"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a Donald Trump-era policy used by U.S. border officials to quickly expel migrants because of the covid pandemic, saying the ban had little proven benefit to public health even as it shunted migrants to dangerous places.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the District of Columbia vacated the order known as Title 42, effectively restoring asylum seekers’ access to the borders for the first time since the Trump administration issued it during the earliest days of the pandemic.
The decision — which takes effect immediately — knocks down one of the last remaining barriers to asylum from the Trump administration, advocates for immigrants said. It also poses an immediate logistical challenge for the Biden administration after two consecutive years of record apprehensions on the U.S.-Mexico border, with the possibility that the numbers could grow.
Biden officials have long worried about a mass rush to the border creating an emergency similar to the one that occurred in Del Rio, Texas, in Sept. 2021, when thousands of migrants crossed illegally and overwhelmed U.S. agents, creating a squalid camp on the banks of the Rio Grande that embarrassed the Biden administration.
Sullivan’s ruling also comes days after top border official Chris Magnus resigned under pressure after clashing with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security had no immediate response to the ruling.
The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that brought the lawsuit on behalf of migrants, said Sullivan’s decision to vacate the Title 42 policy means the policy ends for all migrants, including families and adults traveling without children.
“Title 42 unfortunately had a long shelf life but has finally been ended, and that will mean enormous relief to desperate asylum seekers,” said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.
Sullivan also made clear that that he would not stay his order pending appeal, leaving it to a higher court to do so if the Biden administration sought more time to address the ruling.
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Key Quote:
Sullivan wrote that the federal officials knew the order “would likely expel migrants to locations with a ‘high probability’ of ‘persecution, torture, violent assaults, or rape’ ” — and did so anyway.
“It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take in the pursuit of fulfilling its goals,” Sullivan wrote. “It is undisputed that the impact on migrants was indeed dire.”
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The horrific consequences for lawful asylum seekers subjected to this unlawful policy have indeed been “dire:” rape, assault, kidnapping, beating, torture, extortion, starvation, illness, sickness, death, family separation, despair, to name a few.
By contrast, there have been NO consequences for Stephen Miller and the other Trump Administration officials who fabricated and directed this ruse on the justice system and attack on humanity and the rule of law! Nor have there been any consequences for lower level officials who “went along to get along” with what they knew or should have knownto be deadly abuses of our laws.
Additionally, Biden officials who continued to violate the law and even concocted ways of expanding its illegal and immoral use have escaped accountability and continue in their jobs. DOJ lawyers who failed to do “due diligence” and defended a policy based on pretext, misrepresentations of fact, racism, and xenophobia have also continued to operate in the “ethical twilight zone” that normally would have serious professional consequences!
Of course the whole history of the Title 42 charade ☠️🤮has been one of one step forward and three steps back. The corrupt decision-making extends to unqualified right-wing zealots with lifetime sinecures on the Federal Article III bench and to equally corrupt GOP state AG’s for their dishonest scheme to force continued illegal Title 42expulsions.
So, despite these “crimes against humanity,” don’t expect that “heads will roll!” Given the current sorry state of our Federal Courts and the DOJ, it’s not certain that Judge Sullivan’s order will actually have effect or that asylum seekers will ever get the fundamentally fair and humane treatment to which they are entitled.
But, I am certain that this will eventually go down in history as one of the most disgraceful intentional abrogations of law, with the most drastic consequences for humanity and our nation’s reputation, in 21st Century legal history!
It’s also worthy of note that rather than getting the asylum system properly staffed and trained, bringing in Immigration Judges with the required expertise, installing a BIA of expert judges capable of issuing correct, realistic, generous, practical asylum precedents, working cooperatively with the private bar to facilitate representation, and developing an orderly process for resettlement (away from the border) of asylum applicants who pass credible fear, Garland, Mayorkas, and a White House officials have dithered away two years of time without getting the necessary robust, fair, expert, efficient, timely asylum adjudication system up and running!
The advice and pleas of experts and advocates have been “tuned out” or ignored by those in charge! Now, as all of us predicted, the “chickens have come home to roost” for the Administration’s indifferent, incompetent, and lackadaisical approach to the biggest racial justice and human rights crisis facing our nation.
Thanks Judge Sullivan! Thanks ACLU! Apologies to the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers wronged by the cowardly failure of America to uphold our laws, Constitution, and international obligations — that “subset” of victims who are still alive despite our Government’s grotesque misconduct!
Wis. Gov.. Tony Evers (D) & friends celebrate. He might not “electrify crowds,” but his style and substance struck a high note with Badgerland voters (twice)! PHOTO: (Harm Venhuizen/AP, via WashPost.com)
Gov. Tony Evers, center, celebrates his win with supporters in Madison, Wis., on Wednesday. (Harm Venhuizen/AP)
MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) won reelection Tuesday by 3.4 points. That’s a landslide in a state where four of the past six presidential contests were decided by less than one point and the first time since 1990 that a Badger State governor was reelected from the same party that controlled the White House. For a Democrat, it’s the first time since 1962.
Evers, a former schoolteacher who derives pleasure from euchre and polka music, was rewarded by independents for his stalwart defense of voting and abortion rights. “As it turns out,” Evers said in his victory speech, “boring wins.”
The race was a bit more complicated than that. Republican challenger Tim Michels, who won the August primary because of an endorsement from former president Donald Trump, promised to abolish the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission, sign nearly 20 restrictive voting bills that Evers had vetoed and opened the door to not certifying the 2024 presidential results. “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor,” Michels declared at a campaign stop on Oct. 31.
Evers said some Democratic strategists suggested that he not talk about democracy on the trail because the term is too broad and abstract, but he emphasized voting rights anyway. “I think Wisconsinites get it,” he said. The governor ran as a check and balance on GOP extremism, boasting that he vetoed a record 126 bills over the past two years, and warned that Michels would be a rubber stamp for a Republican legislature.
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Independents made up 30 percent of the electorate, according to exit polling, and Evers won them by six points. Several said during interviews that they are uncomfortable with one-party rule at the federal or state level. Gerrymandering has made it virtually impossible for Democrats to win control of the state Assembly or Senate.
Abortion also mattered: An 1849 state law banning the procedure was dormant until the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June. With providers fleeing to Illinois, Evers offered clemency to anyone convicted of providing care and called special sessions to (unsuccessfully) pressure Republicans to update the law. Michels said he was unapologetically pro-life and that the 1849 ban mirrored his position. Later, he suggested he would sign a bill to add exemptions for rape and incest.
This issue drove a massive turnout spike in liberal Dane County, home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Evers won about 16,000 more votes from the county than in 2018.
Statewide, about one-third of voters identified abortion as their top issue, and Evers won 84 percent of them. According to exit polls, only 8 percent of the electorate said abortion should be illegal in all cases while 62 percent said it should be legal in most or all cases. Evers won women by 13 points.
Democrats benefited from Trump fatigue. While nearly 54 percent of voters disapproved of Biden, 58 percent held an unfavorable view of the former president. In fact, exit polling shows about 30 percent said opposing Trump was a reason for their vote, which is stunning when you consider that he hasn’t been president for two years.
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Read the complete article at the link.
As Courtside readers know, I’m a big fan of dynamic, energetic candidates. But, whatever works in a particular situation! Tony has the right formula for rescuing a state in peril of reactionary, anti-democracy one-party rule!
Sadly, we can’t give Badgerland voters too much credit. Incredibly, they narrowly returned disingenuous, leading conspiracy theorist (https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/11/politics/ron-johnson-wisconsin-reelection/index.html) science-denier, babbler of nonsense, and notorious “Magamoron,” incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Conspiracyland), to the Senate over a far, far superior candidate, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. Go figure!
This California town ran its Chinese residents out. Now the story is finally being told
Mary Chin stands beside a mural in downtown Eureka, Calif., depicting her late husband, Ben Chin, who was said to be the first Chinese American to move to the town in seven decades. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
EUREKA, Calif. — Beauty drew Brieanne Mirjah D’Souza to Eureka.
In 2018, she and her husband — Michigan natives who had been living for a spell in the Bay Area — moved up to this chilly old timber town to build a life beneath the redwoods and by the sea.
