Category: Judicial Review

1ST CIR. EXPOSES BIA’S FLAWED ANALYSIS, HOSTILITY TO ASYLUM SEEKERS — BIA COMMITTED “MULTIPLE ERRORS” IN REVERSING ASYLUM GRANT – ROSALES JUSTO V. SESSIONS – Sessions’s Bias, Push to Truncate Already Flawed EOIR Process & Deny Asylum En Masse Could Lead To Absolute Disaster In Circuit Courts & Breakdown Of Entire System!

1stCirUnable17-1457P-01A

Rosales Justo v. Sessions, 1st Cir., 07-16-18, published

PANEL: Torruella, Lipez, and Kayatt Circuit Judges

OPINION BY: Judge Lipez

KEY QUOTE:

In sum, the BIA’s justifications for its holding that it was clearly erroneous for the IJ to find that the Mexican government is unable to protect Rosales reflect multiple errors. The BIA failed to consider evidence of the Mexican government’s inability to protect Rosales and his nuclear family, as distinct from evidence of the willingness of the police to investigate the murder of Rosales’s son. That error in conflating unwillingness

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and inability was compounded when the BIA discounted country condition reports which, when combined with Rosales’s testimony about the particular circumstances of his case, were sufficient to support the IJ’s finding that the police in Guerrero would be unable to protect Rosales from persecution by organized crime.

The BIA committed further error by concluding that the IJ’s finding that Rosales did not report threats by organized crime to the police refuted the IJ’s ultimate finding of inability. The BIA both ignored our precedent stating that a failure to report a crime does not undermine an assertion of inability if a report would have been futile, and failed to consider evidence in the record that would support a finding of futility, thereby misapplying the clear error standard. Moreover, in another misapplication of the clear error standard, the BIA incorrectly concluded that the IJ’s inability finding was clearly erroneous because the Mexican government’s failure to protect Rosales was indistinguishable from the struggles of any government to combat crime, when the record before the IJ supported a finding that it was distinguishable.

Because of these errors, we grant Rosales’s petition and remand to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. See I.N.S. v. Ventura, 537 U.S. 12, 16-17 (2002) (per curiam) (holding that remand to the BIA is generally the appropriate remedy when the BIA commits a legal error).

So ordered.

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  • Nice to see a Circuit Court, particularly a fairly conservative one like the First Circuit, take strong stand against the nonsense and mockery of Due Process and justice going on at EOIR under Sessions;
  • Expect more of these in the future as the “Just Find A Way To Deny & Deport” initiative by the xenophobic, scofflaw AG goes into high gear at EOIR;
  • Quite contrary to everything Sessions has been saying, which completely ignores the lessons of the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Cardoza Fonseca, asylum law is supposed to be interpreted and applied generously in favor of those seeking life saving protection;
  • This case illustrates the importance of dissent at the BIA, as the First Circuit basically adopted the correct interpretation of the law and facts set forth by a dissenting (female) BIA Appellate Immigration Judge;
  • This also shows the importance of full three-judge review by the BIA on asylum cases, rather than single judge panels or summary denials;
  • The number of fundamental errors committed by the BIA panel majority in reversing this asylum grant and the persistence of the DOJ in advancing untenable legal positions before the Court of Appeals is simply appalling, even if consistent with Session’s own lack of scholarship and total disrespect for fundamental fairness to respondents in Immigration Court;
  • This case also highlights a chronic problem in EOIR asylum adjudication: conflating “willingness to protect” with “ability to protect.”  Too many Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges seize on ineffective efforts by local police, cosmetic improvements by governments, and failure to seek (largely useless and perhaps actually harmful) police assistance to find that there has been “no failure of state protection;”
  • That’s exactly what Sessions himself did in his fundamentally flawed opinion in Matter of A-B-. He encouraged judges to conflate ineffective efforts to protect with actual ability to protect. And, his comparison of how domestic violence is policed and prosecuted in the United States with El Salvador’s pathetic efforts in behalf of domestic violence victims was simply preposterous;
  • This decision also addresses another chronic problem at EOIR: judges “cherry picking” the record and particularly Department of State Country Reports for the information supporting a denial, even though the record taken as a whole  lends support to the respondent’s claim;
  • Once again, how would any unrepresented applicant make the kind of potentially winning asylum case presented by this respondent with the assistance of counsel? When are Courts of Appeals finally going to state the obvious: proceeding to adjudicate an asylum claim by an unrepresented respondent is a per se denial of Due Process!
  • This case should be taken as a message that Immigration Judges and BIA panels following the misguided Sessions’ dicta on “unwilling or unable to protect,” rather than applying the correct standards set forth by most Circuits are going to be getting lots of “do overs” from the Circuit Courts;
  • How could anybody justify “speeding up” a system with this many fundamental (and life-threatening) flaws to begin with? Under Sessions, EOIR is on track to becomes veritable “reversible error factory” — as well as a “Death Railroad!”

