

But, when it comes to bullying, demonizing, and beating up on harmless but extremely vulnerable and desperate refugees, many of them women, children, and families fleeing for their lives, he excels. What does that tell us about the lack of character of the “man,” and the total lack of judgement and regard for American values of those in the minority who put him in office and continue to prop him up?

This appears to be a reaction to: 1) Federal Courts requiring Trump to follow the law; 2) Mexico’s refusal to be bullied into signing an absurdly inappropriate and totally one-sided “safe third country” agreement; 3) Congresses failure to fund the wasteful “Wall;” and 4) the near total, yet highly predictable, failure of Trump’s racist, White Nationalist inspired “get tough” immigration enforcement policies.

The Federal Courts are likely to permanently enjoin Trump from ignoring the law that specifically allows anyone in the U.S., legally or not, to apply for asylum. Additionally, Trump encourages violence against refugees and creates unsafe, inhumane conditions on the Mexican side of the border. Consequently, the end result of Trump’s intentional “making folks wait in Mexico” policy is likely to be encouraging individuals seeking asylum to enter illegally and then turn themselves in to the authorities to apply for asylum in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the better options of working with the UNHCR and Mexico to promote a multinational approach to protection and to solve the problems in the Northern Triangle causing this humanitarian flow remain unaddressed by the Trumpsters.

Also, when will the “Face of Evil,” Stephen Miller, finally be held accountable for his consistently cowardly and racist attacks on the law and the American legal system?

PWS

11-22-18

SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/us/judge-denies-trump-asylum-policy.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter where or how they entered the United States, dealing at least a temporary setback to the president’s attempt to clamp down on a huge wave of Central Americans crossing the border.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order that blocks the government from carrying out a new rule that denies protections to people who enter the country illegally. The order, which suspends the rule until the case is decided by the court, applies nationally.

“Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Mr. Tigar wrote in his order.

As a caravan of several thousand people journeyed toward the Southwest border, President Trump signed a proclamation on Nov. 9 that banned migrants from applying for asylum if they failed to make the request at a legal checkpoint. Only those who entered the country through a port of entry would be eligible, he said, invoking national security powers to protect the integrity of the United States borders.

Within days, the administration submitted a rule to the federal registry, letting it go into effect immediately and without the customary period for public comment.

But the rule overhauled longstanding asylum laws that ensure people fleeing persecution can seek safety in the United States, regardless of how they entered the country. Advocacy groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union, swiftly sued the administration for effectively introducing what they deemed an asylum ban.

The advocacy groups accused the government of “violating Congress’s clear command that manner of entry cannot constitute a categorical asylum bar” in their complaint. They also said the administration had violated federal guidelines by not allowing public comment on the rule.

But Trump administration officials defended the regulatory change, arguing that the president was responding to a surge in migrants seeking asylum based on frivolous claims, which ultimately lead their cases to be denied by an immigration judge. The migrants then ignore any orders to leave, and remain unlawfully in the country.

”The president has sought to halt this dangerous and illegal practice and regain control of the border,” government lawyers said in court filings.

Mr. Trump, who had made stanching illegal immigration a top priority since his days on the campaign trail, has made no secret of his frustration over the swelling number of migrants heading to the United States. The president ordered more than 5,000 active-duty troops to the border to prevent the migrants from entering.

The new rule was widely regarded as an effort to deter Central Americans, many of whom request asylum once they reach the United States, often without inspection, from making the journey over land from their countries to the border.

United States immigration laws stipulate that foreigners who touch American soil are eligible to apply for asylum. They cannot be deported immediately. They are eligible to have a so-called credible fear interview with an asylum officer, a cursory screening that the overwhelming majority of applicants pass. As result, most of the migrants are released with a date to appear in court.

In recent years, more and more migrants have availed of the asylum process, often after entering the United States illegally. A record 23,121 migrants traveling as families were detained at the border in October. Many of the families turn themselves in to the Border Patrol rather than queue up to request asylum at a port of entry.

The Trump administration believes the migrants are exploiting asylum laws to immigrate illegally to the United States. Soaring arrivals have exacerbated a huge backlog of pending cases in the immigration courts, which recently broke the one-million mark. Many migrants skip their court dates, only to remain illegally in the country, which Mr. Trump derides as “catch and release.”

But advocates argue that many migrants are victims of violence or persecution and are entitled to seek sanctuary. Gangs are ubiquitous across El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, where lawlessness and corruption enable them to kill with impunity.

Daniel Victor contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

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

Entirely predictable. “Many of the families turn themselves in to the Border Patrol rather than queue up to request asylum at a port of entry.”

Why aren’t ethical requirements being enforced on Government lawyers who present and defend these clearly frivolous positions in court? Knowingly and intentionally depriving individuals of statutory, civil, and constitutional rights, while tying up Federal Judges and other “officers of the court” on frivolous political stunts directed at harming individuals on the basis of race and nationality must, at some point, be deterred!

These are not criminal proceedings, and the Administration is not entitled to a “presumption of innocence” for its lawless actions. At some point, ethical lawyers have an obligation “not to serve” a lawless Administration and to publicly disclose and oppose the Administration’s intentionally illegal actions and intentional wrongdoing aimed at migrants and communities of color in the U.S. “Job security” doesn’t entitle Government employees, let alone those who also are members of the bar, to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

And no, no matter how much the GOP appointees might want to do so, the Supremes can’t authorize the President to rewrite the clear terms of the law at his whim.

PWS

11-20-18

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema Lays Groundwork For Holding Trump’s Child Abusers & Family Separators Accountable!

https://www.justice4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/JECM-Motion-to-Dismiss-Ruling.pdf

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Rebecca Wolozin, (571) 373-0518
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, (434) 218-9376

FEDERAL COURT ALLOWS CHALLENGE TO GOVERNMENT POLICY

USING DETAINED CHILDREN AS BAIT TO ARREST FAMILIES

ALEXANDRIA, VA (November 16, 2018) — Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied the U.S. government’s motion to dismiss Legal Aid Justice Center’s lawsuit on behalf of detained immigrant children and their families, striking a blow to a new immigration policy that has kept thousands of children unnecessarily detained for months. The Court’s decision is a victory for immigrant children and their families in Virginia and across the country.

This case is particularly significant, not only in Virginia, but nationally. Over 13,000 children are held by Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under the policies challenged in this suit, hundreds of whom are in Virginia. Because the policies are federal policies implemented across the country, the outcome of this case will have a nationwide impact.

Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC), together with the intellectual property law firm of Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein, and Fox, brought this first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit challenging the government’s recent policy of sharing sponsor information and information about sponsors’ household members with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That policy has resulted in ICE arrests of family and friends that came forward to bring their children home.

“The Trump administration has been carrying out a backdoor family separation agenda, keeping immigrant children apart from their families and using children as bait to break up the very families they have traveled so far and risked so much to join,” said Becky Wolozin, lead counsel and attorney with LAJC’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “This decision is a victory for immigrant children and families. The Court has said clearly that the government cannot run roughshod over the rights of these children and their loved ones.”

The lawsuit stemmed from the experience of four children in ORR custody on Virginia who were held by the government for over five months while their relatives tried to bring them home. Three of the four children were finally reunified with their families – one just weeks before the Court’s order came down. The three children who have been reunified with their families have been dismissed from the case. One child remains in government custody, where he has been held apart from his adult sister for six months, after fleeing violence and neglect in his home country.

“For years, ORR has neglected its obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act,” said Sterne Kessler Director Salvador Bezos, lead of the firm’s immigration-focused pro bono matters. “The Administrative Procedure Act provides essential protections against this kind of agency overreach. I am proud of my colleagues’ and LAJC’s efforts to force the government to meet its obligations to the children in its custody.”

“ORR is supposed to protect vulnerable immigrant children. Instead it is placing them in harm’s way under the guise of child welfare,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, Legal Director of LAJC’s Immigrant Advocacy Program. “Their policy and its enforcement undermine successfully placing children with their families and the vast surveillance actions are destabilizing immigrant communities.”

In the November 15th ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema firmly upheld children’s right to liberty and the right to family unity for immigrant families. Judge Brinkema found that the children and their sponsors provided sufficient reason to suggest that their constitutional rights were violated, and that the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it enacted its ICE sharing policy earlier this year. The case will now move forward as LAJC works to certify the class and the parties work to complete discovery.

Read the legal ruling here.

# # #

Legal Aid Justice Center is a statewide Virginia nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen the voices of low-income communities and root out the inequities that keep people in poverty. We provide legal support to immigrant communities facing legal crises and use advocacy and impact litigation to fight back against ICE enforcement and detention abuses. More information is available at http://www.justice4all.org/current-initiatives/fighting-family-separation/

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

Congrats to Rebecca, Simon, and the wonderful crew over at Legal Aid Justice in Virginia! True fighters and leaders of the New Due Process Army!

