Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) – immigrationcourtside.com

👏⚖️ TELLING IT LIKE IT IS! — Immigration Guru & Pundit Dan Kowalski Slams The Immorality & Intellectual Dishonesty Of The Viral “Border Debate” In Congress!

Dan writes on Substack:

Let’s Abandon Ukraine So We Can Be Mean To Mexicans, et al.

Or, How To Further Debase Congress

DAN KOWALSKI

DEC 6, 2023

U.S. immigration law and policy, including border security and asylum, have nothing to do with Ukraine, NATO, Russia and Putin. Right?

Wrong, if you are a Republican in Congress. Here, let Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) explain: “I think … Schumer will realize we’re serious … and then the discussions will begin in earnest.”

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If you are still having trouble with the concept, I’ll translate for you: “Yes, we understand and agree that Russia cannot be allowed to take over Ukraine, and we will fund aid to Ukraine, but in exchange, we insist on fundamental changes to our immigration laws to make sure no more Brown people come to America, starting right effing now.” (“Brown,” in this context, means anyone who is poor, Latin American, Asian, African, non-Anglophone…you get the idea.)

How will this play out in the next few weeks? I see three options: 1) Biden and the Dems cave, so the 1980 Refugee Act is scrapped, Dreamers get deported, the southern border is further militarized, and the economy tanks because a good chunk of the workforce is afraid to come to work; or 2) the GOP does a Tuberville and caves; or 3) the Unknown Unknown.

Stay tuned…

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Thanks for telling it like it is, Dan! There is no validity to the GOP’s attempt to punish asylum seekers by unconscionably returning them to danger and death with no process.

The cruelty and threat to life from forcing desperate seekers to wait in dangerous conditions in Mexico, pushing them to attempt entry in ever more deadly locations along the border, detaining them in inhumane substandard prisons in the U.S., and or returning them without meaningful screening by qualified independent decision-makers is overwhelming. That Congress, the Administration, and much of the “mainstream media” choose to ignore, and often intentionally misrepresent, truth and reality about the horrible human and fiscal wastefulness of “border deterrence” doesn’t change these facts!

Border Death — Casket makers expect a huge boon from the deadly “border negotiations” going on in the U.S. Congress. But, the bodies of many of the victims of U.S. cruelty and blatant trashing of human and legal rights of asylum seekers might never be located. Those about to be sacrificed for political ends have “no voice at the table.” This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

The Administration’s three year failure to build a functional, robust asylum system at the border with humane reception centers, access to legal assistance, a rational resettlement system, and sweeping, readily achievable, administrative reforms and leadership changes at EOIR and the Asylum Office (as laid out by experts, whose views were dismissed) is also inexcusable.

Yet, the media misrepresents this farce as a “debate.” It’s a false “debate” in which neither disingenuous “side” speaks for the endangered humans whose rights and lives they are bargaining away to mask their own failures and immorality.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-08-23

⚖️🗽 SENATE HEARING SHOWS OVERWHELMING NEED FOR ARTICLE I IMMIGRATION COURT, GOP PREFERS MYTHS & FEAR-MONGERING TO PROBLEM SOLVING!🤯 — ALSO: Youngkin’s Border Boondoggle Exposed By NBC 4 I-Team!

https://sourcenm.com/2023/10/19/independent-immigration-court-system-advocated-in-u-s-senate-hearing/

Ariana Figueroa reports for Source New Mexico:

WASHINGTON — An immigration judge and lawyer told a U.S. Senate Judiciary panel on Wednesday that an independent immigration court would help ease a backlog of more than 2 million pending cases.

Because the immigration court system is an arm of the U.S. Justice Department — the Executive Office for Immigration Review — each presidential administration has set immigration policy, and often those courts are subject to political interference, said Mimi Tsankov, an immigration judge, and Jeremy McKinney, an immigration attorney.

In the immigration court system, judges hold formal court proceedings to determine whether someone who is a noncitizen should be allowed to remain in the United States, or should be deported.

“Every administration has interfered with the courts. This undermines the courts’ integrity, and many of the executive branch’s manipulations of judges and their dockets simply backfire,” said McKinney, the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Tsankov, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said in order to alleviate the backlog of immigration court cases, Congress should establish an independent immigration court under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

. . . .

“An independent board will begin the process of healing this broken system,” she said.

The witnesses also argued that many people going through the immigration system lack legal representation, which can greatly impact their outcome.

The top Republican on the Senate panel, John Cornyn of Texas, argued that most cases are without merit, as opposed to asylum cases, which are based on a credible fear of death or harm. He said that people are “clogging the courts” and are aware the severe backlogs will allow them to stay in the country. Some courts have backlogs until 2027.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, pushed back.

“People who have attorneys are 10.5 times more likely to be granted relief,” she said. “So it is when they have attorneys that they can proceed with their asylum claims.”

She added that another issue is that many children who are unaccompanied, even some toddlers, are expected to legally represent themselves.

“There is no guarantee that children will also have a lawyer, and this is alarming because children are some of the most vulnerable people in our immigration system,” she said.

Cornyn said he did not believe that “the taxpayer should be on the hook” for paying for legal fees and representation.

McKinney said that those who have representation and are not detained are five times more likely to gain relief. Immigrants who are detained and have legal representation are 10 times more likely to be granted relief than those who do not have representation.

“The point is that representation ensures due process,” he said. “It also makes the system more efficient when all the parties know the rules and know how to present a case. Cases move faster.”

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Read the full article at the above link. You can also check out the full video of the hearing here:

https://www.senate.gov/isvp/?auto_play=false&comm=judiciary&filename=judiciary101823&poster=https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/assets/images/video-poster.png&stt=

In his opening statement, ranking GOP Sen. Cornyn made it very clear that fixing the Immigration Courts is a nonstarter for the GOP.

Instead of engaging on this critically important initiative, he wasted much of his introduction disingenuously repeating the oft-debunked claim of a connection between asylum seekers and fentanyl smuggling. See, e.g., “Who is sneaking fentanyl across the southern border? Hint: it’s not the migrants,” https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1191638114/fentanyl-smuggling-migrants-mexico-border-drugs.

Obviously grasping at straws, in the absence of any empirical support for his nativist “scare scenario,” Cornyn went so far as to suggest — of course without a shred of evidence — that perhaps “go-arounds” were smuggling fentanyl.

This theory appears particularly questionable in light of evidence that most fentanyl is successfully smuggled through ports of entry by U.S. citizens and legal residents. Why would cartels abandon proven successful methods of port of entry smuggling to entrust their cargos to individuals who might not even survive the border crossing and, if apprehended, would certainly be searched? Cornyn had no answer.

What does seem likely is that by concentrating border law enforcement largely on “apprehending” and fruitlessly trying to “deter” those merely seeking to turn themselves in to exercise legal rights, the USG has diverted attention and resources from real law enforcement like an anti-fentanyl strategy. That almost certainly would require undercover infiltration of smuggling rings — dangerous and sophisticated law enforcement operations far removed from “apprehending” folks who WANT to be caught because they were forced to leave their home countries, are unsafe in Mexico, and can’t wait to schedule asylum appointments at ports of entry through the badly flawed and inadequate “CBP One App!” Building a fair and efficient asylum system should even help CBP apprehend more of Sen. Cornyn’s “go arounds!”

But, Cornyn’s misdirection isn’t just a distraction; it’s actually dangerous! As the GOP has shown over and over, if you repeat a lie or myth enough times, folks start to believe it. Witness the demonstrably totally frivolous claims of election interference that drive much of the GOP’s agenda and has become “truth” for their misguided “base.”

A case in point is the outrageous political boondoggle recently carried out by Virginia’s right-wing Governor Glenn Youngkin. In response to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s White Nationalist plea, Youngkin wasted two million taxpayer dollars on a bogus detail of the National Guard to the Texas border, ostensibly to “protect Virginians from the scourge of fentanyl.”

However, a recent NBC 4 DC investigative team report showed that the Guard encountered no fentanyl at the border! They accomplished nothing notable except to deny thirsty migrants they encountered water — on orders from Abbott’s troops! See https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi7zp3Pq4eCAxVjEFkFHSmyAHYQFnoECA4QAQ&url=https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/inside-virginia-national-guards-2m-border-mission/3445536/&usg=AOvVaw3aI4OM_UhxJFVsE-bS3GYT&opi=89978449. As we often say, “The cruelty is the point!”

What if Youngkin had spent the same amount of money supporting NGOs in Virginia struggling to resettle and represent migrants aimlessly bussed to the DMV by Abbott and DeSantis as part of a political stunt? Community social justice NGOs generally use funds more carefully and efficiently than GOP blowhards like Youngkin and co.

The GOP claim that most asylum claims are frivolous also is misleading. For those who can actually get a merits hearing on asylum at EOIR — often in and of itself no mean feat given the prevalence of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — TRAC statistics for FY 2022 show that 46% are granted. See https://trac.syr.edu/whatsnew/email.221129.html#. And, this is in a system that is still heavily tilted against asylum seekers. EOIR still has many “holdover judges” from the Trump years who were hired not because of their expertise, qualifications, or reputations for fairness, but because their backgrounds indicated that they were likely to be unsympathetic to asylum seekers!

Moreover, contrary to myth, the vast majority of represented asylum seekers show up for their immigration hearings. See, e.g., https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/news/11-years-government-data-reveal-immigrants-do-show-court.

Admittedly, the manner in which EOIR keeps asylum statistics can make meaningful analysis difficult. For example, more than half of asylum “dispositions” are listed as “other” — which covers “abandoned, not adjudicated, other, or withdrawn,” a facially, at least partially, circular definition! See https://www.justice.gov/media/1174741/dl?inline.

Moreover, since EOIR procedures generally require that all potential relief be stated at the time of pleading or presumptively be waived, prudence requires that the right to appply for asylum be protected, even if it is unlikely that the case will proceed to the merits on that application.

Also, it’s worth remembering that the Government already has a powerful tool for both identifying and quickly tossing frivolous asylum claims and expeditiously granting clearly meritorious claims to keep them out of the Immigration Court. It’s called the Asylum Office at USCIS! That despite much ballyhooed regulatory changes, DHS has failed to obtain “maximum leverage” from the credible fear/Asylum Office process is not a reason for eschewing EOIR reform!

What we can tell from the available data is that, rather than wasting more money on expensive and ineffective “deterrence gimmicks,” the best “bang for the buck” for the USG would be to invest in representation for asylum seekers and in a better, professionally-managed EOIR with better, independent judges, acknowledged experts in asylum law, who could “keep the lines moving” without denying due process or stomping on individual rights. They could also set helpful precedents for the Asylum Office. That’s what Congress and the Administration should be investing in.