PWS

07-20-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

GONZO’S WORLD: REPORTS OF TORTURE & ABUSE OF KIDS IN SESSIONS’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG!” – “Keylin says, U.S. Border Patrol guards would kick her body to keep her awake throughout the night. The 16-year-old, whose last name was redacted from court documents, told a lawyer that she would lie in fear on the cement floor of the Border Patrol station in Texas, surrounded by chain-link fence.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/migrant-children-detail-experiences-border-patrol-stations-detention-centers_us_5b4d13ffe4b0de86f485ade8

Angelina Chapin reports for HuffPost:

Over the course of four days in June, Keylin says, U.S. Border Patrol guards would kick her body to keep her awake throughout the night. The 16-year-old, whose last name was redacted from court documents, told a lawyer that she would lie in fear on the cement floor of the Border Patrol station in Texas, surrounded by chain-link fence. She was separated from her mother, who had been held at gunpoint three times in Honduras, after they crossed the U.S. border.

According to a court filing, Keylin says the female guards also made girls “strip naked” in front of them before taking a shower, so they could leer at their bodies (her mother, Daise, corroborated her daughter’s account in a statement she gave to a lawyer). She adds that guards called the group of migrants “filthy” and “made fun of us.”

Keylin barely ate because she says the food was frozen, and she wasn’t given a toothbrush or toothpaste. Though she says the cells were so cold that she shivered and developed pain in her leg, the teen kept quiet. The guards said that anyone with an injury would be detained longer, and she couldn’t take that chance.

“I was very frightened and depressed the entire time,” Keylin told a lawyer on June 29, after she had been transferred to a family detention center and reunited with her mother. “I am still depressed. I also have nightmares and a lot of anxiety because of the separation.” At the time of their June 29 declaration, there was no plan for Keylin and her mother’s release.

HuffPost learned that the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law filed a report in a federal court in Los Angeles on Monday with more than 200 accounts from migrant children and their parents, detailing the horrific conditions they face in Border Patrol stations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and detention centers. The allegations, which HuffPost reviewed, include physical and verbal assault, untenable sleeping conditions and unsanitary drinking water.

A girl from Central America rests on thermal blankets at a detention facility run by the U.S. Border Patrol on Sept. 8, 2014,

JOHN MOORE VIA GETTY IMAGES
A girl from Central America rests on thermal blankets at a detention facility run by the U.S. Border Patrol on Sept. 8, 2014, in McAllen, Texas. 

Peter Schey, the executive director of the law center’s foundation, wrote in the case filing that roughly 90 percent of the testimony he and a team of about 100 lawyers collected is “shocking and atrocious” and that the children they’ve spoken to were “crying, trembling, hungry, thirsty, sleepless, sick, and terrified.”

“The treatment of these children amounts to torture,” Schey told HuffPost, adding that the situation has become worse under the Trump administration. “We see a policy of enforced hunger, enforced dehydration and enforced sleeplessness coupled with routine insults and physical assaults.”

ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) did not return HuffPost’s requests for comment.

Over the past two months, Schey and other lawyers have conducted interviews with migrant parents and children, some of whom were separated from one another under Trump’s zero tolerance policy, which stepped up the use of criminal prosecutions. The court filing does not include the current status of each child, and most said they were not told of their legal rights, including the right to be speedily released to a legal guardian or relative.