Hopefully this will pave the way not only for the end of these despicable and illegal behaviors, but also holding the Trump Administration scofflaws and their career employee accomplices who plan and execute these violations of law fully accountable for their intentionally unlawful and unconstitutional actions.

PWS

11-18-18

EYORE FIDDLES WITH DOCKET AS ROME BURNS – Latest Bureaucratic Gobbledygook From Falls Church Shows Why EOIR Must Be Abolished & Replaced By An Independent Court, Run By Sitting Judges, With Professional, Apolitical Administration!

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1112036/download

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So, let’s see what’s really going on here, beneath all of the “Tower bureaucratese.”

Bureaucrats at Falls Church “Headquarters,” who are beholden to DOJ politicos, are setting the local Immigration Court docket priorities to the exclusion of sitting Immigration Judges, Respondents’ Counsel, NGOs and the members of the public who actually use the system;
But one party, the DHS, is effectively being given unilateral authority to establish the Immigration Courts’ “docket priorities;”
DHS also unilaterally decides which cases will be designated as “family units” and therefore “prioritized;”
EOIR notes that the prioritization of certain “aliens with children” cases between 2014 and 2017, also at the behest of DHS, was a MASSIVE failure that actually decreased productivity and significantly accelerated the backlog (what I refer to as “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”);
Nevertheless, EOIR inexplicably decides to “double down” on a known failure just because their “partners” (Sessions’s term) at DHS essentially have ordered them to do so;
Why “Baltimore, but not Arlington;” “San Francisco, but not San Diego,” “Denver, but not Dallas,” etc.?
“EOIR remains committed to the timely completion of all cases consistent with due process” — Really?
- Lead by enforcement guru Jeff Sessions and DHS, the Trump Administration has intentionally “artificially jacked” the “backlog” to over 1.1 million cases;
- If the approximately 350 currently authorized Immigration Judges were all on board and each met their 700 case “quota,” the Immigration Court could complete only about 250,000 cases per year;
- If no additional cases were filed, and none of the judges left, the pending cases wouldn’t be completed until the latter half of 2023;
- But of course, under the Trump Administration’s mismanaged and totally undisciplined enforcement program, new cases will be piled into the system without regard to its capacity and judges will continue to burn out and leave;
- So, effectively, there is no cogent program for getting the backlog under control — ever;
What’s missing from this bureaucratic never-never land is any sense of fairness, competence, or meaningful participation by those most affected by the backlogs and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and who possess the most expertise at arranging dockets for fairness and efficiency: sitting Immigration Judges, Respondent’s Counsel, NGOs, and respondents themselves (along, of course, with the ICE Chief Counsel unencumbered by the “DHS Enforcement Wackos“);
Also glaringly absent: any requirement that the DHS justify their requests to prioritize the dockets or exercise any responsible “prosecutorial discretion” to take “lower priority ” cases off the dockets;
A “no-brainer” in a functioning independent court system would be requiring DHS to remove one (or more) “low priority” cases for each case they wish the court to “prioritize” or otherwise move ahead of other, older pending cases.

The rapidly failing and unfair system needs aggressive oversight and monitoring — from Congress (read the House) and the Article III Courts!

Ultimately, it will continue its “death spiral” until both the EOIR bureaucracy and the Administration politicos who abuse it are permanently removed from the equation and an independent court, run by sitting judges with assistance from other court management professionals with meaningful public input is established. A strong, independent, efficient, unbiased U.S. Immigration Court will also help ICE carry out its law enforcement mission in a professional, legal, non-discriminatory, de-politicized, and humane manner, perhaps bringing enough rationality to the system to save that beleaguered agency from its critics.

PWS

11-18-18

TAL @ SF CHRONICLE: DHS Enforcement Policies Calculated To Maximize Kiddie Detention @ ORR, Create Backlogs, Increase Suffering, & Maximize Long-Term Damage To Kids, Families!

More than 14,000 immigrant children are in U.S. custody, an all-time high

WASHINGTON — The number of undocumented immigrant children in government custody has topped 14,000 for the first time, a rise that shows no signs of slowing as the Trump administration enforces policies that are keeping them in care longer.

There were 14,056 unaccompanied immigrant minors in Health and Human Services custody on Friday, according to a government source familiar with the number. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that the total had reached approximately 14,000.

That number tops records set just two months ago, putting further strain on an already overburdened system.

The issue of immigrant children in government custody gained widespread attention in the spring and summer when the Trump administration separated thousands of families at the southern border. Almost all those separated children have since left Health and Human Services care, but the total number of children in the system has steadily grown.

The reason is that children who arrive unaccompanied in the U.S. are spending more time in holding facilities before they can be released to suitable adults, often family members. One change that has especially slowed that down is an agreement Health and Human Services signed earlier this year for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do background checks on potential sponsors.

ICE confirmed in September that it had used that information to arrest undocumented adults who came forward to take custody of children. Previous administrations didn’t look into people’s immigration status when deciding whether to release children into their care, but that changed under President Trump.

The Health and Human Services care system was intended to be a temporary bridge for often-traumatized children into a more stable home while they sought legal status in the U.S. But the Trump administration changed course, declaring that no undocumented immigrant was off limits from potential arrest and deportation.

More: https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/More-than-14-000-immigrant-children-are-in-U-S-13399510.php

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The nasty incompetents in charge of these programs need some meaningful oversight from both Congress (read House) and the Article III Courts. When this sorry episode is finally over, there should be some accountability for both the politicos and the career bureaucrats who have designed and implemented a system intended to inflict maximum harm and suffering on kids and their families, and, in some cases, lied to cover up or mask what they are really doing. Nielsen should be first in line as she fits all the categories: intentionally inhumane (probably illegal) policies, incompetent administration, and intentional lies.

“Nice folks” working for the Government these days!

PWS

11-17-18

MEXICO A “SAFE THIRD COUNTRY?” — No Way! — “‘It’s a Crisis of Civilization in Mexico.’ 250,000 Dead. 37,400 Missing.“

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-a-crisis-of-civilization-in-mexico-250-000-dead-37-400-missing-1542213374?emailToken=b782c4822fa5027d9168b45cd695195eFqzrxRlC5OCkGVY8Z0EA4pb8VXl6RHkHREQ1AmaH8yMyeAlVb6MpXqPHHsAocieCxuQWuPDERMwhcxLvXsFRFQsRI5WkHZo3DKDR+cMb5uAd8bNn8ryiZ5q4Nt0344LX&reflink=article_email_share

José de Córdoba and Juan Montes report for the WSJ:

That day, the mothers scoured the site outside El Fuerte, a town in Sinaloa state, on Mexico’s northern Pacific Coast, looking for one of two men presumably kidnapped by cartel gunmen in recent weeks. One body had already been found in a field. The women believed the other may be nearby. In the end, they came up empty.

“This is my life,” said Mirna Medina, a forceful woman who holds the group together. “Digging up holes.”

Her son, who sold CDs by a gas station, was kidnapped in 2014. Three years later to the day, she and the other mothers of the search group dug up his remains. “I felt his presence,” she said, remembering the day and breaking out in tears. “I wanted to find him alive, but at least I found him.”

Some 37,000 people in Mexico are categorized as “missing” by the government. The vast majority are believed to be dead, victims of the country’s spiraling violence that has claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2006. The country’s murder rate has more than doubled to 26 per 100,000 residents, five times the U.S. figure.

Because the missing aren’t counted as part of the country’s official murder tally, it is likely Mexico’s rate itself is higher.

The killing and the number of missing grow each year. Last year, 5,500 people disappeared, up from 3,400 in 2015. Mexico’s murders are up another 18% through September this year.

Victims’ families, mostly mothers, organize search parties, climbing down ravines or scouring trash dumps. Their technique is crude. Sometimes they hire laborers to hammer steel rods into the soil and haul them up to see if they smell like decomposition. Other times, they simply look for an exposed body part or shallow grave.

The sheer numbers of the disappeared now rival more famous cases of missing people in Latin American history.

The Disappeared, or Desaparecidos, became a chilling part of Latin America’s vocabulary during the Cold War, when security forces kidnapped, killed and disposed of the bodies of tens of thousands of leftist guerrillas as well as civilian sympathizers. The most infamous case is Argentina’s “Dirty War,” where at least 10,000 people vanished from 1976 to 1983. In Buenos Aires, mothers of the missing organized weekly vigils in front of Argentina’s presidential palace, gaining world-wide prominence.

Mexico fought its own far-smaller war against Marxist guerrillas during the 1970s. According to the government human-rights commission, 532 people went missing, and at least 275 people were summarily executed by security forces.