Reforming the Immigration Courts and creating an independent Article I Court should be a high national priority. While no single action can bring “order to the border” overnight, fixing EOIR is an achievable priority that will support the rule of law and dramatically improve the quality and efficiency of justice at the border and throughout the U.S.

As Chairman Padilla (D-CA) said, this should be a bipartisan “no-brainer.” Just don’t look to today’s White-Nationalist-myth-driven GOP for help or rational dialogue on the subject.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-21-23

🤡 THE CLOWNING OF AMERICA: AS McCARTHY SLITHERS 🐍 OFF, WHO WILL BE THE “NEXT CLOWN UP?” — Who Would Want To Be? 🤮 — “The moment he began to negotiate with the caucus terrorists in order to secure his seat, he sowed the seeds of his ultimate destruction.”

Clown Court — “Speaker in Waiting”
PHOTO: Clown Civertan.jpg, Creative Commons License

Jay Kuo in “The Status Kuo” on Substack:

https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/ousted?utm_campaign=email-post&r=330z7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

It wasn’t supposed to end this way for Kevin McCarthy. After all, he had done nearly everything that the far-right faction of his caucus wanted, given in to their every demand. Why ever would that fail to satisfy them? But in the end, his actions recalled the parable of the scorpion and the frog. As Fortune magazine retold it,

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, both would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog then agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature.

It is the nature of nihilistic, burn-it-to-the-ground extremists to destroy everything around them, including the very party that once carried them to victory. McCarthy’s mistake was thinking he could ever change that by actually inviting the crazies in and embracing them even closer. Instead, he became the first ever speaker in the 240-year history of the House of Representatives to be ousted. In a period of historic firsts—first president impeached twice, first president to be indicted (and charged 91 times), and now first successful motion to vacate the chair—the GOP seems determined to outdo itself.

As writer Charlotte Clymer colorfully put it, “McCarthy served 270 days, the equivalent of 27 scaramuccis or 0.093 of a pelosi, after giving away his power—and his dignity—to man-toddlers who eventually stabbed him in the back.”

Let’s look at what happened yesterday and then answer some common questions about where things go from here in the GOP’s fractured majority in the House.

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Mean Girls Day

October 3rd is a day that sticks in my mind because of my favorite movie, Mean Girls, which is turning out to carry many lessons for the GOP. The Lincoln Project was out with a meme quickly.

“On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was!” exclaims Cady Heron of the dreamy Aaron Samuels.

“It’s Kevin McCarthy’s last day as Speaker,” Cady responds.

Indeed, it was.

After Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made good on his promise to file a motion to vacate the chair, McCarthy pressed for quick consideration of the motion, rebuffing calls to wait until Thursday when more members were back in Washington. He apparently had hoped to catch a number of Democratic House members away. Nancy Pelosi missed the votes, for example, because she was attending the funeral of her longtime friend, the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

No matter. After first losing a procedural vote to table the motion, with 11 Republicans voting “no” along with all the Democrats present, Kevin McCarthy faced a full vote of the House and was removed by a vote of 216 to 210, with eight GOP members joining all of the Democrats. Even Gretchen Wieners—er, I mean, Nancy Mace (R-SC)—who styles herself as a moderate, was a yea on the motion. Et tu, Nancy?

It bears noting that the Democrats had met as a group earlier that day and emerged with a consensus that they would not be helping McCarthy out. There was simply too much bad blood, from his kissing Trump’s ring two weeks after condemning him for January 6; to his reneging on the budget deal struck in May; to his launch of an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden based on nothing but speculation; to his blaming the Democrats for the near shutdown of the government, when it was Democrats who had kept it open. They simply did not trust him and saw no reason to throw him a lifeline. In fact, he never even asked for help from them directly, though his minions reportedly made a series of calls begging moderate Democrats to save him.

After the vote, several members of the House Republican caucus gathered in a group to pray on the House floor, while Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), wept openly. It was quite a fall for Rep. Wagner, who had triumphantly spearheaded two anti-abortion measures earlier in the year with Speaker McCarthy’s blessing.

McCarthy’s loss of the speakership leaves the GOP caucus effectively without leadership, at a time when appropriations remain largely unfinished.

The Speaker pro tempore

The gavel is currently in the hands of a caretaker Speaker pro tempore, Patrick T. McHenry (R-NC), who gaveled out the evening with such ferocity that he damn near cracked the thing. It’s a good thing men aren’t emotional in politics.

McHenry is supposed to hold the position only so long as it takes to elect a new speaker, and to wield the gavel only for purposes of getting this done. But he couldn’t help but act like yet another petulant man-baby, ordering Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi to clear out her office in the Capitol building and relocate to the Cannon Building. Pelosi issued a response:

With all of the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting, one of the first actions taken by the new Speaker Pro Tempore was to order me to immediately vacate my office in the Capitol. Sadly, because I am in California to mourn the loss of and pay tribute to my dear friend Dianne Feinstein, I am unable to retrieve my belongings at this time.

Petty moves aside, McHenry won’t have any real power to push legislation through, and few even inside the GOP would likely stand for him seeking to assert himself in any way except as a momentary caretaker.

So what happens next?

With McCarthy out, the GOP is back to where it was in January, without the numbers to put someone over the top. One key piece of news that already broke: McCarthy won’t be running for the job again.

That leaves a number of possible replacements. The No. 2 in the House is Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who is well liked but faces health challenges, as he is currently undergoing treatment for blood cancer. Other names that have bubbled up include Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and the No. 3 guy in charge of this mess, Tom Emmer (R-MN).

There is no consensus candidate as of this moment. The House GOP members scattered to their districts on Tuesday night after the debacle, giving a cooling off period before they regroup next week.

Isn’t the devil we know better?

There is considerable and understandable consternation that we might wind up with someone worse than McCarthy, whose feckless cowardice at least led to predictable capitulations and back to the inevitable point of political equilibrium.

But it’s also fair to say that even someone more extreme, like a Jim Jordan, couldn’t actually do anything with this fractured majority beyond what McCarthy already did with it. A House majority without a Senate in concurrence can accomplish little other than hearings and inquiries, which is what the GOP has been up to for months already with nothing to show for it. Handing the keys to the bus to someone else who doesn’t know how to drive isn’t going to keep the party from catastrophe next November.

It also might take some time before they can coalesce around a new leader. Extremists want someone to the right of McCarthy, but moderates might never support such a candidate. And even assuming they did, the party would quickly find itself exactly where it is now: facing a government shutdown while it tries to renege on a deal already agreed to, and up against a Democratically-controlled Senate ready to get on with the business of governing.

The political fallout

The collapse of GOP leadership in the House likely will become a central talking point for Democrats for the 2024 elections. The GOP brand is already badly tarnished by everything from anti-abortion extremism to election denialism to authoritarian suppression.

One thing is clear, however: It was Trump, acting behind the scenes by pressing extremists to hold the line against the budget, who is in large part to blame for the destruction of the House GOP caucus. He won’t take ownership of that, of course, but the amount of damage he has inflicted upon his own party cannot be overstated.

And in a weird twist, some members of the far-right are moving to nominate Donald Trump as Speaker. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) announced late Tuesday he will file paperwork to nominate the former president to be the next Speaker, who in fact doesn’t have to be a member of the body to preside as Speaker. In the past Trump has said he would not be interested in the job, so it’s unclear whether he would take such a nomination seriously. But it does demonstrate how rudderless and leaderless the House GOP caucus is that they once again turn to their Dear Leader to beg him to rescue them. (Trump of course wouldn’t know the first thing about how to act as Speaker, or move legislation through, or count votes, nor would he have time to learn the ropes given his trial schedule. Perhaps they could recruit his son Eric, who at least is foolish enough to accept and might soon have nothing to do because all his businesses have had their certificates to operate in the state canceled.)

That plan might run smack into the GOP’S own House rules, though, which requires leadership to step aside if indicted for a felony with a punishment of more than two years.

Returning to the scorpion and frog fable, and looking back at his tragic and brief tenure, McCarthy’s political death was inevitable. The moment he began to negotiate with the caucus terrorists in order to secure his seat, he sowed the seeds of his ultimate destruction. After all, under the terms of his parole, a single missed frog step could bring down a motion to vacate by a single member. By May, McCarthy had already committed the giant sin of compromising with the Democrats in a near evenly divided government, and a few months later, a single MAGA scorpion planted its stinger right into his back.

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Of course, it’s supreme irony that about the only responsible leadership action McCarthy took during his short tenure as speaker led to his demise at the hands of the GOP anti-American nihilists whom he coddled and ingratiated himself with to get the job in the first place!

At some point, the anti-American GOP voters who put these dangerous, yet cowardly, spineless, and valueless, nut cases into positions of influence have to be held accountable, if only by history! 🏴‍☠️

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-04-23

ICRC: “Migration is not going to stop. If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

Reuters reports:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/24/migration-violence-mexico-central-america?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Waves of migration through Mexico and Central America, and people who go missing, will increase in 2022 due to high levels of violence in the region, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

Battle-scarred ghost town bears mute witness to Mexico’s drug wars

“In many countries, violence is wreaking more and more havoc, and that’s why there are more and more migrants,” ICRC representative Jordi Raich told Reuters in an interview Wednesday. “And it’s not a situation that is going to improve or slow down, not even in the years to come.“

Immigration authorities in Mexico detained 307,679 migrants in 2021, a 68% increase compared with 182,940 detentions in 2019, according to government data.

Shelters in Mexico were completely overwhelmed last year, filled with frustrated migrants unable to continue their journey to the United States, Raich said.

Many migrants get “stuck” along Mexico’s southern or northern borders, Raich said, where they face “enormous economic constraints” and are able to find only basic services.

The administration of Joe Biden has faced record numbers of migrants arriving at the southern border and has implored Mexico and Central American countries to do more to stem the wave.

Disappearances in the region have not slowed either, the Red Cross said in a report released Thursday. Mexico recently surpassed 100,000 people reported missing in the country.

In El Salvador, 488 missing person cases remain unsolved, and in Guatemala, the number of missing women rose to six a day, the Red Cross report said.

Raich said it will be difficult to respond to the root causes of migration immediately. A joint effort among countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is necessary, he added.

“Migration is not going to stop,” Raich said. “If you try to prevent it or strictly regulate it, people start to pile up at the borders, which is happening in Mexico and other countries.”

Meanwhile, the Biden administration on Thursday rolled out a sweeping new regulation that aims to speed up asylum processing and deportations at the US-Mexico border, amid a record number of migrants seeking to enter the US.

The announcement of the new rule came as US officials are debating whether to end a separate Covid-era policy that has blocked most asylum claims at the border. The asylum overhaul could provide a faster way to process border crossers if the Covid order is ended.