But last winter, pregnant with her first child, D’Souza began reflecting on this pretty place she would bring her son into.
D’Souza, a 32-year-old digital marketer, is of Chinese and West Indian descent. And Humboldt County is very white.
As D’Souza’s belly grew and the headlines told of a dramatic surge in anti-Asian hate crimes amid the COVID-19 pandemic, D’Souza set out to find other people who looked like her.
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A fledgling group started meeting over Zoom and trading emails. They learned there had once been a Chinatown in Eureka. Maybe they could commemorate it with a plaque, they figured.
But where had it gone?
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In the late 19th century, Chinatown occupied a single block in the middle of the remote, misty port town.
A historical photo is held up at the corner of 4th and E Streets in Eureka during a guided tour of the city’s old Chinatown, which stood on the right in both images. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A few hundred Asian immigrants — mostly men — lived in Eureka after a federal law barred immigration from China in 1882.
They toiled in redwood logging camps, laundries and restaurants. They were nannies and household servants and vegetable growers. They were former gold prospectors priced out of the work because of a predatory state tax on foreign miners.
When the economy soured in the 1880s, white people blamed them, claiming they stole jobs. Newspapers whipped up anti-Chinese sentiment.
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“There were a lot of stereotypes: that Chinese people were diseased, they were morally corrupt, they would not assimilate to the rest of American society at the time,” said Katie Buesch, a former director and curator at the Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka.
That sentiment was par for the course in the Golden State at the time.
Some California city officials are now acknowledging the ugly past — a counter-movement to red-state politicians pushing to ban books and limit the teaching of history that involves race.
Antioch and San Jose apologized last year for burning their Chinatowns in the late 1800s. San Francisco apologized for barring Chinese children from public schools.
Los Angeles is working on a memorial to commemorate an 1871 massacre in which at least 18 Chinese people were fatally shot or hanged. And in Pacific Grove earlier this year, organizers canceled a pageant that had long featured performers in yellowface.
In Humboldt County, Buesch, who had put together a small museum exhibit on Eureka’s Chinese community just before the pandemic, was struck by an 1885 article in the Daily Times-Telephone newspaper about Chinatown.
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“The time has come when these plague spots should be removed,” the newspaper wrote.
On Feb. 5, 1885, the newspaper, which called the Chinese neighborhood a violent, drug-addled “leper’s colony,” wrote that it would probably be “goodbye to Chinatown” if an “unoffending white man” were killed there.
A Chinese vegetable merchant carries his goods in Eureka before the Chinese expulsion in 1885.(Courtesy of Jean Pfaelzer)
The very next day, a white Eureka city councilman who lived near Chinatown was walking past. Shots rang out between what is said to be two Chinese men, although details are scant. A stray bullet killed the councilman.
An angry mob of more than 600 white people — loggers, fishermen, miners and merchants — filled the streets, said Jean Pfaelzer, author of “Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans.”
A gallows was erected. An effigy of a Chinese man swung from a noose.
Someone suggested slaughtering the Chinese, but that was deemed un-Christian, Pfaelzer said. Others said they should burn Chinatown, but its scrap wood buildings belonged to a white man, since the Chinese were not allowed to own property.
They instead appointed a committee of 15 men to go into Chinatown and order everyone to leave. The sheriff commissioned wagons to gather their belongings. Armed vigilantes roamed on horseback.
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According the the Clarke Museum website, a group of Chinese and Japanese people were secretly brought in to work in a local cannery but were expelled after being found out. They were sent by barge to an island in Humboldt Bay before catching a ship back to Washington. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The next morning, about 300 Chinese people were marched to the wharf and eventually loaded onto two steamships: The Humboldt and The City of Chester.
They were shipped to San Francisco, where no one knew they were coming, Pfaelzer said. They disembarked and fled.
A few dozen sued the city of Eureka, but a judge tossed out their lawsuit.
The purge, which became known as the “Eureka method,” was copied in other towns across California and hailed by white people as nonviolent.
By 1890, the business directory for Humboldt County was boasting that it was “the only county in the state containing no Chinamen.” A Eureka law, in effect until the mid-20th century, banned Chinese people from working in the city.
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Eureka’s Chinatown consisted of one square block, bottom center, in what is now the city’s downtown. The city forced expelled its Chinese residents in 1885 after the shooting death of a white city councilman. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
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In the spring of 2021, a gunman killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at three Atlanta-area spas.
The shootings sparked an outpouring of activism and calls to #StopAsianHate. They followed months of heightened attacks on Asian Americans amid a political climate in which then-President Trump was calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.”
Around that time, D’Souza had set up an Instagram account she called APA Humboldt.
D’Souza quickly heard from a local group of Asian Americans who had organized a series of Japanese taiko drum performances before the pandemic.
They began meeting virtually. Their numbers grew. There was a real hunger for community in this county where only 3% of the population is Asian or Pacific Islander.
The group delved into local history, poring through legal briefs, census data, letters, maps and journals to piece together the little-known story of Eureka’s Chinatown, which had been told mostly from a white perspective.
“We all had an awakening of sorts,” D’Souza said. “There was no awareness that there was once a thriving Chinese community here … and they faced the same kind of discrimination and racism that we’re still facing today.”
D’Souza figured they would install a plaque before her baby came, and that would be that.
Eureka’s Chinatown, pictured in the late 19th century.(Courtesy of Jean Pfaelzer)
With support from the city, they erected signs describing the expulsion in Historic Chinatown — which, today, is a downtown business district with banks, parking lots and no trace of the neighborhood that once stood.
There are plans for a monument.
And — with a mural and a renamed roadway — the Eureka Chinatown Project honored two local Chinese American pioneers whose legacies were too little known.
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Read the complete article at the link.
We can’t build for a better future on the positive foundations of America without honestly acknowledging, discussing, and addressing the racism and injustices of the past. The GOP “history deniers” are hamstringing our nation!
You can trace today’s rise in anti-Asian-American hate crimes, anti-Asian racial slurs from a former President, and snarky “anti-woke proclamations” from DeSantis directly to the ugliest truths about America’s past.
And, just because the latter can speak in complete sentences doesn’t mean that he isn’t just as dangerous to democracy and unsuited to public office as Donald Trump! White Nationalist theocracy and lies are bad for our country no matter who utters them.
DeSantis’s self-proclaimed “Red Florida Paradise” also relies on the hard work of migrants, many of them undocumented, and some other charitable out of state benefactors to literally remain above water: Joe Biden, Democrats, and lots of “Blue State taxpayers:”
Gov. Ron DeSantis has been a persistent critic of President Joe Biden on nearly every policy front as he moves toward a likely potential 2024 presidential bid. But the Florida Republican likes one thing about the president: his wallet.
DeSantis is every bit the charlatan, flim-flam man, would-be theocrat, and purveyor of a whitewashed version of US “history that never was” as Trump. (Concededly, unlike Trump, he actually has won the popular vote in elections.) Under our system, if Floridians have the colossal bad judgement to elect him, that’s their call (although at some point, it could get tiresome for the rest of us to keep bailing them out). But, they have no right to inflict him on the rest of our nation. For the sake of democracy, humanity, and integrity, the rest of us must insure that DeSantis remains where he belongs — below the “Florida-Georgia line.”
Democrats were projected to retain control of the Senate on Saturday, clinching a narrow majority as they showed strength in battleground races in a daunting midterm year that handed President Biden a major victory as he looks to his next two years in office.
The final blow to Republican hopes of retaking the chamber came in Nevada, where on Saturday Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) was projected to win reelection, edging past Adam Laxalt (R), a former state attorney general. Cortez Masto’s projected win ensures Democrats a 50th seat, with a runoff election still to come in Georgia on Dec. 6. Vice President Harris is empowered to cast tiebreaking votes in the Senate.
Control of the House was still up in the air on Saturday, as vote counting continued days after an election in which Democrats overperformed expectations in many contested areas across the country. Democratic control of the Senate dashes GOP hopes of a full takeover on Capitol Hill.