This time around, the horror in Mexico is bigger and its causes more complex. Many of the disappeared in recent years are believed to be the victims of violence unleashed by criminal gangs fighting to control drug routes and other lucrative businesses such as extortion, kidnapping and the theft of gasoline from pipelines, often with the complicity of police forces, government officials say.

“It’s a crisis of civilization in Mexico,” said Javier Sicilia, a poet and victims’ advocate whose son was murdered in 2011. “It’s diabolical—an unprecedented perversity to disappear human beings and erase any trace of them from the world.”

The trauma of Mexico’s missing is an open wound in the nation’s psyche. Families who can’t grieve for their loved ones spend the day alternating between doubt and despair, praying for, and dreading, the blessing of certainty.

“We don’t sleep nights, we have nightmares wondering what happened, where can he be,” said Maria Lugo, 62, whose son disappeared in 2015.

. . . .

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

Those with WSJ access can get the rest of the gruesome story at the link, along with pictures and graphs illustrating the extent of the problem.

Obviously, by no stretch of the imagination is Mexico a “Safe Third Country” for purposes of U.S. asylum law. The brazen attempt by the Trump Administration and GOP Senators led by Chuck Grassley and Mike Lee to force such an agreement down the throat of Mexico is as disingenuous as it is immoral.

It also is appalling the number of Trump Administration senior immigration officials who parrot the bogus claim that “refugees from Central America are required to apply for asylum in Mexico.” Neither international law nor U.S. law imposes such a requirement, for good reasons. Actually, the single “Safe Third Country Agreement” that we have negotiated with Canada in compliance with our immigration laws is quite circumscribed and very limited in scope. And, there are ongoing efforts in Canada to force Canada to withdraw from this agreement because of the Trump Administration’s mistreatment of asylum applicants.

Nevertheless, as I have previously pointed out, given conditions in the Northern Triangle, while Mexico isn’t a “Safe Third Country” for purposes of our law, it might well be a “safer third country,” in practical terms, for many Central American refugees and their families. It’s bigger than the Northern Triangle countries, somewhat better governed than the “failed states” of the Northern Triangle, easier and less dangerous to reach, has more economic opportunities and resettlement options, and is generally (although, sadly, not always) not as overtly hostile to refugees as is the U.S. under Trump.

To encourage (rather than attempt to force) more individuals to apply for asylum in Mexico, our Government should:

Publicly acknowledge and treat the migration from Central America as a “humanitarian situation,” rather than a law enforcement issue;
Work with the UNHCR and Mexican authorities to improve asylum processing, adjudication, and resettlement in Mexico;
Provide financial aid and incentives for Mexico to improve its asylum system (rather than law enforcement money or threats to cut off funding);
Emphasize to Central American refugees the possible benefits of applying for asylum in Mexico (or elsewhere), rather than threatening them and trying to intimidate them from coming to the U.S.
Finally, and most important, the U.S. should be taking a leadership role with the UNHCR and other countries in our hemisphere to address the endemic problems in the Northern Triangle that are creating these refugee flows.

Refugee situations are complex, on a number of levels. They won’t be solved by the simplistic approaches (a/k/a political stunts) currently being taken by the Trump Administration, including the ridiculous “Wall.” Indeed, they can’t be solved by any single country. It takes the countries of the world working together to resolve them. That’s exactly what the mechanisms set up under the U.N. Convention on Refugees were intended to do. It’s beyond foolish for our Government to ignore them.

PWS

11-16-18

CRUEL, INHUMANE, INEFFECTIVE, WASTEFUL: New Report From CMS, KBI, & CBE Shows How Trump’s Racist Immigration Enforcement Policies Are Destroying & Dividing America, Not Protecting Us!

FINAL-Communities-in-Crisis-Report-ver-5

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

A report of the , Center forMigration Studies, and Office of Justice and Ecology

Section 1: Introduction

A woman and her child waiting at the port of entry in Nogales, Sonora to be processed into the US asylum system. Photo: Greg Constantine.

KBI, CMS, and OJE Report November 2018Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and

Their Human Consequences

“My oldest son asks, ‘Where are my rights as a US citizen? Where is my right to live with my family and have a home?’”

— Mother of three US citizen children and wife of detained immigrant

“My husband called and said that he had a normal check-in like every year. He went like always, but this time they arrested him. I asked why if everything was going well. He had a clean record. He is a good father. He is working to help our kids get ahead. We have two children who are citizens and we are fighting for them, so that they are good people and professionals. I didn’t see any reason for him to get arrested.”

— Woman whose husband was deported

“In my preaching, I guide and insist that it is important to be aware of our rights, to not have fear, and to know that we all are God’s children and need a piece of land in this planet. I try to remind them that they are immigrants but also human beings before anything else and that all human beings have rights.”

— Priest

Executive Summary

In late 2017, the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS), and the Office of Justice and Ecology (OJE) of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States initiated a study to examine the characteristics of deportees and the effects of deportation, and to place them in a broader policy context (Attachment A).1

The CRISIS Study (Catholic Removal Impact Survey in Society) included both quantitative and qualitative elements. During the first five months of 2018, KBI staff surveyed 133 deportees from the United States at its migrant shelter in Nogales, Sonora. Survey respondents were all Mexican nationals, all but one were men, and each had been living for a period of time in the United

1 KBI, which operates in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, seeks “to promote US/Mexico border and immigration policies that affirm the dignity of the human person and a spirit of binational solidarity.” KBI provides humanitarian assistance and accompaniment to migrants; social and pastoral education with communities on both sides of the border; and research and advocacy. CMS is a think tank and an educational institute devoted to the study of international migration, to the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees, and newcomers. CMS is a member of the Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN), a global network of migrant shelters, service centers, and other institutions, and the Scalabrini Migration Study Centers. OJE of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and United States seeks to foster reconciliation on issues such as refugee protection, immigration, and economic, criminal, juvenile, and environmental justice.

2

KBI, CMS, and OJE Report November 2018

States.2 They had resided in 16 US states, the majority in Arizona, followed by Nevada, California, and Utah. The survey sought information on their US lives, the removal and detention process, and the impact of removal on them and their families (Attachment B).

The study also included one interview with a deportee (via Skype) and 20 interviews with the family members of deportees and other persons affected by deportation in Catholic parishes in Florida, Michigan, and Minnesota. The parishes — which the report will not identify in order to ensure the interviewees’ anonymity — were chosen based on their geographic, demographic, and sociopolitical diversity, their connections to the agencies conducting the study, and their ability to facilitate access to deportees, their families, and others impacted by deportation.

The interviews explored: (1) the impact of removals on deportees, their families, and other community members; (2) the deportation process; and (3) the relationship between deportees and their families (Attachment C). They provided an intimate, often raw look at the human consequences of deportation.

Long Tenure, Homeownership, Legal Status, and Community Engagement

By and large, survey respondents had built their lives, made their homes, and established long and deep ties in the United States.

On average, they had lived in the United States for 19.9 years.

More than half (56 percent) first entered the country as minors (below age 18), and 21 percent below age 10.

Thirty-eight percent reported having legal status in the United States, including 14.3 percent who were lawful permanent residents (LPRs).

Twenty-six percent had been US homeowners.

Fifty-two percent had participated in church activities, 34.1 percent regularly attended church services, and 9 percent had participated in community organizations.Family and Economic Ties and the Consequences of DeportationSurvey respondents had established strong family and economic ties in the United States. Deportation mostly severed these ties, and divided, devastated, and impoverished the affected families.

Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents had US citizen children.3

The average age of respondents’ children living in the United States was 14.9 and 33 percent were 10 years old or less.

Forty-two percent had US citizen spouses or partners.4

Ninety-six percent had been employed in the United States.2 The report uses the phrase “interior removals” to refer to the deportation of persons who have been living in the United States for a period of time.
3 Respondents were asked to list the age, residency, and citizenship status of up to five children.
4 This figure refers to respondents with spouses or domestic partners.

Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences

On average, they had worked nearly 10 years in the same job and earned roughly $2,800 per month.

Respondents had an average of $142 in their possession at the time of their deportation.5

Deportees reported that they needed employment (78.2 percent), financial (68.4 percent), housing (56.4 percent), emotional (56.4 percent), and social integration (54.9 percent) assistance.

Most survey respondents reported that their spouse or partner in the United States did not have enough money to support their children (74 percent) or to live on (63 percent).

Respondents identified a range of close family members who depended on them financially prior to their deportation, including their mothers (72 percent), fathers (57 percent), and siblings (26 percent).

Forty percent reported having dependents with chronic health or psychological conditions, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and autism.

Nearly one-half (48.1 percent) said that their children — some of whom lived in the United States and some in Mexico — were experiencing difficulties in school.Plans to Return to the United StatesGiven the strong ties binding survey respondents to the United States, it comes as little surprise that:

Three-quarters (73.5 percent) reported that they planned to return to the United States.