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link.

Cruelty, walls, detention, family separation, border militarization, expedited hearings — they aren’t going to stop human migration. We will be able to increase border deaths, expand the scope of “black market migration,” increase our “underground population,” and enrich human smugglers. Good policy?

Meanwhile, it’s obvious that the “disingenuous internal debate” on Title 42 has nothing whatsoever to do with public health and everything to do with whether continued illegal and immoral suspension of asylum protections at the border will prove politically advantageous to the Biden Administration. It won’t! It might, however, cost Dems support among progressives.

How dishonest and unethical is the Biden Administration’s discussion of violating the law? (Do we actually have an Attorney General?) According to the WashPost, scofflaw Biden Administration officials actually are considering lifting Title 42 for families, but not for single males! https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/24/border-biden-migrants-influx-pandemic/

There is, of course, no known medical evidence that “single males” present a greater COVID threat than families! Indeed, there is no known medical evidence to suggest that any potential asylum applicant is a threat to the health and safety of the US.

The whole thing is a deadly farce! Why aren’t Hill Dems calling for oversight of Garland’s sitting by and watching while the law and ethics are pulverized around him? Or worse yet, what about his Department’s defense of abrogation of our laws? Believe it or not, we actually have asylum and protection laws on the books, duly enacted by Congress, although you’d never know it from Garland’s feckless performance!

Meanwhile, WashPost and other so-called “mainstream media” continue to hype stories about increased border pressure. So, continuing to violate asylum law is a viable alternative “strategy?” Give me a break! How is violating the law going to stop folks from fleeing deadly conditions in their home countries? It won’t, as the ICRC points out above!

What it will do, as also pointed out above, is kill more asylum seekers, subject them to rape, torture and other harm, enrich smugglers, and increase the extralegal population in the U.S.!

Blaine Bookey
Legal Director
Center for Gender & Refugee Studies @ Hastings Law
Photo: CGRS website

It also will increase those waiting in vain at the Southern Border for the reopening of a legal asylum system that has abandoned them! In the words of one expert:

“The conditions are squalid,” said Blaine Bookey, the legal director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, who led a team interviewing dozens of families waiting in Tijuana for the federal government to lift Title 42. “There is real lack of access to sanitation, medical care, adequate food, all of the real basic fundamental necessities.”

. . . .

“There have been some exceptions made for Ukrainians, which we’re happy to see, but the policy should be ended for everyone,” Bookey said. “There was never a public health justification, and there certainly isn’t now.” (WashPost, supra).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) babbles nativist nonsense:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said at a committee hearing last week that the influx has “completely derailed” efforts to discuss improving legal immigration to the United States, which he said states such as Texas need to staff hospitals and fill jobs. Border states such as Texas and Arizona are bracing for higher numbers of unauthorized immigrants in coming weeks, he said.

“Rather than deter would-be migrants with weak asylum claims from taking the dangerous journey to the southwest border, the administration has rolled out the welcome mat and created new incentives to illegally immigrate to the United States,” he said at the March 15 hearing before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety.

To my knowledge, neither Cornyn nor any of his other GOP nativist buddies have ever adjudicated an asylum application. Nor have they represented asylum seekers before the Asylum Office or in our broken Immigration Courts. So, how would that have any idea whether certain asylum claims are “weak” or not? They wouldn‘t!

Moreover, we haven’t had a functioning asylum system at our Southern Border for years. So, how would anyone know how many of the claims are “weak?” They wouldn’t?

Remarkably, apparently unknown to Cornyn and his scofflaw buddies, we actually have laws to deal with his concerns. When the legal system is “open for business” — which it isn’t now — those claiming asylum at the border are subject to “summary exclusion” by DHS officers. Their claims are then expeditiously reviewed by Asylum Officers for a “credible fear” of asylum. Those who don’t establish credible fear, subject only to cursory review by an Immigration Judge, can be immediately removed by DHS.

Historically, when the system was at least nominally functional, those “passing” credible fear have been turned over to the now dysfunctional Immigration Courts. Under Trump, these “parodies of courts” were “weaponized” into “asylum killing grounds.”

Sessions and Barr packed their non-independent “captive courts” with “judges” perceived to be “enforcement oriented” and “anti-asylum” — willing to skew the law and facts as necessary to deny and deport. This mess is “led” by an appellate body, the BIA, which contains some of the most notorious members of the “Asylum Deniers’ Club” — folks who got their appellate jobs under Barr specifically because as Immigraton Judges they denied almost every asylum case that came before them! In other words, even when there was some semblance of a legal asylum system, it was redesigned under Trump to be systemically unfair to asylum seekers, particularly women and applicants of color. For sure, racism and misogyny played into this unseemly scenario.

Remarkably, Garland has chosen to maintain this dysfunctional, biased, and broken system largely in the form it existed and with almost all of the same unqualified or questionably qualified “judges” he inherited from Session and Barr!

While the Administration has announced “new interim regulations” that would allow Asylum Officers to grant meritorious cases without going before Immigration Courts, the system still depends on “guidance,” supervision, and de novo review by the broken, biased, and dysfunctional Immigration Courts running amok under Garland. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/03/24/🏴☠%EF%B8%8Fno-surprise-boston-asylum-office-screws-🔩-maine-refugees-☠%EF%B8%8F-part-of-a-serious-national-anti-asylum-bias-largely/

Our broken asylum system can’t and won’t be fixed without dealing head-on with the overarching problem — systemic anti-asylum bias, poor quality decision-making, grotesque inconsistencies, and beyond incompetent administration of our Immigraton Courts by the DOJ!

Remarkably, Garland’s proposed solution is yet another “designed to fail” gimmick — expedite cases in his broken and biased, anti-asylum system! So the solution to a defective court system, infected with anti-asylum bias and poorly qualified judges turning out defective decisions is to make it “go faster!” The new regulations also fail to deal with the huge due process issue of lack of competent representation in the asylum system, particularly the Immigration Courts. Come on man!

We don’t need over 500 pages of new regulations and sophomoric, alternate universe “time limits” for an agency that can’t even find its files! What we need is for Garland to do the job he was hired to do more than a year ago! That’s “clean house” at the Immigration Courts, bring in competent, fair judges who have experience in Immigration Court and are legitimate, well-recognized asylum experts — starting with a new BIA (save for their one qualified Appellate Immigration Judge Andrea Saenz, a Garland appointee).

Get expert judges, intellectual leaders, and competent judicial administrators into the broken Immigration Court system to provide coherent, practical asylum legal guidance and work with advocates, the Asylum Office, and DHS to get a functional and fair legal asylum system in place and operating smoothly and efficiently at the border. It should already be in place by now. That it isn’t, is entirely “on Garland!”

Then, with experts who actually are committed to fairly and impartially applying asylum law in place, we’ll see, for the first time, how many of the asylum claims are valid and how many aren’t! And, while we’re at it, we might find that many of the “legal” immigrants Texas and the rest of America needs are right there at our borders — just waiting for our legal system to do justice and admit them. Asylum seekers are seeking legal immigration! It the USG that’s acting “illegally” here!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-26-22

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏻🤡HOW THE GOP SOLD OUT AMERICA TO RACISM & MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE: “Trump’s incoherence, his temper, his impulsiveness, his breathtaking ignorance — all of it was well-known among the top tiers of the Republican machinery. But for them, it was simply a challenge to overcome, another hurdle that fate had placed between them and their holy grail of judges and tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Not once did I ever hear any concern that just maybe they were working to install a useful idiot who truly was an idiot, with absolutely zero leadership qualities one ordinarily looks for in someone aspiring to become the chief executive of the world’s remaining superpower.”

Trump Clown — Donald J. Trump
Famous American Clown
(Officially titled “Ass Clown”)
Artist: Scott Scheidly
Orlando, FL
Reproduced by permission

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-useful-idiot-book_n_5f4bf594c5b697186e379058

The following is excerpted from “The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party with Racism and the Rest of Us with Coronavirus,” by S.V. Dáte.

A pandemic never occurred to them. The idea that Donald Trump would ever be required to sit still, pay attention and make rational decisions that would determine whether hundreds of thousands of Americans would live or die not once crossed the minds of those who put him into the Oval Office.

Oh, they all had their various reasons for wanting him there. For white evangelical Christians, he had explicitly promised to appoint the federal judges they had so longed for to turn back the nation’s cultural clock. For Mitch McConnell, a Trump win — as unlikely as it seemed — was the only real path to making sure Republicans retained control of the Senate and he himself remained majority leader. And for Vladimir Putin, having Trump in the White House — as unlikely as it seemed — would be a dream come true, an opportunity to wreak havoc on his longtime adversary and weaken its historic alliance with Western Europe.

Russia’s dictator, of course, was not remotely interested in what Trump’s ascension might mean for Americans in the event of an actual calamity. If they were dumb enough to vote for him, well, they deserved whatever they got. In any event, it was not his problem.

As for Trump’s American supporters, perhaps so much time had passed since Sept. 11, 2001, that the idea of a genuine national emergency was but a faded memory. Perhaps the quiet competence that President Barack Obama’s team had employed with the 2009 flu pandemic and later with the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak had diminished the perceived threat that a simple virus could present.

For whatever reason, even as they watched the noise and chaos and nonsense generated by candidate Trump for a full year and a half, the consequences of a real crisis requiring real leadership actually happening on the watch of a President Trump had never really dawned on them.

True, there existed then — and continues to exist today — a significant cadre of Republican voters who genuinely believed that the Trump they watched on “The Apprentice” was the real Donald Trump. That he was a real billionaire, based on his own efforts and smarts. That he was capable of making rational, quality decisions based on the facts presented to him.

That excuse, though, does not work for those Republicans from McConnell on down to the congressional candidates who had occasion to speak with Trump in person. As one top Republican National Committee member told me after his first face-to-face encounter with Trump two months before the 2016 election: “OK. Our guy is insane.”

His was not a minority view, by the way. Trump’s incoherence, his temper, his impulsiveness, his breathtaking ignorance — all of it was well-known among the top tiers of the Republican machinery. But for them, it was simply a challenge to overcome, another hurdle that fate had placed between them and their holy grail of judges and tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Not once did I ever hear any concern that just maybe they were working to install a useful idiot who truly was an idiot, with absolutely zero leadership qualities one ordinarily looks for in someone aspiring to become the chief executive of the world’s remaining superpower.

It was an abject failure of the Republican Party’s responsibility to the country. In our two-party system, both have a duty to weed out candidates who fail the threshold test of commander-in-chief and, relatedly, emergency-manager-in-chief. Through the summer and fall of 2015 and then the early nominating contests of 2016, it was clear as day that Trump was not credible in those roles, and yet neither the remaining candidates nor the party leadership made a serious effort to ensure his defeat.