That’s welcome news for Biden, who was staring down the possibility of humbling defeats as the election neared. Now, the Senate, which oversees the confirmation of executive branch personnel and federal judges, will stay in his party’s corner. A Senate majority will also give the president and his party more say over legislative debates on domestic and foreign spending and other major issues.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the results a “vindication” for Democrats and their agenda, and said Republicans had turned off voters with extremism and “negativity,” including some candidates’ false insistence that the 2020 election had been stolen. “America showed that we believed in our democracy,” he told reporters in New York, while praising the quality of Democratic incumbents.
Cortez Masto announced she would deliver a victory speech on Sunday.
In Nevada, Cortez Masto’s win was part of a perfect record so far by incumbent senators seeking reelection in the midterms, as voters tilted strongly against upending the established order in the chamber. It was part of a strong showing by Democrats in battleground areas where Republicans fell short after emphasizing rising prices and concerns about crime during an era of one-party control in Washington.
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Importantly, Biden & Sen. Chuck Schumer will retain authority to appoint better qualified, progressive, Federal Judges from diverse backgrounds, schools, and experiences to counteract the toxic influx of poorly qualified far-right jurists, many ideologues hand-picked by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation for their extremist, anti-democracy, far right views that threaten the credibility and the legitimacy of the Federal Judiciary.
Biden’s & Schumer’s attention and success at timely appointing and advancing exceptionally well-qualified Article III judges whose views support and advance the rule of law, equal justice for all, and reasonable legal interpretations has been one of the “under the radar” success stories of his first two years. For once, if perhaps a little late in the game, the Dems have treated Federal Judicial appointmentswith the same urgency, strategic thinking, and determination to fundamentally reshape the judiciary as the GOP!
If only Garland had paid the same attention to reforming, improving, and reshaping the Immigration Judiciary to make expertise, due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices paramount after four years of highly questionable judicial appointments and “packing” of the BIAby Sessions and Barr in support of their nativist, anti-immigrant agenda!
Senator Cortez Masto’s victory also saves America from another round of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-TN) as majority leader. Additionally, it’s a well-deserved setback for arrogant GOP Senate campaign honcho Rick Scott (R-FL) — a guy whose idea of America is to block all progress, steal from the poor, give to the rich, and never give an honest answer.
All and all, it’s a good night for American democracy, although the narrowness of Dem victories despite the obvious superiority of Dem candidates should serve as a warning sign that our nation is not out of the “far-right woods” by any means. Next, it remains critically important for the Dems to re-elect Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA, an outstanding and articulate spokesperson for democratic values over the spectacularly incoherent and unqualified Trump-backed GOP challenger Herschel Walker in December’s Georgia runoff. A one-vote “cushion” is critical in the event of death or incapacity of any of the Dem Senators.
Importantly, voters across America rejected every corrupt Trump election denier running on the GOP ticket for positions that would have given them control over state elections.
During her victory remarks on Tuesday night, Spanberger spoke of her “deep and abiding love for the country” and a “profound sense of responsibility.” The former CIA agent reiterated that the country was founded on “a dream” that it need not bound by the past or be ruled by kings and queens. Quoting Benjamin Franklin’s admonition that the constitutional convention delivered a republic “if you can keep it,” she declared, “We must all work hard to keep it.”
As a moderate, Spanberger has managed to balance fidelity to Democratic causes such as investment in green energy and the preservation of abortion rights with an independent, reform-minded streak that sometimes put her at odds with party leadership. (Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, has not allowed a floor vote on Spanberger’s bill that would ban House members and their spouses from holding individual stocks.)
With this win, Spanberger reaffirms her status as a rising star in the party. Her formula — bipartisan problem solving, strong national security credentials, anti-corruption crusading and support for women’s reproductive rights — has proved successful. But she also had another advantage: a Democratic record of legislative success, including the infrastructure bill, the Chips and Science Act, an expansion of veterans’ health care and measures to reduce prescription drug prices.
. . . .
Rep-Elect Hillary Scholten Democrat Michigan 3rd District
Here’s what Hillary had to say in her victory statement:
It’s a new day in West Michigan. I have officially been elected to represent West Michigan in Congress.
Make no mistake: this is a historic victory. We flipped a crucial House seat from red to blue, elected West Michigan’s first-ever Democratic Congresswoman, and sent a strong message that will not tolerate anti-democratic, anti-American extremism here.
I am a proud fourth-generation West Michigander. I know we’re a community that values service over self, building up over tearing down, and unity over division. We’re a community that cares for its poor, supports its vulnerable, and welcomes the stranger. A community where differences are not feared, but valued.
My promise to you is that I will never forget where I come from or who I work for. I will always show up for my community and look forward to getting to work serving West Michiganders.
Forever thankful,
Hillary
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By sharp contrast, the GOP has no known values: divide, bully, lie, demean, hate, misinform, blame, deny, discriminate, humiliate, oppress, smear, shame. Those aren’t values: just highly negative attributes!
The GOP did claim concern about inflation and the economy. But, they offered no coherent plan for addressing it in any practical, bi-partisan manner.
Instead, they promised to wreck Government, mindlessly oppose anything Biden proposes, and even threatened to collapse the worldwide economy by “playing chicken” with the artificially-created “debt ceiling.”
To the extent that any GOP candidate could explain their economic “plan” (most couldn’t or wouldn’t), it was a muddled variation of proven-to-fail “trickle down economics.” Yup, the same nonsense and bureaucratic doublespeak that has destroyed the British economy and led the Conservatives to be a laughingstock of “unstable government by clowns🤡!” Basically slash programs that benefit everybody to reward fat-cats with more un-needed and unfunded tax breaks.
Do we really need to make guys like Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, McConnell, and the “geniuses” who invented “cryptocurrency” richer? Make sense? Of course not! I doubt that there is a shortage of “investment capital” in the U.S. right now.
Is preventing IRS from processing returns in a timely manner and collecting back-taxes owed really the key to reducing budget deficits? Preposterous! Yet GOP pols say so!
Undoubtedly, we need prudence, responsibility, and focus in government spending — from both parties. As working mothers, Abigail and Hillary know a thing or two about making responsible fiscal decisions and insuring that their constituents get the most bang for each hard-earned tax dollar spent. And neither is afraid to speak out against “fraud, waste, and abuse” in any and all forms!
As former Federal civil servants, they recognize the need for cutting waste and getting more value for each dollar. In that respect, I think that requiring competent management, accountability, expertise, innovative customer service, and focused enforcement in the hugely expensive yet highly wasteful, ineffective, and often counterproductive immigration bureaucracy would be a good starting point for achieving much more without drastic resource increases.
It doesn’t hurt that Abigail and Hillary are really really smart and use their brains to help others and society rather than for self-aggrandizement or to lord it over others. Tough as they are, they are also nice, kind, and compassionate. In other words, non-ideologues.
Go, Abigail and Hillary! Make America the best that we can be: A diverse society and powerful nation where everyone can reach their full potential, independence, and self-sufficiency, not just the “chosen few!”
Along the 2,000-mile (3,219km) boundary between the US and Mexico, the 2022 fiscal year proved the deadliest on record for people trying to make unauthorized crossings of this heavily patrolled international line.
In Eagle Pass’s regional enforcement sector alone, border patrol agents discovered more than 200 dead migrants between October 2021 and the end of July, compared to an already heartbreaking 34 bodies during the entire 2020 fiscal year.
Ahead of this week’s crucial midterm elections, Republicans have manipulated these harrowing statistics as yet another opportunity to make much ado about what various rightwing players call Joe Biden’s “open border policies”, accusing his administration of incompetence that is causing “body bags [to] keep piling up”.
It’s close to sealed by a hostile combination of pandemic-era public health measures cynically retooled as federal immigration control and mass policing by state troops who arrest, jail and criminalize migrants.
Cruelly, these hardline deterrence mechanisms advanced by both Democrats and Republicans have probably only made the US’s south-west border bloodier.
Deterrence as a strategy has informed some of the US’s most controversial immigration policies, from separating families, to detaining children, to stranding asylum seekers in dangerous Mexican border towns.