Forty-five percent identified only a little or “not at all” with their country of birth.

Only one-third (35.4) percent reported feeling safe since their deportation.The Criminalization of DeportationThe Trump administration has regularly portrayed undocumented residents, migrants seeking to request asylum at the US-Mexico border, and deportees as criminals and security threats. Most survey respondents either had not been convicted of a crime or had committed an immigration or traffic offense prior to their deportation. Nevertheless, study participants described a deportation system that treated them as criminals and instilled fear in their communities.

Nearly one-half of respondents said they had not been convicted of a crime prior to their deportation.

Of the 37 respondents (51.4 percent) who reported having been convicted of a crime,6 more than one-third (35.1 percent) had been convicted of a traffic or immigration offense, 21.6 percent of a drug-related crime (including possession), and another 21.6 percent of a violent crime.75 Mexican pesos were converted into dollars using prevailing exchange rates on August 19, 2018.
6 Only 72 respondents answered this question.
7 The study classified these self-reported crimes based on the National Crime Information Center’s (NCIC) uniform offense codes.

3

4

KBI, CMS, and OJE Report November 2018

A high percent of respondents (65.2) reported that their deportation began with a police arrest, 30.3 percent reported having been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and less than 1 percent by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The majority of apprehensions took place while respondents were driving (36.1 percent), at home (26.3 percent), or at work (6 percent).

Survey respondents spent an average of 96 days in immigrant detention. Most were detained for 30 days or less, and 17 percent were detained for 180 days or more.

Only 28 percent were able to secure legal counsel.

Roughly one-fourth of survey respondents reported spending no time in criminal custody and 22.6 percent spent a week or less prior to their deportation. However, 17.3 percent spent more than one year.RecommendationsThe CRISIS Study provides a snapshot of the Trump administration’s deportation policies and their effect on established US residents (deportees), families, and communities. In order to mitigate the harsh consequences of these policies and promote the integrity of families and communities, we make the following recommendations.
To the Department of Homeland Security:

Issue prosecutorial discretion guidelines that de-prioritize the arrest and removal of long- term residents; persons with US family members; and those without criminal records or with records for only minor offenses.

Use detention only as a “last resort” and employ the least restrictive means necessary — including supervised release and other alternatives to detention (ATDs) — to ensure appearances in court, check-ins with immigration officials, and possible removal.

Adhere to ICE’s National Detention Standards, which recognize the need for access to legal counsel, generous family visitation guidelines, transparency regarding the location of detainees, and humane conditions of confinement.To Congress:

Pass broad legislation to reduce family-based visa backlogs; to align US legal immigration policies with the nation’s economic, family, and humanitarian interests; to legalize the undocumented parents of US citizens and LPRs and undocumented persons who entered as children; and to expand equitable relief from removal.

Appropriate funding to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice at levels that align with the recommendations in this report and that, in particular, assume the principled exercise of prosecutorial discretion, reduced use of detention, and expansion of community-based ATDs and legal orientation programs.

Reduce funding to ICE in light of its indiscriminate enforcement policies and their negative impact on the safety and integrity of US families and communities.

Communities in Crisis: Interior Removals and Their Human Consequences

• Provide greater oversight of formal partnerships and collaboration between state and local police and ICE and CBP to ensure that these arrangements do not undermine community safety or lead to racial profiling.

To state and local police:

Collect data to measure the prevalence of pretextual police stops and arrests (intended to lead to removal) for minor criminal violations, with a focus on the extent to which such stops involve racial and ethnic minorities.

Limit collaboration with ICE and CBP to prevent local police from acting as immigration agents, to promote public safety, and to ensure that no group of residents fears reporting crimes or otherwise cooperating with the police.

Strengthen policies against racial bias in policing, and regularly train and evaluate law enforcement officers on adherence to these policies.

Adopt and implement policies — like municipal identification cards and driver’s licenses for the undocumented — that treat immigrants as full members of their communities.To faith communities:

Address the urgent priorities of immigrants, including the need for safe and welcoming spaces, deportation planning, transportation, access to legal representation, public safety, access to the police, and accompaniment to places where they might be vulnerable to arrest.

Prioritize pastoral service to immigrants and their families; fully incorporate them into all faith institutions, ministries, and programs; and educate nonimmigrant members and the broader public on the immense challenges facing immigrants.

Identify, collect, disseminate and implement best pastoral practices for accompanying and supporting deportees and their families at all stages of the removal process.

Advocate for the generous exercise of prosecutorial discretion; humane enforcement policies that prioritize family unity and cohesive communities; expanded legal avenues to regularized status; and strong citizenship policies.

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Takeaways:

DHS must reinstate the use of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) (of the type heavily used by every other law enforcement agency in America) in both enforcement actions and Immigration Courts;
- Under the toxic “leadership” of former AG Jeff Sessions the discretion of both DHS and EOIR to use sensible “PD” was basically eradicated;
DHS Enforcement is over funded to the point where money and resources are routinely wasted on counterproductive politically motivated initiatives;
- Congress should resist any further increases in DHS Enforcement funding until DHS shows better management, accountability, and reasonable use of existing resources.

PWS

11-13-18

TRUMPED: Nielsen Is A Sycophant Who Lied To Cover Her Boss’s Stupid, Cruel, & Often Illegal Antics On Immigration – Reportedly, She’s About To Learn That There’s No “Graceful Exit” From The Kakistocracy – “Trump puts people like Nielsen in the position of accounting for his whims and his counterfactual claims. His expectations for how much someone like Nielsen could accomplish when it comes to securing the border were almost definitely unreasonable. She tried to compensate for those shortcomings by saying things she couldn’t possibly have believed to boost Trump.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/13/kirstjen-nielsen-repeatedly-did-trumps-bidding-her-reward-an-unceremonious-impending-exit/?utm_term=.2e8283f31a2a

Aaron Blake reports for WashPost:

We may not be there yet, but there may come a point at which it’s very difficult to find well-qualified people willing to serve in President Trump’s Cabinet. And if we do, we’ll look back on Kirstjen Nielsen’s tenure as an early indicator.

The homeland security secretary appears set for an unceremonious exit less than one year after taking over the nation’s third-largest agency, report The Post’s Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker. The writing has been on the wall for months — and her departure could ostensibly be delayed further — but Trump’s long-standing frustration with Nielsen and the freedom he now has with the 2018 elections behind him seem to be bringing this situation to a head. Trump has previewed a potential shake-up in recent weeks, and Nielsen was always among the most endangered top officials.

The looming decision is about Nielsen’s failure to meet Trump’s expectations when it comes to curtailing illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. An uptick in border apprehensions in recent months and the caravan of migrants coming up from Honduras have probably sealed Nielsen’s fate.

But she seems to be a victim of irrational expectations more than anything. And she has spent much of her tenure tolerating Trump’s whims and even putting her reputation on the line in the name to keeping her job. No amount of public fealty, it seems, has been enough.

Nielsen has repeatedly fed Trump’s narrative about the Russia investigation with misleading or incorrect comments. Like Trump, she declined to directly blame Vladimir Putin for Russia’s 2016 election interference, even though the U.S. intelligence community does. Months earlier, she was asked about that same conclusion and said: “I do not believe that I’ve seen that conclusion. . . . That the specific intent was to help President Trump win? I’m not aware of that.”

She also suggested that Russia’s attacks an American election infrastructure weren’t necessarily aimed at helping Trump, even though the intel community says the broader effort was — a bizarre delineation clearly aimed at appeasing the boss, who has asserted that Russia actually favored Hillary Clinton.

During testimony in January, Nielsen declined to confirm Trump’s closed-door remarks describing African nations, Haiti and El Salvador as “shithole countries” — even though she was present. Then, in an exchange that followed, she was asked to account for Trump saying the United States needed more immigrants from Norway, an overwhelmingly white country. She even tried to pretend that she wasn’t sure Norway was an overwhelmingly white country and that Trump was referring to work ethic:

LEAHY: What does he mean when he says he wants more immigrants from Norway?

NIELSEN: I don’t believe he said that specifically. . . . What he was specifically referring to is, the prime minister telling him that the people of Norway work very hard. And so, what he was referencing is, from a merit-based perspective, we’d like to have those with skills who can assimilate and contribute to the United States, moving away from country quotas and to an individual merit-based system.

LEAHY: Norway is a predominantly white country, isn’t it?

NIELSEN: I actually do not know that, sir, but I imagine that is the case.

By far the most controversial chapter of Nielsen’s tenure, though, has been the separation of migrant families at the border — a policy that led to the detention of children in large cages and the government’s failure to promptly reunite them with their families. Nielsen reportedly resisted the policy behind the scenes. But publicly, she boosted it and even made implausible arguments in favor of it. She even went so far as to argue that it wasn’t an actual policy.