On July 27, the attorney will argue in federal court that the stations and facilities housing children are failing to meet the basic standards for hygiene, food, sleeping conditions and medical care, which are outlined in a 1997 court case called the Flores settlement.

Once migrants cross the border, they are put in short-term Border Patrol stations for a few days before being transferred to detention centers or shelters. While some kids have reported good conditions in longer-term shelters ― friendly staff, movie nights and field trips ― advocates and immigration experts have long considered Border Patrol facilities to be inhumane.

In May, Dixiana, whose last name is edited out along with those of all the other migrants interviewed in the court filing, says she was separated from her mother and taken to a Border Patrol station known as a “hielera” ― Spanish for “ice box” in reference to the cold temperature. The 10-year-old from Honduras told a lawyer her cell was so crowded that she and other girls had to sleep on the floor or while sitting up under bright lights.

She cried at the thought of never seeing her mother again, as did others in her cell.

For breakfast, Dixiana says a guard gave her a frozen ham sandwich but failed to bring her and her cellmates water. “The ham was black,” she told a lawyer. “I took one bite, but did not eat the rest because of the taste.” (One mother from Honduras said, “You could feel the ice when you bit into the sandwich.”)

After 12 hours, Dixiana was transferred to what she calls the “perrera”―Spanish for “dog house,” a reference to the chain-link fencing ― where she could see her mom in another cell. At one point when she was half asleep, Dixiana says a male officer kicked her awake while looking for a girl with a similar name to hers. Over the course of the next few days, she sat in a windowless cell with no idea if it was day or night, crying because she missed her mother.

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The statements collected by lawyers clearly show that Border Patrol stations are no place for children. One mother, Floridalma, described how she and her 3-year-old were put in a 10-by-10-foot room with three other mothers and their children. Since they had only two mattresses, the group slept with their heads on the padding and their bodies on the cement floor.

Children at Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Rio Grande City, Texas, on Jun

U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION VIA REUTERS
Children at Customs and Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Rio Grande City, Texas, on June 17.

Ruth, the mother of a 7-year-old boy, says the Border Patrol station was so cold that children were crying and getting sick. While she was separated from her son, she watched other women’s children get fevers, vomit and cough, while the guards refused to provide medicine.

The Border Patrol stations also fail to meet basic hygiene standards, according to the court filing. Many of the children describe the guards giving them water that tasted like chlorine. “I only drank it twice because I didn’t trust it,” said Justin, a 13-year-old from El Salvador. “It made me feel funny in my stomach the times I drank it.“ One mother, named Yojana, said, “We had to drink water from the toilet to keep hydrated.”

Children described going more than five days without bathing and having limited access to soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste. Fatima says that her 8-year-old daughter had to wear soiled underwear for two days because the guards wouldn’t allow her to use the shower.

Children also spoke to lawyers about issues in family detention centers and Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters, where they are detained for longer periods of time. Since June 8, 15-year-old Elmer has been staying in Casa Padre, America’s largest migrant children’s shelter, which MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff described as resembling a “prison or jail.”

Elmer says that he is always hungry because there’s not enough food and that he wasn’t allowed to see a doctor when he felt sick. The 16-year-old says he told a lawyer that, although the boys, ages 10 to 17, are allowed outside for two hours a day, it is “unbearable” because there is nothing to protect them from the scorching sun. Elmer says that the guards don’t allow him to go to church and that he is rarely given any alone time in his room to process his feelings of loneliness and anxiety.

In addition to the horrible conditions within stations and shelters, children complained about the staff. The case filing contains multiple accounts of kids who say they were kicked by guards while sleeping, as well as instances of verbal abuse. Sixteen-year-old Erick says the guards in a California Border Patrol station call him and the other Guatemalan boys “burros,” the Spanish word for “donkey” or “stupid.” Another youth, whose name was completely blacked out in the court filing, said to a lawyer: “When I told the CPB officer that my mother was killed they made fun of me and said that I was ‘weak.’ I did not feel comfortable after that sharing my fear.”