True, there were some who voiced warnings. Jeb Bush called Trump a “chaos candidate” who would bring us a “chaos presidency.” But there was also Ted Cruz, who literally praised Trump for the better part of a year, refusing to criticize him in the hopes of one day inheriting his voters. By the time Cruz did unload on him, it was seen as sour grapes. Such was the cynicism and game-playing that put us where we are.

. . . .

****************
Read the full article at the link.

It’s what happens when immoral and unprincipled GOP politicos can’t tell the difference between a “useful idiot” and a “total blithering (racist) idiot.”

“It was an abject failure of the Republican Party’s responsibility to the country.” As usual, it’s left for the Dems and the majority of us to clean up the the GOP’s disgraceful (and fundamentally un-American) mess! That’s why in addition to expelling the “Clown Prince” it’s essential to remove the GOP and “Moscow Mitch” from their abusive and destructive control of the Senate!

Check out this page from “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson:

“Caste” Isabel Wilkerson — “Caste”
By Isabel Wilkerson
Random House

Sound familiar? It should! Trumpism and Nazism share a common “core strategy:” Racism based on “dehumanization” of “the other” before the law — otherwise known as “Dred Scottification.” It’s in full operation by the Trump regime. And, most shockingly, a majority of our Supremes have “gone along to get along!” Very similar to the cowardly, complicit, and ultimately disastrous and deadly performance of the German judiciary in the face of Hitler’s racism!

There is no excuse for Trump, and there is no way that our our democratic republic can withstand another four years of his lies, bias, racism, “breathtaking ignorance,” corruption, cowardice, bullying, and “malicious incompetence!”

This November, vote like your life and future of the world depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

09-06-20

SEN. CORNYN (R-TX) OK WITH ETHNIC CLEANSING OF KURDS AS LONG AS NO AMERICAN GETS HURT — Genocide (Particularly On Former Allies) Can Get Messy, So Best Get Out Of The Way So You Don’t Get Splattered With Blood On Your Way Out!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-cornyn-defends-trump-kurds_n_5db1a0f3e4b0131fa99a9fba

Hayley Miller reports for HuffPost:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) defended President Donald Trump’s widely condemned decision to withdraw American troops from northern Syria, claiming it was an appropriate move if Turkey was “trying to ethnically cleanse” U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in the region.

“If Turkey was planning on coming into northern Syria and trying to ethnically cleanse the Kurds, and U.S. troops were caught in the middle, I am not completely convinced that it was a bad idea to get them out of harm’s way,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday, reported The Dallas Morning News.

He added, however, that he wishes there had been “more consultation with Congress and others and our allies in the region.”

The Republican lawmaker’s comments came just hours after Trump announced he was lifting sanctions against Turkey, which agreed to a cease-fire against the Kurds in northeast Syria. Trump took credit for the deal, though Democrats and some Republicans say his decision to upend American foreign policy in the region enabled Turkey to launch a military offensive against the Kurds earlier this month.

Fighting between Turkey and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the main U.S. ally in the fight against the self-declared Islamic State in Syria, has resulted in the deaths of dozens of people and the displacement of thousands more.

During the fighting, Turkish-backed Arab fighters killed Hevrin Khalaf, the head of a Kurdish political party. A militant group posted a gruesome video of her execution online.

Foreign policy experts warned Trump’s decision to essentially abandon the Kurds could lead to their genocide by Turkey, which considers them to be terrorist insurgents. The House overwhelmingly passed a resolution last week to condemn the president’s move.

But Trump patted himself on the back Wednesday, claiming the U.S. and “nobody else” was responsible for avoiding all-out war in northern Syria.

“We have done them a great service and we’ve done a great job for all of them,” Trump said of Turkey, Syria and the Kurds. “And now, we’re getting out. … Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand.”

Cornyn told reporters Wednesday that things need to “play out a little bit” before he could say whether he felt Trump’s decision to lift sanctions was the right move.

Asked Thursday about his “ethnically cleanse” remark, Cornyn appeared to walk it back some.

“I wasn’t very clear,” he told HuffPost. “If the U.S. isn’t committed to stay in Syria, getting our troops out of harm’s way where they might be injured or killed during the inevitable conflict between the Turks and the Kurds was something I was concerned about.”

Igor Bobic contributed reporting.

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

Start a war, abandon your allies, give away their homes in a cease fire, protect the oil fields, lend a hand to Erdogan, Putin, and Assad, three of the worst autocrats around (but not as inept as “autocrat wannabe” Trump). Now that’s a foreign policy that the GOP can be proud of.

Also, since we have declared Syria to be of “no particular concern” to us, for just whom are we “protecting” the Syrian oil fields: Putin? Assad? Erdogan? Iran?

And from whom? An ISIS that was once largely beaten but that now has been rejuvenated by Trump’s treacherous policies?

PWS

10-24-19

CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: Trump & His GOP’s Cowardly “War On Children” Should Outrage Every American! — Join The “New Due Process Army” & Fight To Save Humanity!

Catherine writes in the Washington Post:

You’ve heard of the Wars on Drugs, Terror, Poverty, even Women. Well, welcome to the War on Children.

It’s being waged by the Trump administration and other right-wing public officials, regardless of any claimed “family values.”

For evidence, look no further than the report released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services’s own inspector general. It details the trauma suffered by immigrant children separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s evil “zero tolerance” policy.

Thousands of children were placed in overcrowded centers ill-equipped to provide care for them physically or psychologically. Visits to 45 centers around the country resulted in accounts of children who cried inconsolably; who were drugged; who were promised family reunifications that never came; whose severe emotional distress manifested in phantom chest pains, with complaints that “every heartbeat hurts”; who thought their parents had abandoned them or had been murdered.

Such state-sanctioned child abuse was designed to serve as a “deterrent” for asylum-seeking families, as then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and other administration officials made clear.

Of course, they failed to recognize just how horrific are the conditions these asylum-seeking children are fleeing — conditions that further decreased HHS’s ability to adequately care for them.

“Staff in multiple facilities reported cases of children who had been kidnapped or raped” back in their home countries, the IG report states. Other children witnessed family members raped or murdered.

But hey, Trump believes these kiddos must be punished further for the crime of seeking refuge — a.k.a., the “invasion” of America.

Despite this and other abundant evidence that government facilities are not able to care for children for extended periods, last month, the administration also announced a new policy that would allow it to keep children (along with their families) in jail-like conditions for longer periods of time.

This is hardly the only way the administration has knowingly enacted policies that harm children.

In August, it finalized a rule that would make it more difficult for immigrants to receive green cards if they have used certain safety-net services they’re legally entitled to — or if government officials suspect they might ever use such services. Confusion and fear about the policy and whom it affects abound. This has already created a “chilling effect” for usage of social services, with immigrant parents disenrolling even their U.S.-citizen children just to be safe.

Last fall, for instance, I interviewed a green-card-holding mother who decided not to enroll her underweight newborn in a program that would have provided free formula (even though the program in question was not mentioned in the rule, and the baby is a U.S. citizen). Huge recent declines in children’s Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollment are also believed to be at least partly a result of fears about this policy change.

If Your Dog Does This, It Could Be Them Signaling A Warning

And lest you think only immigrant or brown children are being targeted in this war: U.S. servicemembers’ children, of all sorts of backgrounds, are being hurt, too.

The Trump administration is siphoning billions from various defense projects to fund border wall construction, despite promises that Mexico would pay for it. This might sound unlikely to affect kids, but somehow the Trump administration found a way. Among the projects losing funds are schools for the children of U.S. servicemembers based in Kentucky, Germany and Japan, and a child-care center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

Trump’s proposed federal budgets have likewise axed funding for other programs that serve children, such as subsidized school meals and Medicaid. Indeed, both federal and state GOP officials more broadly are still working to kill the Medicaid expansion, as well as other Affordable Care Act provisions that benefit kids.

The GOP has likewise ignored the pleas of children who want their lives protected from gun violence, or who want their futures protected from a warming planet.

A year ago, I offered a suggestion : that Democrats make children the theme of their midterm campaign. They mostly ignored me and still did okay. Nonetheless, I’m re-upping it.

Because even without Trump’s baby jails and proposed Medicaid cuts, our country’s emphasis on children’s well- being is seriously deficient.

Last year, for the first time on record, we spent a greater share of the federal budget servicing the national debt than we did on children, according to an analysis out next week from First Focus on Children. Spending on children as a share of the federal budget is also expected to shrink over the coming decade, crowded out by both debt service and spending on the elderly.

This is despite the fact that spending on children (especially low-income children) has among the highest returns on investment of any form of government spending.

Whatever the opposite of Trump’s War on Children is, that’s what Democrats should be running on.

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

Thanks, Catherine, for speaking out so clearly and articulately about what has become our #1 National Disgrace: Trump’s War On Human Decency & Future Generations and its sleazy cast of supporting characters like Pence, Kelly, Miller, Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies,” Homan, Albence, Morgan, “Cooch Cooch,” “Gonzo Apocalypto,” Barr, Cotton, Graham, and others with their glib immorality and disregard for truth, our Constitution, the rule of law, and basic human values.

Who thought the U.S. would ever stoop so low — to use our government’s power and might to abuse defenseless, already traumatized, and highly vulnerable children. (Catherine’s article does’t even get into how, with the help of scofflaw Attorneys General Sessions and Barr and some complacent Article III Judges, the Administration has manipulated asylum law and Immigration “Court” procedures to deny children and other asylum seekers the legal protection to which they are entitled under U.S. and international laws.)

There are many groups out there in the “New Due Process Army” fighting every day against this kind of outrageous behavior by our elected leaders, their corrupt cronies, and their many “go along to get along” enablers in the bureaucracy. Join or donate to one today!

The war to save America and humanity from Trump’s vile and cowardly agenda is one that we can’t afford to lose: For the sake of future generations!

PWS

09-06-19

RUDE AWAKENING? — Some In GOP Finally Concerned About Idiotic Actions Of White Nationalist “Tariff Man” — But Don’t Expect Much Action Given GOP’s Endemic Cowardice In The Face Of Trump!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/us/politics/republicans-mexico-tariffs.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fcatie-edmondson&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Catie Edmonson & Maggie Haberman report for the NY Times:

June 4, 2019

WASHINGTON — Republican senators sent the White House a sharp message on Tuesday, warning that they were almost uniformly opposed to President Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports, just hours after the president said lawmakers would be “foolish” to try to stop him.