“We do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period,” she said, laughably. A DHS inspector general’s report last month contradicted this and other claims Nielsen made about the policy’s implementation.

And that’s the thread that runs through all of this. Trump puts people like Nielsen in the position of accounting for his whims and his counterfactual claims. His expectations for how much someone like Nielsen could accomplish when it comes to securing the border were almost definitely unreasonable. She tried to compensate for those shortcomings by saying things she couldn’t possibly have believed to boost Trump.

If and when she is finally ousted, it should serve as notice to anybody who would succeed her, or anyone else in the administration, that fealty is a necessary but not sufficient part of the job. And there’s no guarantee that sacrificing your own reputation for Trump will be rewarded.

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

As I said in connection with the recent Sessions firing, nobody should be surprised by these totally irrational moves against his own loyal toadies. Trump and his policies are failures; so, he obviously needs someone else to blame because he isn’t man enough to take accountability for his own mistakes. It might be hard to find such complete lackeys for these key jobs, but maybe not in today’s GOP.

(I note that Sessions only recused himself from the Russia probe because failure to do so could have been a clear ethical breach that could well have cost him his law license. While Sessions is definitely a sleazy character, for the top law enforcement official in the country to willingly ignore advice of his own ethics officials would take sleaze to an even higher and much more publicly obvious level.)

As I have said before, while public humiliation of loyal toadies is never a pretty sight, nobody should shed tears for either Sessions or Nielsen. They weren’t required to take these jobs and Trump’s lack of character and willingness to bully and publicly humiliate those who had loyally worked for him were well-known long before he became President. He might value sycophantic loyalty (see Mike Pence), but he has none to give. It’s the victims for whom we should feel sorry — families, immigrants, communities, and others who have been hurt by Nielsen’s willingness to ignore the law, human decency, and rational policies in a vain effort to hold onto her job.

PWS

11-13-18

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS TRUMP’S BORDER ORDER IS NQRFPT!

“NQRFPT” = “Not Quite Ready for Prime Time” (as some might remember from my days on the bench)

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/416195-trump-should-withdraw-his-asylum-proclamation

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Detention will continue to be a major problem, regardless.

Under the proclamation, DHS would not have to screen aliens to determine whether they have a credible fear of persecution for asylum purposes, but it would have to screen them to determine if they have a reasonable fear of persecution.

The United States is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, which prohibits expelling a refugee to a country where it is likely that he will be persecuted. Asylum just requires a well-founded fear of persecution.

This condition is met with the withholding of deportation provision in the INA for aliens who establish that it is more likely than not that they will be persecuted.

America also is a signatory to the Convention Against Torture (CAT), which provides that, “No State Party shall expel … a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Relief under these provisions is limited to sending the alien to a country where he would not be persecuted or tortured.

The proclamation should be withdrawn until these problems can be resolved.

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

Go on over to The Hill at the link to read Nolan’s complete article (I have just reprinted the concluding section above). It also was a “headliner” at ImmigrationProf Blog: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2018/11/president-trump-should-withdraw-his-asylum-proclamation.html

Nolan’s conclusion ties in nicely to my preceding posts that confirm, as Nolan points out, that CBP, the Asylum Office, the Immigration Courts, and probably the Federal Courts are woefully unprepared for the additional chaos and workload that is likely to be created by Trump’s shortsighted actions. Like most of what Trump does in the immigration areas it demonstrates a chronic misunderstanding of the laws, how the system operates, the reality of what happens at the border, and ignores the views of career civil servants and experts in the area. In other words, a totally unprofessional performance. But, that’s what “kakistocracy” is all about.

We’ll see what happens next. I expect a U.S. District court ruling on the ACLU’s suit to stop implementation of the Executive Order and the “Interim Regs” to be issued in the near future.

PWS

11-13-18

HOW MANY RIDICULOUS “TRUMP TROOPS” & ARMED BORDER PATROL OFFICERS IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO STOP THESE TWO FOOTSORE LITTLE GIRLS AND THEIR EXHAUSTED MOTHER? — What Kind Of A Nation Rolls Out A Bogus Military Display & Announces Plans To Trash Its Own Laws & International Norms In Response To A Non-Threatening Humanitarian Situation That It Helped Cause & Aggravate?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/11/07/story-behind-photo-little-girl-crying-migrant-caravan/?utm_term=.518223da78ac

Michael E. Miller reports for WashPost:

SAN PEDRO TAPANATEPEC, Mexico — The migrant caravan came alive one morning last week with a rustle of plastic tarps being taken down and packed. A crowd gathered well before dawn.

Near the back of that crowd stood Keila Savioll Mejia. Two weeks earlier, the shy 21-year-old had left home in Honduras to join the caravan with her 2-year-old and 4-year-old daughters. She listened as organizers announced that two trucks were available to take women and children from Tapanatepec to the next stop, 33 miles away.

Mejia thought about rushing forward to claim the last spot. Both of her daughters were sick and Camila, the oldest, was tired of walking. But she said she worried they would be crushed or suffocated in the throng. So she let others climb into the back of the truck, which soon overflowed with about three dozen people.

“There are no more trucks,” an organizer said over a loudspeaker. “Let’s go.”

And with that, Mejia and her daughters set off on foot.

President Trump has portrayed the migrant caravan as a monolithic threat, a mass of “terrorists” intent on “invading” the United States. In reality, the caravan is a collection of individuals and families, each with their own story. And few were worse off than Mejia.

As she carried 2-year-old Samantha through the streets of Tapanatepec, she saw several families with sturdy strollers they had bought for 900 pesos — around $45 — at the Mexico-Guatemala border. Others were flimsy, held together with tape or twine. One father pushed his 5-year-old son in a donated wheelchair.

Mejia had nothing, not even a baby carrier.

Keila Savioll Mejia, 21, holds her daughter Samantha, 2, left, as Johana Hernandez, 16, center, watches 4-year-old Camila. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

By the time the caravan reached the edge of town, Mejia’s thin arms already ached from carrying her toddler. So mother and daughters rested under a tree.

Mejia wore pink plastic slippers so thin they were like walking in bare feet. The girls wore sandals that were hardly any better. Besides a few donated diapers friends carried for them, all their belongings fit into a tiny “Mafalda” bag on Mejia’s back.

Soon, they were back on their feet, Samantha on Mejia’s shoulders and Camila holding hands with Bessi Zelaya, a friend from Peña Blanca.

As they walked through the pre-dawn darkness, the silence was broken every few minutes by the buzz of approaching motorcycle taxis. The tiny three-wheel vehicles would pull up, and half a dozen migrants would pile in, paying a few Mexican pesos to get a little closer to the next stop.

But Mejia didn’t have a few pesos.

In Peña Blanca she had made 100 lempiras — about $4 — a day selling tortillas. The girls’ father had left them long ago, so they lived with Mejia’s mother and siblings in a small cinder block house.

When she heard of the caravan forming in San Pedro Sula just 50 miles away, Mejia borrowed 500 lempiras from a friend, packed her daughter’s backpack and boarded a bus to the capital. By the time they caught up to the caravan a few days later, Mejia had spent half her money on bus fare. She quickly used the rest to buy food for the girls.

“We’ve had to walk ever since,” she said.

As young men strode past and another overloaded mototaxi sped away, an organizer in a yellow traffic vest issued a warning to those falling behind.

“Hurry up,” he said, “or immigration will grab you.”

The fear was real. The sheer size of the caravan made it difficult for Mexican authorities to stop. But small groups that had split off had reportedly been detained and deported. The same could happen to stragglers.

Camila, her tiny legs already exhausted, collapsed to the ground. The girl closed her eyes.

An exhausted Camila collapses to the ground. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

“Camila!” Mejia said sharply.

“Arriba,” said Zelaya, lifting her onto the shoulders of Fernando Reyes Enamorado, a neighbor from Peña Blanca. Camila drooped over the 19-year-old’s head.

They continued walking, but when they stopped at a house where the owners had brought out a jug of water for the migrants, Camila refused to get up. Mejia splashed the girl in the face with water, but she just sat on the ground, kicking off her sandals and beginning to cry.

“Levántate,” Mejia told her. “Get up.”

A family with a stroller went past. Then another, and another. Flashing lights in the distance behind them were a reminder that if they fell far enough behind, their journey could be over in an instant.

Strangers stopped to offer to carry Camila, but the girl refused to let anyone touch her.

Keila Savioll Mejia carries her two daughters during the caravan. If they fell too far behind, they risked being detained and deported. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

Minutes passed as Samantha cried and Camila screamed and the caravan kept going without them. Friends disappeared into the distance. Dawn began to break. Soon the sun would rise, and the temperature would climb to nearly 100 degrees.

So Mejia did the only thing she could: She lifted both girls — one over each shoulder — and started walking.