But desperate people still find ways to make it on to US soil: last fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection documented nearly 2.38m enforcement encounters at the southern border, a record high causing headaches for Biden as conservatives accuse the president of being “lax” on border crime.
The truth is more complex, and not at all lax. More than a million of last fiscal year’s border enforcement encounters were processed under Title 42, now invoked as a federal immigration enforcement tool but originally disguised as a public health measure amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The policy allowed the Trump and now the Biden administrations to expel huge numbers of people from the US without even letting them ask for asylum, seemingly in violation of domestic and international law.
Far from ending unauthorized migration, the invocation of Title 42 has in fact dramatically inflated the number of encounters at the US-Mexico border, as people who are expelled feel compelled to cross again – and again, and again. Sometimes, relentless migrants have been so determined to complete their journeys that they have risked life and limb dozens of times, fueling a political and humanitarian disaster.
And both parties continue to police people seeking security and opportunity over violence, persecution and poverty as if they’re national security threats.
In the shadow of it all, the corpses amass.
Back in Eagle Pass, locals like Rosalinda Medrano who have lived for decades along a porous border understand that migrants have and will always come or, increasingly, die trying.
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“Even though there’s one fence, and another fence, and so many troopers, and the national guard, and you name it – Border Patrol, here and there and everywhere – it’s not gonna stop these families,” she said, adding simply: “They want a better life.”
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Read the complete article at the link, in which Alexandra points to the numerous achievable solutions that both parties eschew — for political reasons — some cynical, dishonest, and racist (GOP) — others cowardly (Dems). None of what Alexandra reports will come as news to faithful readers of Courtside, or, indeed, to anyone who has taken the time to actually study and reflect on America’s decades of expensive, inhumane, “deterrence policies.”
Fact is, existing law, if correctly applied and administered, offers some obvious ways to start solving the problem:
Robust realistic “overseas” refugee programs in the Western Hemisphere — 150,000 would be a modest start — rather than the piddling, restricted numbers now slowly doled out by the Biden Administration.
Reopen legal ports of entry to legal asylum seekers, as required by law, to incentivize and reward them for not seeking to cross between ports of entry.
Staff the Asylum Office and the Immigration Courts with real experts in asylum law (there are plenty of well-qualified lawyers now in the private sector) who are committed to due process and can rapidly recognize and grant the many meritorious cases. Then, individuals are admitted in legal status, on their way to green cards, rather than aimlessly wandering the US with government-issued packets of misinformation (or no information at all) waiting for hearings that will come either too soon or too late, but never in a reasonable manner and often with incorrect preordained results designed to abuse the legal system as an “enforcement deterrent.” (NOTE: To act as an incentive/reward for appearing at ports of entry, the asylum system must be credible, transparent, and timely — something that no Administration has achieved to date, but which is possible with more vision, leadership, and better personnel making decisions.)
Work with, bolster, support, and learn from the many NGOs in the U.S. to insure that asylum seekers are informed of their obligations, represented on their applications, and resettled, mostly away from the borders to areas that need them, in an orderly fashion.
“Even though there’s one fence, and another fence, and so many troopers, and the national guard, and you name it – Border Patrol, here and there and everywhere – it’s not gonna stop these families,” she said, adding simply: “They want a better life.”
We can, and must, do better than “more body bags” as a matter of national policy! Migrants aren’t going to stop coming. That, we can’t change in the long run — no matter how many lies, myths, and distortions nativists throw out there, and no matter how fast spineless Dem politicos run from or attempt to hide the truth. But, we can deal with reality in a more humane, practical, realistic manner that will serve our nation’s, and humanity’s, interests into the future.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Hillary Scholten will become the first Democrat to represent Grand Rapids in Congress since 1977 after defeating Trump-backed Republican John Gibbs in a race that’s drawn national attention.
Scholten, an immigration attorney from Grand Rapids who worked in the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration, defeated Gibbs 53% to 44%, according to unofficial results from the Associated Press.
The AP called the race for Scholten just before 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, with 63% of votes counted.
Scholten campaigned as a common-sense, problem-solving candidate who supports abortion rights, lowering the cost of health care and prescription drugs, and protecting Social Security and Medicare. Scholten cast Gibbs as an extreme candidate focused overturning the 2020 election results and “doing Donald Trump’s bidding on West Michigan.”
Scholten could not immediately be reached for comment early on Wednesday, Nov. 9. Her campaign spokesperson, Larkin Parker, said Scholten would be live-streaming a speech this morning.
Gibbs took to Twitter after AP called the race, saying “we believe this call is premature.”
“There are plenty more votes outstanding and we expect the vote count to go well into Wednesday,” said Gibbs, who grew up in Lansing and served in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during Trump’s presidency.
The last time a Democrat was elected to represent Grand Rapids in Congress was 1974. Attorney Richard Vander Veen was elected that year, in what was then the 5th Congressional District. He replaced U.S. Rep. Gerald Ford, who resigned from the seat to become vice president during Richard Nixon’s second term.
. . . .
After the polls closed Tuesday, Scholten spoke to supporters at Paddock Place, a restaurant and event venue in Grand Rapids. She described her campaign as a unifying effort to draw in voters from both sides of the political spectrum, as opposed to the “divisiveness” of her opponent’s campaign.
“This campaign has, and continues to build, something new here in West Michigan,” Scholten said. “A new political home for people on the right, the left, the center, who are tired of politics as usual, who are ready to cast aside the old frame of division, ‘us versus them,’ and join hands together for a better, brighter West Michigan for all of us.”
. . . .
**************************
Hillary has always been a widely respected “bridge builder.” She’s intellectually powerful, value-driven, dynamic, “tough as nails,” yet always kind and compassionate!
To my knowledge, she’s the first NDPA stalwart and first BIA employee to be elected to Congress. I hope she inspires others who share her values to enter the political arena and help those of us who believe in rational, practical, people and values-centered government and equal justice for all to save America from extremist ideologues!
🇺🇸 Congrats again and Due Process Forever! Practical, human values, and the courage to stand-up for them against lies and tyranny CAN win elections!
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
Forbes: Evidently, USCBP is eliminating the passport entry stamp to streamline the entry process. So now, foreign nationals will only have access to the Form I-94 website as proof of their lawful immigration status.
CBS: The department confirmed the review when asked to respond to accounts from migrants who told “60 Minutes” that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials along the U.S.-Mexico border kept their documents, despite agency policy instructing agents to return migrants’ personal property unless they are fraudulent.
NIJC: More than 130 immigration, criminal justice, and civil rights organizations released a letter today urging the Biden administration to include immigrants in the pardon process.
Law360: More than 100 immigrant rights organizations are urging the Biden administration to fully reinstate visitation at immigration detention facilities, saying in a Thursday letter that visitation is crucial for detainees’ mental health and monitoring human rights violations.
SA Current: The ACLU is condemning the actions of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents allegedly caught on video firing pepper balls at a group of Venezuelan migrants protesting along the banks of the Rio Grande River near El Paso.
Law360: The Second Circuit on Wednesday declined to review a decision denying an asylum application from a Honduran man and his son who claim they will be killed by gang members if they return home, finding the Board of Immigration Appeals properly reviewed the immigration judge’s decision.
Law360: The Second Circuit on Tuesday backed the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeal’s decision to apply a persecution motive standard used in asylum requests to an Ecuadorian’s withholding of removal request, saying it was reasonable for the agency to do so.
Law360: The Third Circuit on Tuesday knocked down a Guatemalan man’s asylum bid after concluding he failed to back up his fears of violence in the Central American nation based on gang recruitment efforts and his rejection of gangs due to his evangelical Christian faith.
Law360: The Eighth Circuit has upheld a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling that denied a family asylum based on alleged gang threats for lack of evidence that the government of El Salvador could not or would not protect them.
Law360: A Mexican citizen who said police and criminal gangs would torture him for being bisexual and suffering from mental illness if he is deported a third time
Law360: The Ninth Circuit on Thursday backed an order requiring U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to adjudicate Special Immigrant Juvenile petitions within 180 days, rejecting the government’s argument that a lower court relied on “stale evidence” and disregarded hardship considerations.