Mr. Trump’s latest threat to impose 5 percent tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico, rising to as high as 25 percent until the Mexican government stems the flow of migrants, has prompted some of the most serious defiance in the Republican ranks since the president took office.

Republican senators emerged from a closed-door lunch at the Capitol angered by the briefing they received from a deputy White House counsel and an assistant attorney general on the legal basis for Mr. Trump to impose new tariffs by declaring a national emergency at the southern border.

“I want you to take a message back” to the White House, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, told the lawyers, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Cruz warned that “you didn’t hear a single yes” from the Republican conference. He called the proposed tariffs a $30 billion tax increase on Texans.

“I will yield to nobody in passion and seriousness and commitment for securing the border,” Mr. Cruz later told reporters. “But there’s no reason for Texas farmers and ranchers and manufacturers and small businesses to pay the price of massive new taxes.”

The president’s latest foray into a global trade war has troubled economists and roiled stock and bond markets. The Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome H. Powell, hinted on Tuesday that the central bank could cut interest rates if the trade war started to hurt the economy. The remarks sent stocks higher for their strongest day in months.

But senators were mindful of the long-term stakes for their home states.

[Mr. Powell’s comments sent a signal that the central bank was watching Mr. Trump’s trade wars warily.]

Texas would be hit the hardest by the proposed tariffs on Mexican products, followed by Michigan, California, Illinois and Ohio, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A 25 percent tariff would threaten $26.75 billion of Texas imports.

“We’re holding a gun to our own heads,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.

If Mr. Trump were to declare an emergency to impose the tariffs, the House and the Senate could pass a resolution disapproving them. But such a resolution would almost certainly face a presidential veto, meaning that both the House and the Senate would have to muster two-thirds majorities to beat Mr. Trump.

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said he warned the lawyers that the Senate could muster an overwhelming majority to beat back the tariffs, even if Mr. Trump were to veto a resolution disapproving them. Republicans may be broadly supportive of Mr. Trump’s push to build a wall and secure the border, he said, but they oppose tying immigration policy to the imposition of tariffs on Mexico.

“The White House should be concerned about what that vote would result in, because Republicans really don’t like taxing American consumers and businesses,” Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Trump, just hours before at a news conference in London with the British prime minister, Theresa May, said he planned to move forward with imposing tariffs on Mexican imports next week as part of his effort to stem the flow of migrants crossing the southern border.

“I think it’s more likely that the tariffs go on, and we’ll probably be talking during the time that the tariffs are on, and they’re going to be paid,” Mr. Trump said. When asked about Senate Republicans discussing ways to block the tariffs, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think they will do that.”

He said, “I think if they do, it’s foolish.”

Republicans are still holding out hope that the tariffs can be avoided. Mexico’s foreign minister is leading a delegation to Washington this week to try to defuse the situation with the Trump administration. A White House meeting with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday could prove pivotal.

“There is not much support for tariffs in my conference, that’s for sure,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. “Our hope is that the tariffs will be avoided, and we will not have to answer any hypotheticals.”

A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.

Leaving the lunch, lawmakers complained they were facing too many such hypotheticals. Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, asked the lawyers what the precedent for imposing tariffs through an emergency declaration would be. His question was left unanswered. In fact, since the National Emergencies Act was signed in 1976, it has never been used to impose tariffs on a single country.

Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said he “would not be inclined to vote on a tariff against a friend,” but ventured that “what you’re likely to see is the Mexican government and our government finding some way to work on this collaboratively and not reach a tariff.”

Others were less convinced.

“He’s committed to this,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, who spoke with Mr. Trump on Sunday and was sure the president would proceed with the tariffs, regardless of the concerns. “He’s serious as four heart attacks and a stroke. He’s moving forward.”

Opponents of the tariffs would use the same motion of disapproval that they tried to use to block the president from grabbing federal money for a border wall that was not appropriated for that purpose. That motion did pass Congress with significant Republican support, but not enough to overcome Mr. Trump’s veto.

Mr. Johnson warned White House officials that they should not count on a veto override vote going the same way. But Mr. Trump has supporters, and Republicans, especially in the House, have been loath to oppose him on immigration. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, once a moderate on immigration policy, took to Twitter to say the president was within his rights to use tariffs to force Mexico’s hand.

Marco Rubio

✔@marcorubio

The law provides @potus broad authority to control transactions with other nations if there is an unusual & extraordinary threat to the national security &/or economy of the U.S.. Unlawful migration & drug flow transiting through #Mexico into U.S. clearly poses such a threat.

1,347

6:28 PM – Jun 3, 2019

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840 people are talking about this

Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, expressed support for the president, as did Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is up for re-election in 2020 and faced blistering criticism after flip-flopping this year on whether he would vote to disapprove the president’s emergency declaration to build the wall.

“I think Mexico could help us solve the crisis down at the border,” Mr. Tillis told reporters. “What’s the tax on handling 80,000 additional illegal immigrants coming across the border, housing them, adjudicating them? You’ve got to look at the total cost of the prices.”

If a revolt comes to pass, it would start in the Senate, but House Republicans would have to join the effort to overturn a veto.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus, declined to forecast whether the House would try to block the tariffs on Mexico.

“The administration’s tariff policy is erratic and all over the place,” he said. “We will see what the Senate Republicans ultimately decide to do, but we will certainly strongly consider proceeding in a way that is appropriate and consistent with our legislative powers.”

Mr. Trump seemed unimpressed when a reporter noted that Mexican officials said that they had increased the number of migrants they had apprehended coming into their country from elsewhere in Central America. He offered no specifics on what it would take to keep the tariffs from being imposed.

“Look, millions of people are flowing through Mexico,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s unacceptable.”

Catie Edmondson reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from London. Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Emily Cochrane and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting from Washington.

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

Rubio’s pro-Trump tweet seems pretty off-base. Other than the fact that Trump is incompetently using Border Patrol on a self-created emergency that could be handled by Inspectors and Asylum Officers at ports of entry, allowing Border Patrol Officers to focus on more important law enforcement duties, there doesn’t appear to be any known connection between families from the Northern Triangle turning themselves in and applying for legal asylum under our laws and “drug smuggling.” Nor do such individuals who turn themselves in present any known threat to either national security or our economy (particularly since Trump plans to bar them from working unless and until they actually receive asylum under a system he has intentionally skewed against them). Indeed, smugglers would have to be pretty stupid to use individuals who intended to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol at the border as “drug couriers.”

On the other hand, Trump’s incompetent handling of the border situation, his gross misuse of national emergency and tariff authorities, and his attacks on trade with Canada and Mexico, two of our major allies and trading partners, does promise to threaten both our econommy and our national security. Rather ironic that the asylum applicants are the ones using our legal system while Trump is the one trashing it in multiple ways.

Sen. Tillis also seems out of bounds. Individuals have a right to apply for ayslum. Undoubtedly, the number of individuals now applying could be processed fairly and legally for much less than Trump’s tariffs would cost U.S. consumers, not to mention the money wasted on useless walls, unnecessary detention, and misuse of American troops. Even spending some money on helping Mexico improve its system and joining Mexico’s initiative to improve conditions in the Northern Triangle would be more cost effective than tariffs.

Why would Tillis expect Mexico, a smaller and poorer country, to do a better job of stopping the flow than the U.S. has? How would he expect Mexico to process all the migrants without major human rights violations? Wouldn’t wrecking the Mexican economy, along with our own, restart the flow of Mexicans going north that actually has been reversed in recent years? Pretty scary how little the GOP understands about migration and sound immigration policies.

When policy is made based on irrational factors such as White Nationalism, racism, contempt for foreign countries, and disregard for human rights, bad things are going to happen. But, I’m still not betting on the GOP to stand up to Trump. Lots of grumbling; but, in the past, such grumbling has seldom been turned into action.

PWS

06-05-19

WASHPOST: RACISTS FIND HOME IN TODAY’S GOP —From Dissing Mexican Americans, To Barring Muslims, Abandoning Refugees, Restricting Legal Immigration, Slamming Families, & Encouraging Voter Suppression, GOP Appears To Be “All In” On “Built To Fail” Strategy Of Making America White Again: “the larger moral cowardice that has overtaken the party.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/im-not-going-there-as-trump-hurls-racial-invective-most-republicans-stay-silent/2018/08/18/aab7fd8a-a189-11e8-83d2-70203b8d7b44_story.html

By Ashley Parker

, Reporter

Seung Min Kim

, Reporter

Robert Costa

, Reporter

August 18 at 6:14 PM

The president of the United States had just lobbed another racially charged insult — this time calling his former top African American adviser a “dog” — but Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) had no interest in talking about it.

“I’ve got more important things on my mind, so I really don’t have a comment on that,” said the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, chuckling at the question.

Has President Trump ever said anything on race that made Cornyn uncomfortable? “I think the most important thing is to pay attention to what the president does, which I think has been good for the country,” the senator demurred.

What about his constituents back home — are they concerned? “I know you have to ask these questions but I’m not going to talk about that,” Cornyn said, politely ending the brief interview in the basement of the U.S. Capitol. “I just think that’s an endless little wild goose chase and I’m not going there.”

And so it went last week among Republicans: As Trump immersed the nation in a new wave of fraught battles over race, most GOP lawmakers tried to ignore the topic altogether. The studied avoidance is a reflection of the enduring reluctance of Republicans to confront Trump’s often divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, in part because the president remains deeply popular within a party dominated by older white voters.

The Washington Post reached out to all 51 Republican senators and six House Republican leaders asking them to participate in a brief interview about Trump and race. Only three senators agreed to participate: Jeff Flake of Arizona, David Perdue of Georgia and Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate.

Trump has a history of mocking his black critics’ intelligence

President Trump insulted NBA player LeBron James’s intelligence in a tweet Aug. 3. It’s not the first time Trump has taken this approach. (Elyse Samuels /The Washington Post)

Flake, a frequent Trump critic who is retiring, rattled off examples when asked if there were times he felt Trump had been racially insensitive.

“It started long before his campaign, the whole Barack Obama, the birtherism . . . that was abhorrent, I thought,” Flake said in a phone interview. “And then you know, the Mexican rapists . . . on his first official day as a campaign. And then you know, Judge Curiel, the statement that he couldn’t judge because of his heritage. Failure to, you know, condemn in Charlottesville. Just the willingness to go there, all the time. Muslim ban. This kind of divide-and-conquer strategy. It’s just — it’s been one thing after another.”

Six other lawmakers granted impromptu interviews when approached in the Capitol, although most declined to be specific about whether they were uncomfortable with any of Trump’s statements on race. One exception was Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, another Trump critic who is leaving Congress in January.

“It’s a formula that I think they think works for them, as it relates to winning,” Corker said, referring to the use of divisive racial issues by Trump and his advisers. “I think that’s their kind of governing. I think that’s how they think they stay in power, is to divide.”