Within a few minutes, she had caught up with the others where the road met a highway. Migrants slept in the ditch as they waited for trucks on which to catch a ride.

Mejia set the girls down and handed them candy to keep them awake.

But as vehicles approached, it was the young men who always reacted first. They climbed atop oil tankers and leaped aboard moving container trucks.

So Mejia started walking again, Samantha in her arms and Camila flailing unhappily at her side.

But then their luck suddenly changed. As she passed a red car belonging to a Televisa news crew, the cameraman recognized her.

Paco Santana, a TV anchorman, had interviewed Mejia a few days earlier and had given her a lift. Now he offered to do so again.

Keila Savioll Mejia and her daughters receive a much needed lift when a local television reporter offers them a ride. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

“I wish I could take you all like last time, but I have a woman who is very pregnant,” he told Zelaya and Mejia’s other friends.

“No, no, no,” said Ana Velazquez, 36, who was traveling with her 16-year-old daughter. “What we want is for her to get a ride because the little girl doesn’t like to walk.”

“Well,” Santana said, turning to Mejia. “What do you think?”

She looked at her friends. Then she looked at her daughters.

“Do you want to go in the car, like the other day?” Santana asked Camila and Samantha.

With shouts of excitement, her daughters made the decision for her.

“I don’t have cookies this time,” Santana said, opening the door of his car, where the pregnant woman and her partner were already waiting for a ride. “Should we go get some?”

And then it was on to the next town, the single mother’s odyssey over — at least for another day.

Samantha Savioll Mejia, 2, peaks out the window of a car belonging to the Televisa news crew while sitting on her mother’s lap. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

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At some point, there will be an accounting for Trump’s cowardly actions and his misuse of our military in this wasteful and immoral political stunt.

PWS

11-11-18

TRUMP’S TOADIES: EOIR JOINS “PARTNERS” AT DHS IN FRIVOLOUS “INTERIM” REG THAT CLEARLY VIOLATES ASYLUM STATUTE! — All In Pursuit Of Trump’s Racist, Anti-Asylum Agenda!

Here’s a link to the “Interim Regulations:”

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2018-24594.pdf

Here’s “Tal’s Take:”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Trump-administration-to-issue-travel-ban-like-13376110.php

Trump administration to issue travel ban-like rule at southern border

Tal Kopan Nov. 8, 2018

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is using travel ban-like authority to substantially curtail immigrants’ ability to seek asylum in the U.S.

The administration took the first step Thursday to bar immigrants from applying for asylum if they cross the southern border illegally. On Friday, President Trump is likely to issue a proclamation implementing the ban, a senior administration official suggested in a briefing.

The ban will apply to future illegal border crossers, not those who have already entered the country, the official said.

The move, which was first reported by The Chronicle last month, comes as a caravan of thousands of impoverished migrants is slowly traveling through Mexico toward the U.S. The migrants are still several weeks away from the border, but Trump has already sent 5,000 troops to the Southwest to prepare for their possible arrival.

Related Stories

Trump’s proclamation will apply only apply to those who cross the U.S.-Mexican border illegally. The goal, said a second administration official, is to “funnel” asylum seekers to legal border crossings, where the government is “better resourced” and has “better capabilities and better manpower and staffing.”

But the rule could have overwhelming consequences for crossings like San Ysidro in San Diego County. The busiest land crossing in the Western hemisphere, that port of entry already struggles to process immigrants who arrive seeking asylum, with wait times often approaching weeks.

The administration officials did not answer a question about how the ports of entry would be able to accommodate even more immigrants.

The San Ysidro crossing can process 50 to 100 immigrants a day, according to Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan. There were days in July when the line was 1,000 people long.

Officials cannot legally turn away immigrants seeking asylum at recognized border crossings. But they do conduct “metering,” stopping immigrants before they get to the crossing and telling them they have to come back.

That has created desperate situations south of the border. An inspector general’s report analyzing the administration’s handling of the family separation crisis this summer blamed “metering” for causing more people to cross into the U.S. illegally.

Federal law says asylum protections, which afford a path to citizenship for qualifying immigrants who fear persecution in their home countries, are available to immigrants “whether or not” they arrive at a legal crossing. The administration argues that other provisions of the law allow them to restrict that.

Immigrant advocates disagree, and have already said they will sue to block Trump’s expected proclamation.

“The asylum ban is patently unlawful and disregards our nation’s long commitment to providing a safe haven for those fleeing danger. Court challenges are coming,” said Lee Gelernt, a lead immigration attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

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These “Interim Regs” are 78 pages of pure legal gobbledygook, bureaucratic doublespeak, and irrelevant and intentionally misleading stats purporting to “justify the unjustifiable.” So, I’ll make this simple.

The asylum statute says individuals have a right to apply for asylum regardless of legal status and without regard to whether they arrived or entered at a legal “port of entry;”
This “Interim Regulation” purports to make those who don’t arrive at a port of entry ineligible to apply for asylum;
The regulation cites a statutory provision that allows the AG and the Secretary of DHS to create “exceptions” and “conditions” on applicants by regulation;
But, that statute actually says those “exceptions and conditions” must be “consistent with” the statute;
The “exception” to eligibility in this Interim Regulation specifically contradicts the clear language of the statute permitting those who enter or arrive illegally to apply for asylum;
Therefore, the exception is beyond the authority of the AG and the Secretary to create by regulation;
Indeed, the facial invalidity of this Interim Regulation is so clear that the EOIR and DHS position is frivolous— not passing the “straight face test” — and the policy officials and bureaucrats involved are promoting frivolous litigation before the Federal Courts — generally frowned upon when done by members of the public!
Perhaps at some point the Federal Courts will assert themselves by starting to “take names” of those US Government officials wasting court time in pursuit of illegal, racially-motivated objectives.

No wonder the Dudes who drafted this piece of garbage wanted to bury their real actions and intent in 78 pages of pure nonsense! This from an Administration supposedly committed to cutting bureaucracy and eliminating unnecessary and burdensome regulations!

Tomorrow, as previously promised, Trump will continue to carry out his racist, White Nationalist political agenda by declaring a totally bogus “immigration emergency” by Executive Order (similar to the bogus emergency he used to justify the discriminatory and bogus “Travel Ban”). The only question is whether the Federal Courts will let him get away with thumbing his nose at the statute, our Constitution, and the authority of the Article III Courts themselves.

Stay tuned!

PWS

11-08-18

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!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/jeff-sessions-donald-trump-resign-disgrace.html

Stern writes:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned on Wednesday at the request of Donald Trump. He served a little less than two years as the head of the Department of Justice. During that time, Sessions used his immense power to make America a crueler, more brutal place. He was one of the most sadistic and unscrupulous attorneys general in American history.

At the Department of Justice, Sessions enforced the law in a manner that harmed racial minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. He rolled backObama-era drug sentencing reforms in an effort to keep nonviolent offenders locked away for longer. He reversed a policy that limited the DOJ’s use of private prisons. He undermined consent decrees with law enforcement agencies that had a history of misconduct and killed a program that helped local agencies bring their policing in line with constitutional requirements. And he lobbied against bipartisan sentencing reform, falsely claiming that such legislation would benefit “a highly dangerous cohort of criminals.”

Sessions’ attack on immigrants was equally ruthless. He compelled immigration judges to order the deportation of more unauthorized immigrants and punished them when they did not. He barred most victims of domestic violence from seeking asylum in the United States, deporting survivors back to their persecutors. He attempted to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, subjecting hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to deportation but was too inept to do so lawfully. He tried to prevent states and cities from protecting immigrants within their borders. And he implemented the “zero tolerance” family separation policy, imprisoning thousands of individuals at the border for the misdemeanor of unlawful entry, then seizing their children and locking them in cages. (Hundreds of these kids are still separatedfrom their parents.)

Meanwhile, Sessions mobilized the DOJ’s attorneys to torture immigrant minors in other ways. He fought in court to keep undocumented teenagers pregnant against their will, defending the Trump administration’s decision to block their access to abortion. His Justice Department made the astonishing claim that the federal government could decide that forced birth was in the “best interest” of children. It also revealed these minors’ pregnancies to family members who threatened to abuse them. And when the American Civil Liberties Union defeated this position in court, his DOJ launched a failed legal assault on individual ACLU lawyers for daring to defend their clients.

As he oversaw family separation, forced birth, and mass incarceration, Sessions found time to degrade LGBTQ Americans and their families. He issued a memo alleging that federal civil rights laws do not protect transgender employees, a position the Justice Department recently reiterated to the Supreme Court. He also argued that these civil rights laws do not protect gay people. His DOJ defended Trump’s ban on open transgender military service by claiming that trans people are disordered deviants. Under his leadership, the DOJ also asked the Supreme Court to rule that many businesses have a First Amendment right to turn away same-sex couples. (Sessions gave a speech to the anti-LGBTQ group that brought that case to SCOTUS, thanking them for their “important work” on behalf of religious liberty.)