Law360: Republican state attorneys general accused the Biden administration of violating an injunction requiring it to repel migrants from the border under pandemic-era restrictions, saying a sharp drop in Haitian expulsions indicated the administration was selectively lifting the so-called Title 42 border block.
AILA: On 10/31/22, DHS began limited implementation of the DACA final rule. USCIS will continue to accept and process applications for deferred action, work authorization, and advance parole for current DACA recipients. Due to litigation, USCIS will accept but cannot process initial DACA requests.
AILA: EOIR 30-day notice and request for comments on proposed revisions to Form EOIR-42A and Form EOIR-42B. Comments are due 12/5/22. (87 FR 66326, 11/3/22)
AILA: EOIR 30-day notice-and-comment period for proposed revisions to Form EOIR-31A, which allows an organization to seek accreditation or renewal of accreditation of a non-attorney representative to appear before EOIR and/or DHS. Comments are due by 12/5/22.
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
Supposedly, the main political issues right now are the economy and inflation. But, the economy and inflation are largely determined by the Fed, markets, global conditions, weather, and a certain amount of pure luck — all things beyond the direct control of the political branches of the USG.
As mentioned by Chuck Todd on last Sunday’s NBC “Meet the Press,” many experts say that the most effective tool that the Administration and Congress have to improve the economy without triggering a recession is to increase legal immigration — sooner rather than later. But, neither party is interested. The GOP sees an anti-immigrant stance as a key to political success. And, the Dems are “actively disinterested” in the issue. So, the opportunity passes.
But, the reality is that, in the long run, no amount of shipping containers, walls, prisons, family separations, deportations, exclusions to death or despair, hate rhetoric, or restrictive legal roadblocks will halt the future flow of human migration, and not incidentally, the internal relocation in America as certain areas become “unlivable.”
According to a government report published in today’s Washington Post:
The U.S. can expect more forced migration and displacement
Already, the authors of Monday’s report said, major storms such as Hurricane Maria, as well as extended droughts that strained lives and livelihoods, have led people to leave their homes in search of more-stable places.
In the hotter world that lies ahead, they write, additional climate impacts — along with other factors such as the housing market, job trends and pandemics — are expected to increasingly influence migration patterns.
“More severe wildfires in California, sea level rise in Florida, and more frequent flooding in Texas are expected to displace millions of people, while climate-driven economic changes abroad continue to increase the rate of emigration to the United States,” the report finds.
Such shifts are inherently complicated and fraught.
Several Indigenous tribes in coastal regions, facing fast-rising seas, have already sought government help to relocate, but have struggled to do so without significant hurdles.
“Forced migrations and displacements disrupt social networks, decrease housing security, and exacerbate grief, anxiety and mental health outcomes,” the authors write.
Neither political party appears serious about addressing these migration realities — already underway. The ideas that we can wall ourselves off, invest in “sending countries,” detain, and deport our way out of migration are not “solutions.”
Failure to act boldly and expansively on legal immigration will create a huge class of exploitable, disenfranchised, extralegal residents and plenty of work for border agents, internal police, righty judges, and jailers. It will also be a huge boon to smugglers and cartels who basically will “own” the American migration franchise. But, in the long run, building a large “underground humanity” won’t be enough to offset the “downside” of lacking a robust, realistic, orderly, legal immigration process.
Eventually, those nation-states that figure out how to harness, welcome, and distribute the power of human migration will rule the future. Right now, America’s leaders, of both parties, seem wedded to a “sure to fail” approach of either opposing or ignoring the realities and unlimited potential of human migration. Too bad — for all of us!
Hon.Romano L. Mazoli (1932-2022) U.S Congressman (D-KY; 1971-95) PHOTO: therecord.com
I personally knew Congressman Mazzoli (D-KY), and worked with him and his staff on the Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986 (“IRCA”), as I did with Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) and his staff on the Senate side. At that time I was the Deputy General Counsel and later Acting General Counsel of the “Legacy INS.”
Shortly before I left INS for private practice, in 1987, Congressman Mazzoli invited me to his hometown of Louisville to speak on immigration reform. I was presented with a ceramic “Big Balloon,” representing the City of Louisville, to memorialize that occasion.
We kept up for a time after I went into private practice. He was friendly with Harris Miller who worked with me at Fragomen during my stint as DC Managing Partner. Harris, who recently, sadly, died at 71, had worked for Ron and the Democrats on the House Judiciary staff. I remember Harris, his wife Deborah, Ron, his wife Helen, my wife Cathy, and me having dinner at the Occidental Restaurant in DC shortly after he left Congress and just before I left Fragomen to become the BIA Chair in 1995. Ron supported my application.
At that time, Ron was putting together plans to teach at his alma mater U. of Louisville Law. I believe Harris and I might have offered him some “syllabus pointers,” although, in actuality, he hardly needed any help from us given his decades of experience in Congress.
Eventually, we lost touch. But I still have fond memories of Ron, Harris, and a time when the immigration debate, although always spirited and contentious, was more civilized and empirically based.
Here’s a lengthy obit on Ron from The NY Times, forwarded by my friend Nolan Rappaport.
Ron was a gentleman and a dedicated public servant who did everything he could to make the system work for the common good — part of the “lost art of governing effectively.” A life well lived. Rest In Peace, Ron.
“Can’t anyone here play this game?” The GOP lacks honesty and decency. The Dems lack vision and guts. The public is misinformed about the realities of immigration. Migrants and their supporters are caught in the crossfire of political failure! PHOTO: Rudi Reit Creative Commons
Lack of immigration reform hurts businesses and farmers, puts nation’s food supply at risk
Note the comments from immigration lawyer George Pappas in North Carolina.
The hostility is reflected in the immigration courts in Atlanta and in Charlotte, where the highest denial rates for asylum prevail,” he told USA TODAY. “They will not be talking about outsourcing workers or about education. The right wing base of the Republican party has used immigration as a political wedge issue to deflect attention and to deflect media, airwaves, and media space from real issues.
While undoubtedly the Immigration Courts in Atlanta and Charlotte do reflect the type of biased, anti-immigrant approach pushed by GOP politicos, today they are run by Dem AG Merrick Garland. He has failed to make needed reforms and changes at the top, starting with inept leadership from EOIR Headquarters and a precedent setting appellate board (BIA) that does not reflect the best-qualified expert judicial talent available who would implement due process, fundamental fairness, consistency, and best judicial practices nationwide.
Ironically, these values WERE once part of the “EOIR Vision,” abandoned and trashed by Administrations of both parties over the past two decades. For Dems who believe in the power of immigrants and immigrants’ tights, it’s now basically “Pogoland:” “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
A number of the public comments in the articles also show gross misconceptions about the nature of migration, the goals of the GOP, the reasons why migrants can’t apply for asylum in a safe, orderly manner at ports of entry, the immense benefits to both the workforce and society brought by family-based immigrants and those seeking to enter as refugees and asylees, and the relationship between an improved economy and a sensible, robust, realistic approach to immigration (eschewed by the GOP; bobbled by the Dems).
Both parties have squandered opportunities to acknowledge truth, make the current system work better, and create order at the border. Neither has a serious plan for reform on its agenda.
Unlike the Trump “shut the border/build the wall” racist fiasco, Biden’s initial USCitizenship Act of 2021 had some good ideas. But, after quickly “throwing it out there,” apparently as a sop to those who helped elect them, the Administration shoved it in a drawer and forgot about it. Instead, they pursued a mishmash of “built to fail gimmicks,” bureaucratic bungling, broken courts, poor legal positions, lack of vision, inept PR, and weak leadership.
The failure of the world’s leading “nation of immigrants” to discard and disavow the racist nonsense on immigration and come together on realistic, forward looking, generous, welcoming immigration policies makes our nation look bad and robs us of opportunities to improve the economy and build for the future.
John Gibbs, Hillary Scholten Michigan race pursues the middle – The Washington Post
By Marianna Sotomayor
. . . .
Republicans argue that economic woes in an area that has traditionally valued fiscal conservatism will make it possible for Gibbs to keep the district under GOP control.