While pediatricians and counselors have spoken about the long-term trauma that will result from family separation, children say in the court filing that their guards are less sympathetic.

Since Sergio was separated from his father and taken to Casa Padre in early June, he’s become so consumed with worry he can’t sleep. The 16-year-old has only been able to speak with his dad for 20 minutes in the last 45 days, and he told a lawyer that his father is getting deported. When a guard found him crying in the bathroom one night, Sergio said the man accused him of being a “crybaby,” an insult he followed with an English phrase that another boy translated as “swear words.” “The way I have been treated makes me feel like I don’t matter,” he said, “like I am trash.”

Schey, who conducted interviews with children in Casa Padre last week, said the separated kids he spoke with are “traumatized.” “They are not getting mental health services. They are experiencing depression and anxiety… and nightmares and sleeplessness.”

The law center’s court filing, which is more than 1,500 pages long, paints a dark picture of the cruel conditions many migrant children suffer through. On July 27, Schey will present their declarations in federal court and ask U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee to appoint an independent monitor who has the power to make sure facilities are meeting the standards outlined in the Flores settlement.

“This story is more than just separating children from their parents,” he told HuffPost. “The bigger picture is forced starvation and sleeplessness and terrorizing these children.”

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What kind of country puts innocent kids in abusive prisons while letting their abusers hold public office?

PW*

07-19-18

Related posts:

  1. NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: WHILE MANY RIGHT WING APOLOGISTS (ALONG WITH ALAN DERSHOWITZ) PAN NAZI COMPARISON, ACTUAL HOLOCAUST CHILD SURVIVOR YOKA VERDONER UNDERSTANDS THE PARALLELS! — Child Abuse Is Child Abuse —Evil Is Evil — Damage Is Irreparable!
  2. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  3. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

LISTEN TO TAL KOPAN AND CATHERINE SHOICHET OF CNN DISCUSS SEPARATION OF MIGRANT FAMILIES ON THIS PODCAST!

Here are Tal and Catherine for your listening pleasure:

http://podcasts.cnn.net/embed/single/skin/xqwdnq/the-latest-in-immigration.html

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My takeaways:

  • No immigration crisis here; this is a humanitarian crisis created solely by the cruel and perverted actions of this Administration;
  • Good Government solves problems; the Trump Administration creates problems that it has neither plans nor the ability to solve = Bad Government;
  • It’s always easier to create a mess than to clean it up;
  • Each individual lawsuit against the Trump Administration is an important step in upholding American democracy;
  • Only the Article III Courts have the ability to get some truth out of an inherently dishonest and disingenuous Administration;
  • The free press is playing a critical role in exposing the intentional cruelty, incompetence, and fundamental dishonesty of the Trump Administration;
  • Messing with kids is always stupid as well as inhumane;
  • Under the GOP, Congress has abdicated its role, basically leaving the Executive and the Judiciary to govern;
  • Right now, Trump has the upper hand with the GOP Congress stuffing the Courts with “go along to get along” appointees who won’t stand up for our country or to Trump & Sessions!

CONCLUSION: WE NEED REGIME CHANGE NOW! THE ONLY WAY TO GET IT WILL BE AT THE BALLOT BOX THIS FALL. GET OUT THE VOTE! JUST SAY NO TO TRUMP, SESSIONS, THEIR GOP ENABLERS & THEIR REGIME OF CRUELTY, INCOMPETENCE, & DISHONESTY!

PWS

07-18-18

 

Related posts:

  1. GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”
  2. INSIDE THE CHILD ABUSE CONSPIRACY: LIKE MANY CRIMINALS, TRUMP’S “GANG OF SIX” CAN’T KEEP THEIR STORIES STRAIGHT — But, There Is One Consistency — Everything These “Kakistocrats” Say Is A Lie!
  3. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  4. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!