The guiding principle of Sessions’ career is animus toward people who are unlike him. While serving in the Senate, he voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act because it expressly protected LGBTQ women. He opposed immigration reform, including relief for young people brought to America by their parents as children. He voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He voted against a federal hate crime bill protecting gay people. Before that, as Alabama attorney general, he tried to prevent LGBTQ students from meeting at a public university. But as U.S. attorney general, he positioned himself as an impassioned defender of campus free speech.

While Sessions doesn’t identify as a white nationalist, his agenda as attorney general abetted the cause of white nationalism. His policies were designed to make the country more white by keeping out Hispanics and locking up blacks. His tenure will remain a permanent stain on the Department of Justice. Thousands of people were brutalized by his bigotry, and our country will not soon recover from the malice he unleashed.

His successor could be even worse.

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

Can’t overstate the intentional damage that this immoral, intellectually dishonest, and bigoted man has done to millions of human lives and the moral and legal fabric of our country. “The Father of the New American Gulag,” America’s most notorious unpunished child abuser, and the destroyer of Due Process in our U.S. Immigration Courts are among a few of his many unsavory legacies!

The scary thing: Stern is right — “His successor could be even worse.” If so, the survival of our Constitution and our nation will be at risk!

PWS

11-06-18

ROQUE PLANAS @ HUFFPOST: TRUMP’S BOGUS CARAVAN THREAT MIGHT BE HIS MOST OUTRAGEOUS SCAM YET! — GOP’S Racist Commercial So Vile That Even Fox Pulls It!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fabricating-border-crisis-before-election_us_5be0a522e4b09d43e321d731

Roque Planas writes in HuffPost:

Almost every day last week, the White House thrust immigration to the center of national politics. The Pentagon announced plans to dispatch some 5,200 troops to the border with Mexico. Trump said he planned to eliminate the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship by executive fiat. He announced a coming plan to bar migrants who cross illegally from claiming asylum and to detain them indefinitely in tent cities. To hear him speak at a press conference on Thursday, it would appear the United States faces an onslaught of illegal immigration.

None of this reflects reality. For the last eight years, arrests for illegal border crossing have been at their lowest levels since the 1970s.

But it does jibe with the strategy of a president who propelled himself to the White House by making specious immigration claims. Facing an election cycle that imperils the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the president’s message is clear: Voters should blame Democrats for a nonexistent catastrophe at the border.

The ad — which NBC abandoned, along with Fox and Facebook, after a major backlash — is part of Trump’s strategy to drum up fears of the caravan among his base. CNN declined to air it, calling it “racist.”

It’s also flatly false.

Luis Bracamontes, the unauthorized immigrant in Trump’s ad, was convicted in 2014 for killing two Sacramento police officers and has nothing to do with the caravan.

The original version of the ad that Trump posted to Twitter was even more blatantly dishonest. After showing clips of a deranged Bracamontes ranting in court about how he would escape and kill others, it claimed that Democrats let him into the country and that they let him stay. It then it cuts to video of the caravan, giving the impression that it’s composed of similar fiends.

In fact, no one let Bracamontes in. He was deported twice, once in 1997 and again in 2001.

Some critics of the ad have noted that the last time he entered the country illegally appears to have been during the presidency of George W. Bush. He didn’t let Bracamontes in either, though. The fact is that Bracamontes evaded law enforcement, which is not in itself noteworthy. The rate of success for people who attempt to enter the country illegally multiple times never dipped below 96 percent until 2008, according to the Mexico Migration Project, the most comprehensive sociological database to track migration across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Implying that the migrant caravan is consists of dangerous criminals like Bracamontes is just as untenable as the claim that Democrats let him in. Among the several thousand people traveling through Mexico in the main caravan are 2,300 kids, according to UNICEF USA. The migrants are banding together in caravans not as some kind of invading force but as a way to seek protection in numbers from human traffickers.

The major challenge that the U.S. faces at the border is how to process efficiently an uptick in the number of Central American families and children who make asylum claims or ask for other forms of humanitarian relief from deportation. But that trend dates from 2014, so it’s hardly new.

It won’t be clear until after the midterm elections whether Trump will follow through on his barrage of immigration promises. But with less than 24 hours to Election Day, the more immediate question is how voters will react to his statements.

Mass migration from Mexico had petered out seven years before Trump launched his campaign for the presidency by vilifying Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists and blaming “open border” Democrats for an immigration crisis that didn’t exist. The strategy helped get him elected in 2016. On Tuesday, we’ll see if it works for him again.

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

Lies, knowingly false narratives, corruption, scams on the American people, racism, intolerance, disrespect for millions of Americans and our Constitution — that’s just business as usual for the Trump Administration.

Truth is, the “Caravans” are doing favors for the US Government in a number of ways:

Easy to track;
Plenty of advance notice;
Reduces danger and deaths along the way;
Takes business away from professional smugglers;
Almost all “Caravan” members who actually reach the border (only a fraction of those who begin the thousand mile plus journey) are processed in an orderly fashion, either waiting patiently at ports of entry or turning themselves in to the Border Patrol immediately upon entry;
There is no evidence of significant numbers of “Caravan” members disappearing into the interior of the US without some type of inspection and screening — almost all those who are not summarily returned have gone through credible fear screenings and are either detained or released on bond after the Government confirms their identity and reasons for coming, and determines that they have credible cases for protection under our laws;
There is no record that I’m aware of that any “Caravan” has attempted to “storm the border” or violently attacked US border authorities en masse — why would they, since their only chance for survival is to hope and pray that the US authorities will actually live up to our legal responsibilities and give them a chance to seek legal protection under our laws?

However, if the Trump Administration continues to ignore our laws and to mount bogus attacks on fleeing refugees, they probably will be able to convince many of those folks that our legal system is a fraud and they had best employ the services of a professional smuggler to get them into the interior of the US where they can lose themselves in the crowd and probably save their lives — a sort of “do it yourself asylum.” And, while wasting taxpayer money on the “border hoax,” this Administration is failing to fund and intentionally ignoring international efforts to address the dangerous and chaotic conditions in the Northern Triangle that causes these refugee flows in the first place — and will continue to cause them until we put wiser and more honest policies into effect.

The real threat to our country’s security and future is Trump and his willfully blind or in some cases outright White Nationalist, racist, or purposefully racially tone-deaf supporters and enablers.

If that’s not the America you want and want for future generations, get out the vote to start regaining control of our country from a misguided yet loud and active minority trying to shove their lack of values down the rest of our throats! America is for all Americans, not just the “Trump Base” and their fellow travelers!

PWS

11-06-18

CONTEMPT OF COURT: Trump Administration Asks Supremes To Short-Circuit Lower Federal Courts, End DACA!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-daca/trump-turns-to-supreme-court-to-wind-down-dreamer-immigration-program-idUSKCN1NB01D

Lawrence Hurley and Tom Hals report for Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to allow it to end a program introduced by former President Barack Obama that protects thousands of young immigrants who live in the United States without legal status.

FILE PHOTO: Activists and DACA recipients march up Broadway during the start of their ‘Walk to Stay Home,’ a five-day 250-mile walk from New York to Washington D.C., to demand that Congress pass a Clean Dream Act, in Manhattan, New York, U.S., February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

The day before congressional elections in which Trump’s harsh anti-immigration rhetoric has taken center stage, the administration urged the justices to throw out three lower court rulings that blocked Trump’s plan to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The policy has shielded from deportation immigrants dubbed “Dreamers” and given them work permits, though not a path to citizenship.

In a court filing, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the original DACA policy was introduced by Obama administration officials “even though existing laws provided them no ability to do so.” Now, it is lawful for the Department of Homeland Security to change course, he added.

“It is plainly within DHS’s authority to set the nation’s immigration enforcement priorities and to end the discretionary DACA policy,” Francisco said.

The Justice Department’s move was unusually aggressive in terms of procedure, asking the justices to take action even before intermediate federal appeals courts have ruled on the three lower court rulings. The administration says a final ruling is urgently needed.

If the Supreme Court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority, agrees to hear the case, a ruling would likely come before the end of June.

Poll: Voter enthusiasm surges among U.S. Hispanics

Trump and his conservative political allies have made his hard-line policies toward immigration a key issue ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections that will determine if his fellow Republicans maintain control of Congress.

The Trump administration has argued that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers when he bypassed Congress and created DACA, which offers protections to roughly 700,000 young adults, mostly Hispanics.

The administration is contesting three different district court rulings from judges in California, New York and the District of Columbia that told the administration to continue processing renewals of existing DACA applications while litigation over the legality of Trump’s action is resolved.