Democrats have in turn rallied around their candidate, Hillary Scholten, who lost to Meijer in the 2020 general election. They counter that Gibbs’s embrace of Trump, his previous criticism of women’s right to vote and other inflammatory statements are incompatible with a race that requires that a candidate appeal to the district’s growing middle.
The district’s new lines — encompassing more suburban parts of Grand Rapids, as well as the lakeshore cities of Muskegon and Grand Haven — have Democrats confident they can close the six-point gap that marked Scholten’s previous loss to Meijer. Republicans also acknowledged that possibility, with several strategists who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations noting that Meijer’s moderate bona fides made him the most likely GOP candidate to keep the seat.
. . . .
PolitiFact has rated as false the claims that Scholten “dismissed” the destruction that rioters caused during the George Floyd protests. At the time, Scholten put out a statement encouraging people to “continue to speak out for George and all victims of violence” but pleaded “with those who take to the streets to make that effort peaceful and to not resort to violence and destruction.”
Scholten jokes that the Republican ads have earned her a new nickname at home from her two young sons: “Agent of Chaos.”
As a fourth-generation West Michigander and deacon in her Dutch Reformed Church, Scholten says she is confident that her reputation will usurp what she describes as “baseless attacks by someone that has no connection” to the district. (Gibbs recently moved to Grand Rapids, but he was born and raised in Lansing, the state capital.)
“I think it’s almost having a boomerang effect, where people see that attack against someone like me that has such deep connection and respect in our community, and it reflects more negatively on the person that is insulting them,” she said.
“You weren’t here then,” Scholten said in response to claims by Gibbs and the GOP about the protests. “You don’t know.”
In an effort to attract the middle, Scholten also has been critical of her party, especially on fiscal issues.
“We’re doing everything to cope with rising prices, but Washington doesn’t seem to be doing anything at all,” she says in her most recent ad. “Democrats, stop the spending. And Republicans, stop putting politics before people.”
Scholten also is trying to highlight differences with her opponent on abortion rights. Voters in November will decide whether to protect reproductive freedom in the Michigan Constitution or adopt a 1931 law that bans abortions except if the mother’s life is threatened and criminalizes the person who performs the procedure.
A recent CNN poll showed 54 percent of Michigan’s registered voters support the amendment that would enshrine protections for reproductive freedom.
Scholten pushed back against Gibbs’s characterization that she is in favor of abortions until birth, noting that she is “not pro-abortion” while speaking about it in personal terms. At 13 weeks pregnant, Scholten was offered an abortion by a doctor after a diagnosis of Turner syndrome. She and her husband “chose life,” Scholten said, but the fetus had died by Scholten’s 19-week appointment.
Gibbs has said he would support a 15-week federal ban on abortion, saying it is a “position based on common sense” because most European countries have more conservative laws limiting abortion. That is a slightly more moderate position than he espoused before the primary, where he downplayed the need for exceptions because, he said, medicine was sufficiently advanced to save the life of the mother. He told The Detroit News, “There are many great Americans all around the country who were actually conceived from rape, and they’re doing great things.
. . . .
For voters like Killion, Gibbs’s apparent attempt to distance himself from Trump may not be persuasive. He says that touting the connection to Trump “throws up an alarm” since he believes many in the Republican Party have put “blinders on” and follow only the former president.
“At the end of the day, I don’t care about who endorses you. I want to know what you plan on doing,” he said.
These days, running for office on a platform of real family values, practical problem solving, fiscal responsibility, common sense, individual freedom, and human decency is an act of great courage. Obviously, Hillary has had to “take the cheap shots and low blows” from her opposition. Also, she was “caught in the middle” on the very dubious political “strategy” of the national Democratic Party to promote the far-right Gibbs over the more moderate Congressman Peter Meijer (D-MI), who bested Hillary in the “pre-redistricting” 2020 race and who was one of the few GOP Reps voting to impeach Trump.
The folks in Michigan-3 can be confident that in casting a vote for Hillary they will get a responsible, non-ideological, approachable Representative who understands the community and is laser-focused on solving their problems and addressing their concerns. She exudes integrity and humanity. She knows what it is like to raise a family while working full-time on demanding and sometimes emotionally draining jobs. Hillary is smart, informed, courageous, a great team member, and someone who will work cooperatively with anybody to get the job done for her district and for America. She is just what we need in Washington right now.
I hear lots of talk about “what it will take to get America back on track!” Electing Hillary Scholten won’t solve all of our nation’s problems, but it would be a fantastic start that will pay dividends for many year to come!
Elizabeth Gibson Managing Attorney National Immigrant Justice Center Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
Weekly Briefing
This briefing is designed as a quick-reference aggregation of developments in immigration law, practice, and policy that you can scan for anything you missed over the last week. The contents of the news, links, and events do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Immigrant Justice Center. If you have items that you would like considered for inclusion, please email them to egibson@heartlandalliance.org.
This gathering will bring together existing universal representation projects as well as groups considering starting/supporting new programs to reflect on best practices, adapting models while seeking to end detention, and ways to expand universal representation. The deadline to register for virtual attendance is tomorrow, October 25, 2022.
CNN: There were 227,547 migrant encounters along the US-Mexico border in September, up 12 percent from the previous month. The sharp increase in migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua contributed to the uptick.
NYT: The number of Venezuelans entering the United States illegally dropped from about 1,200 a day to 150 in the first days after the Biden administration rolled out the new policies.
Reuters: The Ethiopian military and allies including troops from neighboring Eritrea have been battling forces from the northern region of Tigray on and off for two years. The conflict has killed thousands, displaced millions and left hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine.
The Hill: The Coast Guard stopped 185 Cubans on Friday, 94 on Saturday and 40 on Sunday. In total, the service says it has intercepted 921 Cubans since Oct. 1.
AP: Molina was among 13 migrants who recently arrived in the U.S. who agreed to share documents with The Associated Press that they received when they were released from U.S. custody while they seek asylum after crossing the border with Mexico. The AP found that most had no idea where they were going — nor did the people at the addresses listed on their paperwork.
CNN: It has been an endless cycle since President Joe Biden took office, according to multiple administration officials and sources close to the White House. Agency officials dream up a plan but then struggle to get White House approval, even as the problem compounds and Republicans step up their criticism. See also Immigrant advocates feel abandoned as they stare at Biden’s first-term checklist.
TRAC: According to new data obtained by TRAC through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, 480,301 people have been enrolled in ICE’s electronic monitoring program known as Alternatives to Detention (ATD) between August 2020 and June 2022. Many of these individuals, about 196,000, were previously active in ATD but have since ceased to be monitored under ATD, while 284,000 immigrants were still in ATD as of the end of June.
TRAC: As of the end of September 2022, Immigration Court judges dismissed a total of 63,586 cases because Department of Homeland Security officials, chiefly Border Patrol agents, are not filing the actual “Notice to Appear” (NTA) with the Immigration Court. Without a filed NTA, the Court has no jurisdiction to hear the case.
GBH: Police in New York arrested about 57,000 unlicensed drivers a year before state lawmakers narrowly approved the Green Light Law in 2019, making most immigrants eligible for licenses regardless of their legal status. In 2021, those arrests declined to about 30,000 and are on a similar pace for this year, according to records obtained by GBH News from the New York State Unified Court System.
Block Club: As a major city that attracts immigrants, Chicago specifically has been struggling to support the recent influx of asylum seekers. After dealing with cuts under the Trump administration and then the COVID-19 pandemic, immigrant serving organizations’ resources were already strained before the war in Ukraine and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and subsequent Taliban takeover sent thousands of refugees and asylum seekers to Chicago. The recent arrival of migrants from Texas has only added to the strain on organizations’ resources, including legal services and representation.
LexisNexis: He argues that the immigration judge (“IJ”) applied the incorrect legal standard in assessing whether he would more likely than not be tortured with the “consent or acquiescence” of the Honduran government, and that the BIA erred in its review of the IJ’s decision. He also argues that the BIA failed to consider whether the Honduran government would likely torture him and whether the MS-13 gang is a de facto government actor. We agree that the agency erred in these respects, and we therefore grant his petition for review, vacate the order of the BIA to the extent it denied him CAT relief as to Honduras, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
CA1: We thus remand for the BIA to consider in the first instance whether Chavez’s proposed social group satisfies the requirements for constituting a particular social group under the INA to which he belongs. We express no opinion as to the merits of that issue other than to emphasize that the BIA cannot reject such a group based solely on its determination that current or former gang members cannot form a particular social group.