WILL WEISSERT & EMILY SCHMALL @ AP (AUSTIN, TX) EXPOSE HOW DUE PROCESS HAS GONE “BELLY UP” @ EOIR UNDER SESISONS – “Credible Fear Reviews” Are Nothing But “Rubber Stamps” By “Wholly Owned Judges” Working For Openly Xenophobic AG!`

https://www.sfgate.com/news/texas/article/Credible-fear-for-US-asylum-harder-to-prove-13078667.php

Will & Emily report for AP:

LOS FRESNOS, Texas (AP) — Patricia Aragon told the U.S. asylum officer at her recent case assessment that she was fleeing her native Honduras because she had been robbed and raped by a gang member who threatened to kill her and her 9-year-old daughter if she went to the police.

Until recently, the 41-year-old seamstress from San Pedro Sula would have had a good chance of clearing that first hurdle in the asylum process due to a “credible fear” for her safety, but she didn’t. The officer said the Honduran government wasn’t to blame for what happened to Aragon and recommended that she not get asylum, meaning she’ll likely be sent home.

“The U.S. has always been characterized as a humanitarian country,” Aragon said through tears at Port Isabel, a remote immigration detention center tucked among livestock and grapefruit groves near Los Fresnos, a town about 15 miles (25kilometers) from the Mexico border. “My experience has been very difficult.”

As part of the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on immigration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently tightened the restrictions on the types of cases that can qualify someone for asylum, making it harder for Central Americans who say they’re fleeing the threat of gangs, drug smugglers or domestic violence to pass even the first hurdle for securing U.S. protection.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has overturned protections for asylum seekers in a decision that could affect thousands. Sessions ruled that a 2014 Board of Immigration Appeals decision that protected domestic violence victims from Central America was wrongly decided. Under the new ruling, “the applicant must show that the government condoned the private actions or demonstrated an inability to protect the victims,” in order to qualify for asylum protection. Asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems, even all serious problems, that people face every day all over the world. I will be issuing a decision that restores sound principles of asylum and long-standing principles of immigration law.

Immigration lawyers say that’s meant more asylum seekers failing interviews with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to establish credible fear of harm in their home countries. They also say that immigration judges, who work for the Justice Department, are overwhelmingly signing off on those recommendations during appeals, effectively ending what could have been a yearslong asylum process almost before it’s begun.

“This is a direct, manipulated attack on the asylum process,” said Sofia Casini of the Austin nonprofit Grassroots Leadership, which has been working with immigrant women held at the nearby T. Don Hutto detention center who were separated from their kids under a widely condemned policy that President Donald Trump ended on June 20.

Casini said that of the roughly 35 separated mothers her group worked with, more than a third failed their credible fear interviews, which she said is about twice the failure rate of before the new restrictions took effect. Nationally, more than 2,000 immigrant children and parents have yet to be reunited, including Aragon and her daughter, who is being held at a New York children’s shelter and whose future is as unclear as her mother’s.

In order to qualify for asylum, seekers must demonstrate that they have a well-founded fear they’ll be persecuted back home based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinions. The interviews with USCIS asylum officers, which typically last 30 to 60 minutes, are sometimes done by phone. Any evidence asylum seekers present to support their claims must be translated into English, and they often don’t have lawyers present.

. . . .

“The asylum officer conducting credible fear (interviews) has been instructed to apply A.B., so when the person says, ‘My boyfriend or my husband beat me’ it’s, ‘So what, you lose,'” said Paul W. Schmidt, a former immigration judge in Arlington, Virginia, who retired in 2016. “It then goes to the immigration judge, who has just been ordered to follow Sessions’ precedent — and most of them want to keep their jobs and they just rubber stamp it, and there’s no meaningful appeal.”

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link.

The now long forgotten “EOIR Vision” developed by our Executive Group in the late 1990s was “To be the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”

Under Sessions, the U.S. Immigration Courts have been converted into kangaroo courts that are a parody of Due Process and fairness. Since the Immigration Courts are one of the foundations upon which the U.S. Justice System rests, that doesn’t bode well for justice or the future of our country as a Constitutional democratic republic.