Several other lawmakers said they did not like some of Trump’s language, especially on race, but did not consider Trump to be racist.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said Trump’s description of former black adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman as a “dog” was “not appropriate, ever.” But he stopped short of pointing to a time when he felt the president had crossed a racial boundary.

“I just think that’s the way he reacts and the way he interacts with people who attack him,” Thune said. “I don’t condone it. But I think it’s probably part built into his — it’s just going to be in his DNA.”

The month of August — which included the first anniversary of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville — has seen Trump unleash a steady tide of racially charged invective, including questioning the intelligence of basketball star LeBron James, attacking Chinese college students and reviving his attacks on anthem protests by black NFL players. At one point last week, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she could not guarantee that no audio recording exists of Trump using the n-word, as Manigault Newman alleges in her book.

Republicans have struggled over issues of race since the Civil Rights era, with periodic efforts to appeal to blacks, Latinos and other minorities. Trump’s critics within the party fear that, in an increasingly diverse nation, the president is reopening wounds many Republicans had sought to heal.

Trump and his allies frequently counter by offering economic data that they say is favorable to minorities, seeking to separate Trump’s harsh rhetoric from his policy agenda.

But some longtime party stalwarts worry about the long-term consequences of the party’s near-silence on race.

Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican consultant and vocal Trump critic, bemoaned “the larger moral cowardice that has overtaken the party.”

“Trump’s shtick is that he’s the grievance candidate,” Murphy said. “He’s focused on the economically squeezed Caucasian voter. . . . He is speaking to that rage. Mexican rapists, clever Chinese traders, African American people as dogs. That’s Trump’s DNA.”

. . . .

Perdue said in an interview that he believes Trump is results-focused and “trying to be all-inclusive,” and that Democrats are the ones using race as a political issue.

“Well, I hope they will,” Perdue said. “I have many friends in the African American community and they’re tired of being treated as pawns.”

But Republicans who believe that Trump has galloped past norms of civil society on race and other issues worry about the costs the party may ultimately pay, both politically and morally.

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Not surprising to see modern-day Jim Crows like Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) out there carrying water for the Trump/Sessions brand of 21st Century racism. After all, in the face of the overwhelming evidence that America needs more legal immigration and that family-based immigration is good for America, Perdue is one of the chief sponsors of the CIS-inspired bogus merit-based immigration bill that actually reduces legal immigration in a losing attempt to bar immigrants of color and “Keep America White As Long As Possible.” Donald Trump trying to be “all-inclusive?” How’s that David, by dissing African-Americans, calling them “dogs,” dehumanizing immigrants, slurring Hispanics, taking protections away from transgender kids, taking away security clearances of critics, attacking the free press, attacking the Justice Department, the FBI and the intelligence community, promoting a false narrative about voter fraud, or telling thousands of lies since assuming office? Which one of these is “all inclusive?” The only “inclusive” thing about Donald Trump is that the majority of Americans who aren’t in his overwhelmingly White Guy “core.” are all included in his insults, lies, and disrespect!

I also thought that the final comment about the late George Wallace was telling. Yup, Wallace accomplished some things in Alabama including getting more textbooks. (Remember that Adolf Hitler built great Autobahns too!) But, the screaming crowds of White Folks who supported Wallace on the national stage weren’t excited about textbooks or better roads — they loved the message of racism and White Supremacy. And, that’s exactly how history will remember Wallace and his supporters — not for the textbooks, but for the public defense and advocacy of racism (just like Hitler isn’t remembered for his Autobahns). Which is how Trump, his “base,” and his many enablers (whether enthusiastic, merely willing, or downright cowardly) will also be remembered!

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Still doubt the racism of Trump and his agenda. check out this article by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic entitled “The First White President:” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/

It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power. Trump inaugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican “rapists,” only to be later alleged by multiple accusers, and by his own proud words, to be a sexual violator himself. White supremacy has always had a perverse sexual tint. Trump’s rise was shepherded by Steve Bannon, a man who mocks his white male critics as “cucks.” The word, derived from cuckold, is specifically meant to debase by fear and fantasy—the target is so weak that he would submit to the humiliation of having his white wife lie with black men. That the slur cuck casts white men as victims aligns with the dicta of whiteness, which seek to alchemize one’s profligate sins into virtue. So it was with Virginia slaveholders claiming that Britain sought to make slaves of them. So it was with marauding Klansmen organized against alleged rapes and other outrages. So it was with a candidate who called for a foreign power to hack his opponent’s email and who now, as president, is claiming to be the victim of “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.”

In Trump, white supremacists see one of their own. Only grudgingly did Trump denounce the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, one of its former grand wizards—and after the clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Duke in turn praised Trump’s contentious claim that “both sides” were responsible for the violence.

Trump’s political career began in advocacy of birtherism. But long before that, he had made his worldview clear.

To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a “piece of ass.” The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it”), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy—to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump’s counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible.

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I encourage you to read Coates’s entire totally cogent expose of the Supreme ugliness of Trump, his “team,” and his core supporters. No, you can’t really separate Donald Trump’s policies from his racism.

That’s why America needs regime change at the ballot box. NOW!

PWS

08-18-18

HERE’S THE VIDEO LINK TO THE APRIL 18, 2018 SENATE HEARINGS ON IMMIGRATION COURT REFORM — SEE & HEAR JUDGE A. ASHLEY TABADDOR’S TESTIMONY AND FOLLOWING Q&A HERE!

Here’s the link to the hearing. I had to move the “time bar” at the bottom to about 28 minutes in before the “action” started. Thanks to both Laura Lynch of AILA and Nolan Rappaport for forwarding this to me.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/strengthening-and-reforming-americas-immigration-court-system

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PWS

04-19-18

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND: It Didn’t Take This GOP Controlled Congress Long To Forget About Saving The “Dreamers!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/with-no-more-deadline-congress-has-stopped-talking-about-immigration/2018/03/01/12d66ad6-1c9d-11e8-b2d9-08e748f892c0_story.html

Paul Kane reports for the Washington Post:

“Take away a deadline, and Congress will simply lose its focus on any issue — even the heated debate around immigration.

At Tuesday morning’s House Republican briefing, just one of the five GOP leaders made a reference to the issue, and it was a passing one — a proposal meant mostly to placate conservatives, not a real solution that could get signed into law.

Across the Capitol, a few hours later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and four senior Republicans did their weekly briefing. Topics ranged from gun background checks to the Winter Olympics. There was no immigration talk at all.

The four Senate Democrats who followed McConnell also made no mention of the looming Monday deadline to resolve the fate of 800,000 undocumented immigrants who have been shielded from the threat of deportation under an expiring executive order.

It’s understandable that most of the attention has shifted toward the fallout of the Valentine’s Day massacre of 17 students and faculty at a Florida high school, with the media intensely focused on gun laws and school violence.

Capitol Police remove a banner as members of the Catholic community and supporters of DACA recipients are arrested during a protest on Capitol Hill this week. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

All but one of the 17 questions fielded by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), at their separate press briefings, related in some way to the Parkland, Fla., shootings. The lone outlier focused on the memorial service for the Rev. Billy Graham.

This was supposed to be the week when Congress would force itself to resolve the dispute over the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order, which President Trump announced in September he would revoke on March 5, giving Congress a six-month window to resolve the issue.

It was, in some ways, a masterful idea by the Trump West Wing, living up to his tough talk on immigration during the presidential campaign in 2016 but also foisting the issue into the laps of lawmakers.

But now, amid legislative and judicial gridlock, lawmakers and the media have moved on to other topics. First, the Senate failed two weeks ago to approve any compromise. Then, the Supreme Court declared it would not wade into the legal challenges to the DACA program until it plays out in lower federal court rulings — a legal process with no obvious end date in sight.

“We would be well advised to continue our work on it, but it seems to me that a lot of the air is out of the balloon here in the Capitol, and people don’t sense its urgency,” said Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the Republican whip who had been leading bipartisan talks.

Cornyn’s lead negotiating partner, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the Democratic whip, has declared helping the “dreamers,” as the undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children are known, an urgent, moral mandate. But even he understands why the issue has fallen off the radar.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) flanked by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), left, and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.), speaks with reporters this week about school safety measures in response to the Parkland, Fla., massacre that left 17 dead. The Republicans made no mention of immigration reform. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

“Along comes this tragedy, in the high school in Parkland, Florida, and the response of the young people and the national response of the subject, it blows away all other conversations about DACA and the Dream Act, North Korean nuclear threats,” Durbin said.

He and Cornyn have not held any serious immigration talks in weeks, he said — and he added that the same is true for a separate bipartisan group of centrist senators. And none are on tap.

“We talk but at this point we don’t have a plan,” he said.

Just like that, in the span of a few days — Senate gridlock, a madman’s bullets killing children and a judicial ruling — and the issue that consumed Washington for most of December, January and February is no longer worth a mention at a leadership news conference.

That’s not to say the issue has subsided from the political debate. Activists are trying to keep the pressure on Trump and Congress, with a rally planned for Sunday in Washington to draw attention to Monday’s DACA deadline that is set to pass without much fanfare.

In southwestern Pennsylvania, Republicans are furiously trying to stave off an embarrassing loss in a special election to fill a vacant House seat. The district tilted toward Trump by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016, a year in which Democrats did not even field a candidate against the longtime Republican incumbent, Tim Murphy, who resigned amid a scandal late last year.

Now, to halt the momentum for Democrat Conor Lamb, a GOP super PAC called the Congressional Leadership Fund has unleashed a new adthat ties Lamb to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her hometown San Francisco’s status as a “sanctuary city” for people in the country illegally.

“Conor Lamb wants to help Nancy Pelosi give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants,” the narrator says. “Sanctuary cities and amnesty for illegals. Conor Lamb is a Pelosi liberal.”

Lamb, 33, a former assistant U.S. attorney, does support a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, but he has stated that he will not vote for Pelosi as speaker. That position was highlighted in a new ad he is running that calls for new leadership in both parties.

Clearly, Republicans believe the issue still has resonance with their conservative base voters, especially if it is mixed in with images of Pelosi. And Lamb seems to be aware of the threat.

But Republicans could face their own political dilemma if the federal courts rule that DACA was illegal, which would effectively reinstate Trump’s order and revoke protections from those 800,000 people. Deportations could begin quickly.

“I don’t believe that Senator McConnell and the Republicans want to see too many people deported out of Nevada and Arizona in the weeks and months ahead,” Durbin said.

He named two southwestern states with large dreamer populations where Republicans are trying to defend two Senate seats that could flip control of the Senate in the November midterm elections.