LexisNexis: The plain language of the statute, coupled with the reasoning of Mahn and Ramirez-Contreras, persuades us that the Pennsylvania felony fleeing statute does not qualify as turpitudinous. While the failing to stop for a police officer while crossing a state line is conduct that may put another in danger, it does not necessarily do so. The agency therefore erred in its conclusion that King was convicted of a CIMT.
LexisNexis: We conclude: (1) the record in this case compels the conclusion that two of De Leon’s attackers were police officers during a July 2011 incident; (2) De Leon showed acquiescence on the part of the Guatemalan government with respect to that incident because government officials— namely, the two police officers—directly participated in the incident; and (3) the record indicates that the IJ and BIA’s conclusion that De Leon is not likely to be subjected to torture with government acquiescence if returned to Guatemala disregards several important circumstances pertinent to evaluating the likelihood of future torture. In light of these errors, we grant the petition and remand for the agency to reconsider De Leon’s application for relief.
Law360: The state of Texas on Wednesday agreed to drop its challenge to a provision of the pandemic-era Title 42 policy which exempted unaccompanied minor migrants from being expelled from the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Law360: An Illinois university professor and students can’t stop the Biden administration from enforcing a Trump-era policy barring student visas to Chinese nationals who are connected to any entity in China that supports its “military-civil fusion strategy,” a federal judge has ruled, denying the plaintiffs’ bid for a temporary restraining order.
Law360: A class of foreign-born military recruits who sought $10 million in attorney fees after winning back their expedited path to naturalization two years ago have settled for $2.75 million in the interest of conserving resources and avoiding further litigation risks.
AIC: Several legal services organizations filed a lawsuit today against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for unlawfully preventing attorneys from communicating with immigrants detained in four detention facilities in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona.
USCIS: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is extending certain COVID-19-related flexibilities through Jan. 24, 2023, to assist applicants, petitioners, and requestors.
You now can change your email settings or search the archives using the Google Group. If you are receiving this briefing from a third party, you can visit the Google Group and request to be added. If you receive an error, make sure you click request access.
Elizabeth Gibson (Pronouns: she/her/ella)
Managing Attorney for Capacity Building and Mentorship
National Immigrant Justice Center
A HEARTLAND ALLIANCE Program
224 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 600, Chicago, IL 60604
T: (312) 660-1688| F: (312) 660-1688| E: egibson@heartlandalliance.org
But immigrant advocates note that some of their demands aren’t contingent on Congress or the courts, which makes it all the more exasperating as to why the administration has failed to deliver.
Some told POLITICO they simply wanted to see the administration remedy the harm caused by the Trump administration’s family separation policies. Others want to see follow-up on early proposals to protect immigrant workers in labor disputes.
The administration further angered the community last week when it announced plans to use the Trump-era pandemic policy, Title 42, to expel Venezuelan migrants crossing the border illegally as part of its new humanitarian parole program for them. Advocates decried the expansion of Title 42, which the Justice Department is fighting in court, as a continuation of the Trump “playbook.”
. . . .
The biggest, most significant “unforced error” by the Biden Administration has been the failure to “clean house” at EOIR and to reform the Immigration Courts to be a model of great, scholarly, humane judging, and a bastion of due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices.
The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation set forth a successful “blueprint” for a far-right takeover of not only the Immigration Courts, but the entire Article III Judiciary. The Trump Administration adopted and successfully followed it!
By stark contrast, the Dems have failed to act timely and decisively on the one all-important Federal court system that they completely control! EOIR is a system that probably has more impact on the future of America — or whether there will even be a future America — than any court short of the Supremes!
Garland’s dismissive treatment of the informed views of immigration, human rights, and racial justice experts — who have had “hands on” experience with “America’s most dysfunctional courts” (the Immigration Courts) — has undermined our legal system and hamstrung almost every other progressive social justice initiative — from voting rights to abortion!
Garland’s failure to bring in experienced, dynamic, inspirational, respected, “Tier One” progressive practical scholar/leaders — folks like, for example, Dean Kevin Johnson, Professor Karen Musalo, Marielena Hincapie, Professor Phil Schrag, Margaret Stock, Professor Michele Pistone, and Judge Dana Leigh Marks — to clean up EOIR, kick some tail, and create “the best, fairest, most efficient courts in America” — is beyond inexcusable!
Dems are a self-inflicted mess when it comes to immigration — apparently because those “calling the shots” are more “Stephen Miller Lite” than they are Julian Castro and other Democrats who understand the essential importance of immigrants and of standing up for their rights — starting with the “retail level” of American justice.
As one frustrated experienced practitioner recently told me: “Biden’s entire immigration policies are a train wreck. He didn’t take the action he said he would. The practice of immigration law is soul crushing.”
“Soul crushing!” Those words should be a “wake up call” to the “tone deaf” policy honchos in the Administration. It shouldn’t be this way in a Dem Administration that was elected because they promised to do better and to stand up to the lies, myths, and false narratives of the nativist right! Once in power, Dems don’t seem to be able to distinguish between their friends and their adversaries. That’s proven NOT to be a “formula for success!”
For every immigrant/racial justice advocate that the Biden Administration wears down and demoralizes, two “new recruits” for the NDPA will arise, fully energized to keep litigating, winning, and raising hell until due process, human rights, fundamental fairness, and racial justice get some long overdue ACTION. Based on results to date, that means continuing to “beat Garland’s brains out” in court! The talent and creativity is obviously “out here,” not in Garland’s “Halls of (In)Justice!” Given that the “Stephen Miller Group” is also challenging the Administration in court, Garland will eventually find himself doing nothing but litigating immigration issues and getting walloped by both sides!
Meanwhile, as the Administration daily fails on immigration, human rights, and racial justice within the Executive Branch, my mailbox and message box are overflowing with desperate requests from Dem politicos, from Joe, Kamala, Nancy, and Chuck on down, for more donations of money and time. But, once the election cycle is over, our views are ignored, and we are treated as “PNGs.” Meanwhile, those who actively undermined immigrants’ rights and diminished due process are rewarded or retained in key positions where they continue to heap damage on the most vulnerable among us and frustrate their supporters.
Doesn’t seem like a sustainable future for the Democratic Party or for American democracy! But, hey, I’m just a retired Immigration Judge. Maybe my friends in the social justice movement enjoy being treated as “chopped liver” — frozen out and ignored — once they have helped elect Dems.
Republicans boldly “run on the big lie.” Meanwhile, Dems “run from the truth” about immigrants and their all-important role in America’s future! Go figure!
A quote from a recent NY Times article struck me as aptly summarizing the failure of leaders of both political parties to take an honest, creative, and practical approach to the opportunity presented by continuing human migration:
Immigration in the United States is broken, but one side of the fence wants to study the root causes of the problem, and don’t want to see what’s happening right here,” Mr. [John] Martin [deputy director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso] said, squinting beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “And the other side wants to build a wall which would become a dam and eventually burst.”
Former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions went to the border to preach his “gospel” of anti-immigrant hate, lies, nativist myths, and to “fire up” officials for one of the biggest unconstitutional abuses of prosecutorial authority in modern American history. Indeed, that is when one reporter coined the term “Gonzo Apocalypto” to describe the absolute nonsense spewing from Sessions’s mouth.
Sessions orchestrated a vile “strategy” of family separation from which the victims haven’t yet, and may never, fully recover. Interestingly, he has also escaped accountability.
By contrast, Garland, to my knowledge, has never bothered to visit the border and engage first-hand with the human carnage his failed “courts” and abuse of both the Constitution and asylum law inflict on others. He interacts neither with those outside government trying to uphold the rule of law nor the enforcement officials given “mission impossible.” He absolves himself from observing the effect that his failure to carry out orderly, humane, legally compliant refugee and asylum processing — using existing law rather than extralegal “gimmicks” — has on communities on the border and in the interior.