Reporting by Tom Hals and Lawrence Hurley, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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

The Administration shows its utter contempt for the Third Branch in two ways:

First, by essentially demanding to skip appealing the District Court orders to the Courts of Appeals, as all other litigants are required to do, they are expressing their contempt for the proper role of the Courts of Appeals;
Second, by publicly indicating that they “own” the Supremes and can get them to short-Circuit the system and do their bidding on demand.

A prudent Court would send Trump packing. Indeed, there is no reason whatsoever to allow the Government to circumvent the legal system here. Given that there are already 750,000 cases in Immigration Court, the 800,000 “Dreamers” aren’t going anywhere. Clearly, the Administration’s claim of “urgency” is totally bogus. Moreover, given the sympathetic circumstances of the Dreamers, there is no reason for the Court to rush on this one. It remains something that Congress eventually will have to solve, no matter how much they might want to avoid doing so.

We’ll see how this one plays out. It will tell us lots about the wisdom, integrity, and courage of the Supremes in the age of Trump.

PWS

11-05-18

MR. ROGERS: APOSTLE OF RADICAL KINDNESS

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/fred-rogers-understated-champion-of-radical-kindness/2018/11/02/97e784c4-cb27-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html

Annie Murphy Paul writes in the Washington Post:

In a recent interview on NPR, journalist Beth Macy was asked about the personal toll taken by her work reporting on the ravages of the opioid crisis — work that entailed spending hour upon hour with desperate addicts and grieving families. Macy replied that the words of a friend helped buoy her spirits and guide her approach to the story, which also involved interviewing “the people fighting back” against the scourge of addiction: doctors, social workers, first responders, health activists. Recalled Macy of her friend: “He quoted Mister Rogers — he said, ‘Look for the helpers.’ ”

(Harry N. Abrams)

“Look for the helpers”: a small gift, one of many, for which we can thank the children’s television personality Mister Rogers. The life of Fred Rogers — yes, he had one outside the confines of the living room where each day he changed into a cardigan and sneakers on camera — is recounted in “The Good Neighbor,” a new biography by Maxwell King. King, a former journalist who now leads the nonprofit Pittsburgh Foundation, offers the full complement of heartwarming, feel-good stories we would expect from a book about Mister Rogers. But, as King is at pains to demonstrate, Rogers wasn’t just about feeling good. He was no superficial cartoon of niceness. The man was deep — a quality that distinguished him from the characters featured in other children’s shows, from Soupy Sales and Captain Kangaroo to, later, Barney the Dinosaur and Elmo the helium-voiced Muppet. Rogers treated with sober seriousness notions that the rest of us regard as platitudes — “Love thy neighbor” — and devotedly lived them out. He made niceness radical.

King is a skilled storyteller who captures the essence of not only Rogers the person but also the very particular American scene that produced him. The future television icon was born in 1928 in Latrobe, Pa., an industrial city 40 miles outside Pittsburgh. Viewers who regard him as the epitome of middle-class bourgeois habits may be surprised to learn that Rogers grew up very, very rich, in a mansion with a cook and a chauffeur. His mother, known around town for her extraordinary kindness and generosity, was a model for Fred and the source of the advice Macy found so inspiring: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news,” Rogers once related on his show, “my mother would say to me: ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”

Rogers himself was a “sickly, chubby boy” whose classmates called him “Fat Freddy” and chased him home from school. Despite such treatment, he formed a loving attachment to his home town, which he would later re-create on his show as “The Neighborhood of Make-Believe,” complete with trolleys and factories. Many of the factories in real-life Latrobe were owned by Rogers’s family, but unlike the super-rich of today, the Rogerses lived and worked and socialized among their less-affluent neighbors instead of other people of wealth. Reading King’s account of this close-knit and community-minded city, one gains new insight into the affection and nostalgia so many feel for “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”: Its host was dramatizing a world that was already, at that moment, slipping away.

“The Good Neighbor” guides us smoothly from Rogers’s childhood though his early adulthood and the start of his professional career. After studying music composition at Rollins College in Florida (where he met his future wife, a pianist named Joanne Byrd), he was hired by NBC Television in New York, working as an assistant producer and floor director for shows like “The Kate Smith Evening Hour” and the “NBC Opera Theatre.” In 1953, Rogers moved back to Pennsylvania to work at WQED Pittsburgh, the nation’s first community-sponsored educational television station. There he produced a program called “The Children’s Corner,” in which he introduced many of the characters that would later become familiar to generations of young viewers: Daniel Striped Tiger, X the Owl, King Friday XIII, Henrietta Pussycat, Lady Elaine Fairchilde. That show led to the creation of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” featuring Rogers himself as host, which was distributed nationally starting in 1968.

Rogers’s show was earnest, quirky, amateurish in the best sense of the word; it was also groundbreaking. Into the lily-white world of midcentury children’s programming, Rogers invited actors of diverse backgrounds like Francois Clemmons, an African American singer and actor who played a police officer; Maggie Stewart, the African American “mayor” of Westwood, adjoining the Neighborhood of Make-Believe; and Tony Chiroldes, the owner of a shop that sold toys, books and computers in the Neighborhood, and who sometimes taught Mister Rogers words in Spanish. In the 1970s, Rogers became a vegetarian, offering as his reason another understated gem: “I don’t want to eat anything that has a mother,” he said. As King notes, “In many ways, he was ahead of his time.”

And yet, as we’ve noted, Rogers was also a creature of an earlier era. Even as the world around him ratcheted up its speed, Rogers maintained his slow, steady tempo. King tells us that his friends and co-workers called it “Fred-time”: “Whenever one sat down to talk with him, urgency seemed to dissipate, discussion proceeded at a measured, almost otherworldly pace, and the deepest feelings and thoughts were given patient attention.”

Rogers was also deeply religious, committed to his mother’s Presbyterian faith. For eight years, he slipped away from his duties at the television station three or four times a week to attend classes at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; he was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1963. Many who knew Rogers seem to have regarded him as almost saintly. King quotes William Hirsch, a friend of Rogers’s from his church: “So what would Christ be like? He would be like Fred. He would encourage you to do things that were right and would help other people.”

King seems to recognize the dangers of regarding Rogers as too good — so impossibly virtuous as to seem not quite mortal — and does his best to excavate Rogers’s dark side. He could be stubborn and rigid, the biographer reveals; to hear former producer Margy Whitmer tell it, Mister Rogers was a bit of a control freak. “Our show wasn’t a director’s dream,” Whitmer confesses to King. “Fred had a lot of rules about showing the whole body, not just the hands. When actors or puppets were reading something, Fred wanted the kids to see the words, even if viewers couldn’t literally read them. The camera moves left to right, because you read left to right. All those little tiny details were really important to Fred.”

It does no damage to Rogers’s reputation to gain this humanizing perspective. One of the most affecting stories in the book, in fact, highlights both his rigidity and his goodness. Before appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 1985, Rogers issued strict instructions: No children were to be present during the taping. King explains: “He knew that if there were children in the studio audience, he wouldn’t focus on Winfrey’s questions, he wouldn’t pay heed to her legion of viewers, and he wouldn’t convey the great importance of his work. The children and their needs would come first. He couldn’t help it.” Winfrey and her producers ignored his request and filled her studio with young children and their mothers.

King describes what happened next: “As soon as the children started to ask him questions directly, he seemed to get lost in their world, slowing his responses to their pace, and even hunching in his chair as if to insinuate himself down to their level. This wasn’t good television — at least, good adult television. Everything was going into a kind of slow motion as Fred Rogers became Mister Rogers, connecting powerfully with the smallest children present. He seemed to forget the camera as he focused on them one by one.” Winfrey, King relates, began to look worried. “Then it got worse. In the audience, Winfrey leaned down with her microphone to ask a little blond girl if she had a question for Mister Rogers. Instead of answering, the child broke away from her mother, pushed past Winfrey, and ran down to the stage to hug him. As the only adult present not stunned by this, apparently, Fred Rogers knelt to accept her embrace.”

In today’s ugly climate, full of bitterness and rage on all sides, Rogers’s example feels more necessary than ever. Indeed, 15 years after his death, we’re still passing on his words to each other like something warm to hold. When we look for the helpers, he’s there.

THE GOOD NEIGHBOR

The Life and Work of Fred Rogers

By Maxwell King

Abrams. 405 pp. $30

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

Fred Rogers actually was exactly what he was on TV. Our oldest son loved Mr. Rogers. I remember taking him down to DAR Constitution Hall to see Mr. Rogers and the rest of his “Neighborhood” “live.”

PWS

11-04-17

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

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These “Interim Regs” are 78 pages of pure legal gobbledygook, bureaucratic doublespeak, and irrelevant and intentionally misleading stats purporting to “justify the unjustifiable.” So, I’ll make this simple.

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PWS

11-06-18

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