Republicans are well aware of the potential for a court ruling at any time.

“I’ve been working in and around courts long enough to know things can turn on a dime,” said Cornyn, who served as Texas attorney general, and on the state Supreme Court, before winning his Senate seat 15 years ago.

That said, Cornyn remains less than optimistic about congressional action until that court order arrives and forces action. Stating the obvious, he said: “We don’t do things around here unless there is a deadline.”

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Given the ugliness surrounding the farcical “debate” about Dreamers in the Senate and pressure exerted by the White Nationalists/Bakuninists in the House, perhaps it’s just as well that Dreamers are “forgotten” for now.

My prediction: It will take “regime change” — however long that might take — to solve the “Dreamers’ dilemma” on a long-term basis. In the meantime, I think that their status and fate will be tied up in the courts for a long, long time — wasteful, but an unfortunate fact of life when we have “Gonzo Government” elected by a minority of voters.

PWS

03-02-18

A WASHINGTON ANOMOLY – THE SENATE IS ABOUT TO EMBARK ON AN “IMMIGRATION DEBATE” WHERE THE OUTCOME HASN’T ACTUALLY BEEN “COOKED” IN ADVANCE! — Tal Tells All @CNN!

“Open-ended immigration debate to grip Senate

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The Senate is set to begin debating immigration Monday evening, and in a rare occurrence for the upper chamber of Congress, no one is quite sure how that will go.

Late Sunday, a group of Republicans introduced a version of President Donald Trump’s proposal on how to handle the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation before Trump decided to terminate it. That is expected to be one of the amendments that will compete for votes this week.

Some things are known: McConnell teed up the debate early Friday morning, as he had pledged, immediately after the Senate voted to end a government shutdown. The bill McConnell chose was entirely unrelated to immigration, which he said he planned to do to allow a blank slate for proposals to compete for votes.

Let the debate begin

At 5:30 p.m. Monday, senators will vote on whether to open debate on the bill, a vote that is largely expected to succeed.

From there, a lot will be up to senators. Both sides will be able to offer amendments that will compete for 60 votes — the threshold to advance legislation in the Senate. It’s expected that amendments will be subject to that threshold and will require consent agreements from senators for votes, opening up the process to negotiations.

If a proposal can garner 60 votes, it will likely pass the Senate, but it will still face an uncertain fate. The House Republican leadership has made no commitment to consider the Senate bill or hold a debate of its own, and House Speaker Paul Ryan has pledged repeatedly to consider a bill only if President Donald Trump will sign it.

Different groups have been working to prepare legislation for the immigration effort, including the conservatives who worked off the White House framework and a group of bipartisan senators who have been meeting nearly daily to try to reach agreement on the issue. Trump has proposed giving 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship in exchange for $25 billion for his long-promised border wall and a host of other strict immigration reforms.

The bill from GOP senators largely sticks to those bullet points, including sharp cuts to family-based migration, ending the diversity lottery and giving federal authorities enhanced deportation and detention powers.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of about 20 senators was drafting legislation over the weekend to offer perhaps multiple amendments and potentially keep the debate focused on a narrow DACA-border security bill. Multiple members of the group have expressed confidence that only such a narrow approach could pass the Senate — and hope that a strong vote could move Trump to endorse the approach and pave the way for passage in the House.

Advocates on the left may offer a clean DACA fix, like the DREAM Act, as well as the conservative White House proposal — though neither is expected to have 60 votes.

The move to hold an unpredictable Senate debate next week fulfills the promise McConnell made on the Senate floor to end the last government shutdown in mid-January, when he pledged to hold a neutral debate on the immigration issue that was “fair to all sides.”

Even Sunday, leadership aides weren’t able to say entirely how the week would go. The debate could easily go beyond one week, and with a scheduled recess coming next week, it could stretch on through February or even longer.

One Democratic aide said there will likely be an effort to reach an agreement between Republicans and Democrats on timing so that amendments can be dealt with efficiently, and, absent that, alternating proposals may be considered under time-consuming procedural steps.

“We just have to see how the week goes and how high the level of cooperation is,” the aide said.

Many Democrats and moderate Republicans were placing hope in the bipartisan group’s progress.

“We’re waiting for the moderates to see if they can produce a bill,” said the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, on Thursday. “And considering options, there are lots of them, on the Democratic side. There’s no understanding now about the first Democratic amendment.”

Durbin said traditionally both sides have shared a few amendments with each other to begin to figure out the process’ structure. He also said the bipartisan group could be an influential voting bloc, if they can work together.

“They could be the deciding factor, and I’ve been hopeful that they would be, because I’ve had friends in those Common Sense (Coalition), whatever they call themselves, and reported back the conversations, and I think they’re on the right track.”

As she was leaving the Senate floor Friday night after the Senate voted to pass a budget deal and fund government into March, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins was optimistic about the preparedness of the bipartisan group she has been leading for the all-Senate debate.

“We’ll be ready,” she told reporters.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, who has been working both with the group introducing the White House proposal and the bipartisan group, said late Friday night that his plan is “to get things done.”

“It’s no grand secret that I have no problem with the President’s proposal; the challenge is going to be trying to get 60 votes,” Lankford said. “So I would have no issue with what (Sens. John) Cornyn and (Chuck) Grassley are working on and with the President supporting that, but I also want to continue to try finding out and see, if that doesn’t get 60 votes, what could.”

He said everyone is waiting to find out what happens next.

“Everybody’s trying to figure out the chaos of next week, and I’m with you,” Lankford said. “I don’t know yet how open the process is going to be. I hope it’s very open.”

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

Fortunately, we can rely on Tal’s amazing up to the minute reporting and analysis to keep us abreast of what’s happening on the Senate floor and in the cloakrooms!

Stay tuned!

PWS

02-12-18

SEE, HEAR, READ TAL’S ANALYSIS OF LATEST GOP IMMIGRATION PROPOSAL ON CNN!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/11/politics/republican-senators-white-house-framework/index.html

“GOP senators introduce version of White House immigration framework

By Tal Kopan, CNN
Updated 6:13 PM ET, Sun February 11, 2018
Trump proposes path to citizenship for 1.8M

Washington (CNN)A group of Republican senators on Sunday night released a version of President Donald Trump’s immigration proposal ahead of a floor debate on immigration this week.

The proposal is expected to be one of several amendments the Senate will consider this week as it debates immigration. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has used a bill unrelated to immigration as the starting point for the debate, which will allow senators to offer proposals that can compete for 60 votes to advance.
The bill from Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, James Lankford, Thom Tillis, David Perdue, Tom Cotton and Joni Ernst largely resembles what Trump has proposed.
At its base is still a resolution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation. Trump has decided to terminate the Obama-era program.
With DACA left out again, advocates figure out their next move
With DACA left out again, advocates figure out their next move
The White House proposal offered a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million eligible immigrants, more than the 800,000 of whom registered for DACA in the five years of the program. In exchange, the White House sought upwards of $25 billion for border security and a wall, a number of changes to laws to make it easier to deport and detain immigrants, a substantial cut to legal immigration based on family relationships and an end to the diversity visa lottery.
The Grassley bill essentially makes those bullet points a reality, including the proposals that would toughen immigration enforcement and limiting family-based visas only to spouses and children under 18 years old — a vastly reduced number of eligible immigrants from the current system.
As proposed by the White House, the cuts to the family system and diversity lottery would be used to allow in the 4 million to 5 million immigrants already waiting years — and in some cases decades — in the backlog for visas. Cuts to yearly visas would only occur after that backlog is cleared, allowing Congress time to make reforms, the lawmakers said.
McConnell officially tees up immigration debate next week
McConnell officially tees up immigration debate next week
The bill is not expected to have 60 votes in support of it, the threshold required to advance legislation in the Senate. Democrats have uniformly objected to the cuts to family migration and have issues with the ending of the diversity visa without another way to support immigrants from countries that are otherwise underrepresented in immigration to the US. The so-called reforms to current immigration laws also face steep opposition.“

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Click the above link to see Tal on TV!

Unfortunately, “closing loopholes” is a euphemism for increasing unnecessary, expensive, and inhumane civil immigration detention (the “New American Gulag”).

It also involves denying due process to tens of thousands of “unaccompanied children” seeking protection for which many should qualify were they given a fair opportunity to obtain counsel, adequate time to document applications, and truly fair hearings in Immigration Court.

In plain terms, it’s a cowardly and disingenuous attack on the rights of the most vulnerable migrants. Hopefully there are enough legislators on both sides of the aisle committed to due process, human rights, and just plain human decency to expose and defeat these highly abusive and dishonest parts of the GOP proposal.

PWS

02-11-18

DREAMERS “LEFT OUT” AGAIN – CONTEMPLATE NEXT MOVE – News & Analysis From Tal @ CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/10/politics/daca-left-out-what-next/index.html

The “Amazing Tal” writes:

“Washington (CNN)As the ink dried Friday on a major budget compromise deal in Congress, immigration advocates were taking stock of getting left behind — again — without a resolution for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants on the verge of losing protections.

It’s an open question if there are cards left to play in the push to enshrine the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy into law. While no advocates say they are giving up, many also openly admit that Democrats and allies gave up their best negotiating position on the issue without another clear avenue coming up.

In the meantime, a pending court decision on DACA, which President Donald Trump is terminating, means the immigrants protected by it and who mostly have never known another country than the US, won’t begin losing their protections as planned on March 5 — but their fate could be reversed at any moment by another court decision.

Trump signs massive budget deal after Congress votes to reopen government

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who has long served as one of the most outspoken advocates in Congress for immigration reform, was pessimistic with reporters early Friday morning as Congress passed the deal with virtually every Democratic priority except DACA in it.

“No, I don’t, I don’t,” he said when asked if there was any other way Democrats could exert leverage on the issue. Gutierrez said the plan from the beginning was to either attach a DACA compromise to the must-pass budget deal or raising the debt ceiling, both of which were passed in the early morning hours Friday without DACA. Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva called the episode “disheartening.”

close dialog

“We have decoupled the issues. Your leverage is you want them one and the same,” Gutierrez said. “Do we need a new way forward? Yeah, we’re going to figure out a new way forward.”

Step 1: Senate vote next week

McConnell officially tees up immigration debate next week

There is one glimmer of hope for advocates. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made good on his promise to tee up an immigration debate on the Senate floor next week. Moments after the Senate passed the deal, McConnell filed to have a vote to open debate on an unrelated bill Monday evening — which will kick off a process where an as-yet-unknown number of amendments will be able to compete for a procedural threshold of 60 votes to then pass the Senate.