Sessions was a vile, intellectually dishonest, and immoral leader; Garland is simply a failed and disengaged one. But, the difference might not be readily apparent to most practitioners laboring in the foul trenches of Garland’s dysfunctional “court” system.
From my observation, there are folks out here interested in, and capable of, addressing the opportunities, potential benefits, and challenges presented by the inevitability of human migration in the 21st Century. Most of them, unlike “pontificating politicos,” have, at some point, “walked the walk” with those humans caught up in the migration dilemma, on both sides of the border.
But, leaders of neither party are interested in the constructive ideas and solutions developed within the rule of law that these unusually talented and dedicated individuals can offer. As long as that is the case, the realities of human migration, false promises, racially driven bias, and wildly inconsistent application of justice in America will continue to vex both politicians and the voters who put such “non-problem-solvers” in office!
Garland’s approach to immigrant justice in his courts harkens back to “the bad old days.” Yet he remains impervious — and unaccountable! The Wasp 1882-01-06 cover Slow but sure.jpg Slow, but Sure. Cartoon depicts Lady Justice riding a tortoise, about to hang a man. George Frederick Keller Public domain
Dean Kevin Johnson @ ImmigrationProf Blog previews upcoming book by Professor Maya Pagni Barack:
The publisher’s description of the book reads as follows:
“Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings take years and most migrants will eventually be ordered deported. The Slow Violence of Immigration Court sheds light on the experiences of migrants from the “Northern Triangle” (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) as they navigate legal processes, deportation proceedings, immigration court, and the immigration system writ large.
Grounded in the illuminating stories of people facing deportation, the family members who support them, and the attorneys who defend them, The Slow Violence of Immigration Court invites readers to question matters of fairness and justice and the fear of living with the threat of deportation. Although the spectacle of violence created by family separation and deportation is perceived as extreme and unprecedented, these long legal proceedings are masked in the mundane and are often overlooked, ignored, and excused. In an urgent call to action, Maya Pagni Barak deftly demonstrates that deportation and family separation are not abhorrent anomalies, but are a routine, slow form of violence at the heart of the U.S. immigration system.”
KJ
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The ongoing national disgrace called “EOIR” continues to mete out injustice and inane bureaucratic nonsense under a DEMOCRATIC Administration that pledged to return the rule of law and humanity to our broken Immigration Court system!
That system is “headed and controlled” by a DEMOCRATIC AG, Merrick Garland. He is a former Federal Appellate Judge who certainly knows that what passes for “justice” in his broken “court” system is nothing of the sort! Also this ongoing debacle doesn’t say much good about Garland’s “lieutenants:” Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, Associate AG Vanita Gupta, Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, and Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
They have all “looked the other way,” defended, or failed to condemn this travesty undermining our entire justice system, unfolding under their collective noses at EOIR every day! At some point in the future, all these guys will be “making the rounds” of major law firms, NGOs, universities, mainstream media, and corporations — seeking to “cash in” on their DOJ “experience.” Then, folks should remember how they ACTUALLY PERFORMED (or didn’t) when they had a chance to fix “America’s worst courts” — hotbeds of racial and ethnic injustice, purveyors of bad law, and a haven for ridiculously dysfunctional procedures!
Perhaps a suitable future for these willfully blind “public servants” would be to require them to spend the balance of their careers practicing on a pro bono basis before the “star chambers” they inflicted on others! See how they like being “scheduled,” with no or inadequate notice, to do 15 or 20 asylum cases per month; appearing before too many ill-qualified “judges” who have already decided to deny regardless of the law and facts; appealing to a captive “appellate court” dominated by individuals, working for the Executive, whose main “judicial qualification” was that they denied close to 100% of the asylum claims that came before them in Immigration Court and were known for their rude and dismissive treatment of asylum applicants and their lawyers! See, e.g., “Confronting The American Star Chamber . . .,” https://wp.me/p8eeJm-4Vm.,
Here’s Professor Barak’s bio from the U of Michigan-Dearborn website:
Maya Barak, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Studies
Maya P. Barak, PhD Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies U. of Michigan -Dearborn PHOTO: UM-D Websitew
Teaching Areas: Arab American Studies, Criminology & Criminal Justice Studies, Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Women’s & Gender Studies
Research Areas: Capital Punishment, Criminal Justice, Criminology, Gangs, Immigrants / Crimmigration, Legal Sociology, Procedural Justice, State-Corporate Crime
Biography and Education
I am an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. I hold a PhD in Justice, Law and Criminology from American University (2016), an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Eastern Michigan University (2011), and a BA in Social Anthropology and Peace and Social Justice from the University of Michigan (2009). My research brings together the areas of law, deviance, immigration, and power, utilizing interdisciplinary approaches that span the fields of criminology, law and society, and anthropology.
Gould, Jon B. and Maya Barak. 2019. Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America’s Death Penalty Lawyers. New York: NYU Press.
Selected Articles
Barak, Maya. 2021. “Can You Hear Me Now? Attorney Perceptions of Interpretation, Technology, and Power in Immigration Court.” Journal on Migration and Human Security (https://doi.org/10.1177/23315024211034740).
Barak, Maya. 2021. “A Hollow Hope? The Empty Promise of Rights in the U.S. Immigration System”/ “¿Una promesa vacía? La ilusión de “los derechos” en el sistema migratorio de los Estados Unidos.” Las Cadenas Que Amamos: Una panorámica sobre el retroceso de Occidente a todos los niveles.
Barak, Maya. 2021. “Family Separation as State-Corporate Crime.” Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime Vol. 2(2), 2021, pp. 109-121 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631309X20982299). (2021 Outstanding Article or Book Chapter Award, Division of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, American Society of Criminology)
Barak, Maya. 2017. “Motherhood and Immigration Policy: How Immigration Law Shapes Central Americans’ Experience of Family.” In Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field, edited by Tanya Golash-Boza. New York: Oxford University Press.
Advocates and all Americans committed to racial justice and equal justice under law need to keep raising hell — and supporting progressive candidates — until this horrible system is replaced by a real court system, with subject matter expert judges, totally focused on delivering due process, fundamental fairness, and best judicial practices to all!
What’s happening to individuals (fellow humans, “persons” under our Constitution) and their lawyers at EOIR is NOT OK, nor is it acceptable from a DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION!
Yeah, “there’s trouble, right here in River City!” And, it begins with “E,” ends with “R,” and rhymes with “EYORE!”
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
We’re not going to defeat fascism by talking about policy. Nor by issuing grave warnings. Nor by praying for the rain of indictments. Nor by despair.
We are going to defeat it by outcompeting it. Here is a proposal for how we can do that right now.
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Watch the compelling “spot on” video at the above link. Many thanks to my friend Charles Kuck for passing this on!
The Dems once were the “party of practical problem solvers” — particularly at the local level with great organizations that effectively addressed issues on the minds of the local populace. After all, it was Dem House Speaker, the late Tip O’Neill, who famously said that “All politics is local” (although, perhaps contrary to popular notions, he did not “coin” that phrase.)
It’s not that today’s GOP solves problems. Far from it! Indeed they specialize in division, destruction (“the wrecking crew”), and making things worse. (How would you like to go to GOP Rep. MTG or Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin to get help with mistreatment of your trans kid in school? Good luck with the one!)
Yet the GOP does excel in one area. That is channeling and fanning the rage, bitterness, and anger of folks in the community who feel left out or that “the system” has betrayed them. They are also great at using that collective anger and resentment for their own political ends — usually anti-democracy actions or picking on, demonizing, and falsely blaming vulnerable groups in society for all their ills.
Anand says it’s time for Dems to get back to communicating and problem solving: “outcompeting” and “outperforming,” if you will! That’s certainly true on a larger scale. But, it’s also true at Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR. There, bureaucratic nonsense, “built to fail gimmicks,” and false “deterrence rationale” have replaced scholarship, timeliness, and practical problem solving directed at the achievable, yet inexplicably elusive, “common good.” Time for a difference approach at the critical, yet often ignored, “retail level” of democracy!