It was that promise that put in motion the deal that eventually severed DACA from other negotiations but also offers a rare opportunity for lawmakers to compete on a neutral playing field for bipartisan support.

“We’re pivoting, what can you do?” said longtime advocate Frank Sharry, executive director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice. “We’ve had our doubts about the viability of a standalone legislative process but that’s what we’re left with, so we’re hoping to make the most of it. … That will put pressure on the President and the House to do the same.”

Already, groups of lawmakers are preparing for the floor debate, even as it remains unclear how many amendments will be offered, how debate will be structured and how long it might last.

A group of roughly 20 bipartisan senators is drafting legislation over the weekend to offer perhaps multiple amendments and potentially keep the debate focused on a narrow DACA-border security bill. Advocates on the left may offer a clean DACA fix like the Dream Act, and some on the right are drafting a version of the White House proposal that would include $25 billion for a border wall and heavy cuts to legal immigration with a pathway to citizenship — though neither is expected to have 60 votes.

Bipartisan group of senators scrambling to draft immigration bill

“First of all, we have the Senate procedure, which is my hope. We’re working with the (bipartisan group) to see if we can come to a two-pillar solution,” said Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who has long worked on the issue, when asked Thursday what comes next for DACA. “Hopefully we could gather 60 votes for that. And then that would be it — we’d resist everything else, any other amendments, and then go back to the House and create all the pressure in the House to make it happen.”

Step 2: Pressure Ryan

If the Senate can pass a bill, lawmakers hope Trump will fully embrace it, freeing House Speaker Paul Ryan to call it up.

Already as the budget deal was on track for passage, House advocates began a pressure campaign to urge Ryan to make a promise like McConnell — though Ryan continually demurred and insisted instead he’s committed to the issue of immigration and passing a bill the President can support.

Anger rises from left as DACA left out of budget deal again

“I think we have to be realistic,” said Arizona’s Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego. “We’re going to have to deal with reality and find whatever means possible to put pressure on Speaker Ryan and the Republican Party to bring, again, a fair vote on the Dream Act to the floor.”

“I think for me the strategy has to be pressure Ryan and bring it to the floor,” Grijalva said, adding the process should allow any proposal to vie for a majority — even if it doesn’t have a majority of Republican votes. “The Senate, when they gave up on not voting for it, at the very minimum extracted a time certain and a debate on something. We don’t even have that.”

Democrats also may have some Republican supporters in the House to pressure Ryan. A bipartisan group of lawmakers that includes two dozen Republicans sent a letter to Ryan asking to open a floor debate like McConnell.

Republican Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania said he’s been urging fellow moderates to use their numbers the way that conservatives on the right flank do.

“The Freedom Caucus has been effective because they’ll use their power of 24 (votes to deny a majority), and they take the hostage, they’ll do what they have to do,” Dent said. “I tell our members, we put our votes together, we can really direct an outcome. … I suspect if the Senate sends us a bipartisan DACA bill, that’s when we’re going to have to flex our muscles.”

Exclusive: Pressure grows on Paul Ryan to commit to immigration debate

But others have doubts. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a member of the bipartisan group, says he learned his lesson in 2013, when he co-authored legislation that passed the Senate with wide margins but died in the House.

“There are some who believe that if we get a bunch of votes it’ll force the House to do it. I don’t agree,” Rubio said. “We could vote on it 90-10. … This notion that the House is going to listen to what a senator tells them to do is not real.”

Step 3: Other leverage

If the legislative process can’t produce success, advocates say, they will look for any other leverage points they can.

“If that doesn’t work out, then there’s still an omnibus at the end of the day,” said Menendez, referring to the spending bills due in March to fund the government under the topline two-year budget deal passed Friday.

But Gutierrez doubted that approach — scoffing at the idea that Democrats would be taken seriously if they threatened to withhold their votes yet again without success.

“Really?” Gutierrez said about the omnibus as leverage. “Is it plausible? Is it realistic? Can you continue to threaten with something?”

Other options could include a temporary, one-year or two-year extension of DACA without a permanent solution, though lawmakers have decried that option.

Still, many aren’t ready to give up hope.

“This President clearly wants to get it done, I think the majority of Republicans want to get it done and the majority of Democrats want to get it done. Can we reach that balance? We can get there, I feel very confident we can get there,” said Florida’s Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.”

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Although it should be a “no brainer,” I’m not as confident as Rep. Diaz-Balart that this group can “get to yes.” A fair resolution of the “Dreamers” situation just isn’t very high on the GOP agenda, particularly in the House. And, both the Dreamers and the Dems are coming to grips with the obvious reality: if you want to set or control the agenda, you have to win elections!

We need Julia Preston to lock these folks in a room for awhile!

PWS

02-10-18

NIGHT SHIFT W/ TAL @ CNN – “CLARIFYING” THE UNCLEAR STATUS OF DACA IF CONGRESS PUNTS AGAIN – “It’s Complicated!” — PLUS “BONUS COVERAGE” OF OTHER IMMIGRATION “HOT NEWS” BY TAL & HER CNN COLLEAGUES!

“Intrepid 24-7-365” Immigration Reporter Tal Kopan and her wonderful CNN colleagues provide up to the minute coverage of the latest developments. Thanks, Tal, for all that you and your colleagues do!

Despite fight in Congress over immigration, the DACA deadline is up in the air

By Tal Kopan, CNN

When President Donald Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, he created a March 5 deadline for protections to end, designed to give Congress time to act to save the program.

But while lawmakers have continued to use the March 5 date as a target, court action and the realities of the program have made any deadline murky and unclear.

As a result, there currently is no date that the protections will actually run out for the roughly 700,000 DACA recipients, young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children — but there remains a large amount of uncertainty about whether they could disappear at any time.

Trump himself mentioned the March 5 deadline in a tweet Monday.

“Any deal on DACA that does not include STRONG border security and the desperately needed WALL is a total waste of time. March 5th is rapidly approaching and the Dems seem not to care about DACA. Make a deal!”

The original plan proposed by Trump in September was that the Department of Homeland Security would phase out DACA by letting the two-year protections and work permits issued under the program expire without the option to renew them. But the administration allowed anyone with permits that expired before March 5 a one-month window to apply for a renewal, which would reset their two-year clock.

However, 20,000 of the 150,000 eligible to renew didn’t. They were either rejected, unable to pull together the paperwork and $500 fee, or unwilling to trust the government with their personal data and enroll again. Further complicating things, some of those rejections were later reopened after DHS acknowledged that thousands may have had their applications lost in the mail or delivered on time but rejected as late.

Then, in January, a federal court judge issued an order stopping the President’s plan to phase out DACA, and DHS has since resumed processing applications for renewals for all the recipients who had protections in September.

But the administration has also aggressively sought to have the judge’s ruling overturned by a higher court, including the Supreme Court, only adding uncertainty to the situation. If a court were to overturn the judge’s ruling, it could have several outcomes, including letting renewals processed in the interim stand, invalidating all of those renewals or even ending the whole program immediately.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/politics/daca-deadline-march/index.html

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McConnell holds all the cards on next week’s immigration debate, and he’s not tipping his hand

By Tal Kopan and Lauren Fox, CNN

In a week the Senate is supposed to debate and vote on major immigration legislation for the first time in years — and only one person might know what it will look like: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“That, you’d have to check with the leader on,” said Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, Monday about the process as he left a GOP Senate leadership meeting.

“You’ll have to ask him,” echoed fellow leadership member Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. “He’ll have to decide what he wants to do.”

“Sen. McConnell hasn’t announced his intention,” Majority Whip John Cornyn told reporters.

Lawmakers of both parties told reporters Monday repeatedly they had no idea what the legislation or the process they’d be voting on likely next week would look like.

McConnell promised to turn to immigration on the Senate floor after February 8, the next date that government funding runs out, if broad agreement couldn’t be reached in that time. The promise, which he made on the Senate floor, was instrumental in ending a brief government shutdown last month, with senators of both parties pointing to the pledge for a “fair” floor debate as a major breakthrough.

The reality is, though, that McConnell has a lot of discretion as to how such a vote could go — and as of now, he has not given many clues.

Even in a meeting with White House chief of staff John Kelly, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and White House legislative director Marc Short, a source said McConnell “wouldn’t indicate what he’s going to do.”

“Total poker face,” the administration official said. “He’s not going to tip his hand.”

But the group came for the meeting, the official said, to “make sure he hears from the administration.”

On Monday, lawmakers expressed hope that such a deal could come together before the Thursday funding deadline, but wouldn’t call it likely. That tees up a vote next week with an uncertain end.

“Probably if nothing is agreed on this week, which I would not be optimistic will happen, then Mitch’ll call up some bill next week and let everyone get their votes on their amendments and see where it goes,” Thune said. “My assumption is that in the end, something will pass. But I guess we’ll see.”

McConnell’s choices will be instrumental in deciding how the debate goes, lawmakers and experts say, and he has a number of options on how to proceed, from the base bill, to the amendment process.

“There’s a lot of different conversations that continue, I don’t think anyone has narrowed it down to one, two or even three paths at this point,” Gardner said.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving GOP senator, was the only lawmaker who seemed to know how the debate would look.

“I have a pretty good sense. I’ve been through it a hundred times,” he said, laughing. Asked if that meant a mess, he added, still chuckling: “It’s always a mess.”

Plenty more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/05/politics/senate-immigration-debate-no-clarity/index.html

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Bonus story: Latest on the drunk driving crash that is shaping up to be a new flashpoint in the immigration debate:

http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/06/politics/colts-drunk-driving-crash-undocumented-immigrant/index.html

Trump: ‘Disgraceful that a person illegally in our country’ killed Colts player in crash

By Tal Kopan and Maegan Vazquez, CNN

Updated 9:43 AM ET, Tue February 6, 2018

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that it was “disgraceful” that an NFL player was killed by a man who police believe is an undocumented immigrant in a suspected drunk driving accident over the weekend.

“So disgraceful that a person illegally in our country killed @Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson. This is just one of many such preventable tragedies. We must get the Dems to get tough on the Border, and with illegal immigration, FAST!” Trump tweeted.

Indianapolis Colts linebacker Edwin Jackson and another man were struck and killed in a suspected drunken driving accident early Sunday morning. Indiana State Police say the man they believe hit them is an undocumented immigrant who has been deported twice.

“My prayers and best wishes are with the family of Edwin Jackson, a wonderful young man whose life was so senselessly taken. @Colts,” Trump said in a second tweet Tuesday morning.

The crash occurred when Jackson and the other man were struck on the shoulder of Interstate 70 in Indianapolis.

Read the complete report from Tal and Meagan at the above link.

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There’s always something “shaking” in the “hot button” world of 21st Century Immigration.

PWS

02-06-18

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