PWS

07-16-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!
  3. 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!
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

COURTS: TIMEOUT ON THE KILLING FLOOR! – JUDGE SABRAW TEMPORARILY HALTS DUE-PROCESS-LESS DEPORTATIONS OF REUNITED FAMILIES TO HARM’S WAY – Will Hear Arguments From Both Parties, As He Tries To Figure Out Just What Nefarious Plan Sessions Has Up His Sleeve Now!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/family-separations-border-reunification/index.html

Tal Kopan and Laura Jarrett report for CNN:

(CNN)A federal judge on Monday ordered the US government to temporarily pause deportations of reunited families to allow attorneys time to debate whether he should more permanently extend that order.

San Diego-based US District Court Judge Dana Sabraw addressed the issue at the top of a status hearing in a continuing family separations case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Sabraw ordered the pause to allow for a full written argument on the ACLU’s request to pause deportations of parents for a week after reunification.
The ACLU argued that the week would be necessary for parents to have time to fully consider the decision whether to have their children deported along with them.
The ACLU’s filing was made earlier Monday morning, and Sabraw gave the Department of Justice a week to respond.
But in the meantime, he ordered a “stay” of deportations until that issue can be litigated.

Fact-checking Trump's claim on family separation

Lawyers for the ACLU said their motion was due to “the persistent and increasing rumors — which Defendants have refused to deny — that mass deportations may be carried out imminently and immediately upon reunification.” They argue this issue is “directly related to effectuating the Court’s ruling that parents make an informed, non-coerced decision if they are going to leave their children behind.”

“A one-week stay is a reasonable and appropriate remedy to ensure that the unimaginable trauma these families have suffered does not turn even worse because parents made an uninformed decision about the fate of their child,” the ACLU’s lawyers added.
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Sounds like in the end, the “No-Due-Process Deportation Machine” will be allowed to resume. But, at least this gives the Judge a little time to pin the Government down on exactly what they are doing and to see for himself how Due Process is being compromised on a large-scale basis. In the end, permanently halting the “Deportation Railroad” might be beyond the scope of this particular suit.  Stay tuned for the result. However it comes out, it’s always good to make a complete record of the Government’s misconduct and revolting disrespect for laws, human life, fundamental fairness, and human dignity for the history books and future generations.
And, many thanks to Tal & Laura for being “on top” of his breaking story.
PWS
07-16-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: AS SESSIONS RAMPS UP THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG,” RAMPANT SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE DETAINEES CERTAIN TO INCREASE! – AG’S Child Abuse Also Makes Him Complicit In Sexual Abuse! – See The Short Video By Emily Kassie Here!
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. EXPOSING SESSIONS’S DEADLY DUE PROCESS SCAM: JUDGE SULLIVAN BLOCKS ANOTHER POTENTIAL DEPORTATION TO DEATH AS SESSIONS-LED DOJ ARGUES THAT THE KILLING LINE NOT SUBJECT TO REVIEW — Pro Bono Counsel Jones Day Saves The Day, At Least For Now — “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”

EUGENE ROBINSON @WASHPOST ASKS THE QUESTION ALL DECENT AMERICANS SHOULD BE ASKING: WhyAren’t Child Abuser/Kidnapper Jeff Sessions & His Equally Vile & Dishonest Cohorts In Jail? — “Kidnapping children. Failing even to account for them. Sending families home to be killed. Give us your huddled masses, this administration seems to say, and let us kick them in their little faces.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-kidnapped-children-someone-should-go-to-jail/2018/07/12/2128c51c-8605-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html?utm_term=.d64b5c997413

The Trump administration kidnapped children. Someone should go to jail.

by Eugene Robinson

The Trump administration’s kidnapping — that’s the proper word — of the children of would-be migrants should be seen as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. Somebody ought to go to jail.

Under a federal court order, all 103 children under the age of 5 who were taken from their families at the border were supposed to be returned by Tuesday. The government missed that deadline, and I wish U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who issued the order, had held somebody in contempt. One candidate would be Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who on Tuesday had the gall to describe the administration’s treatment of immigrant children as “one of the great acts of American generosity and charity.”

On Thursday, officials announced with fanfare that 57 of the kids — some still in diapers — had been returned to their parents. But 46 others were deemed “ineligible,” meaning they remain in government custody.

The reasons for failing to comply fully with Sabraw’s order sound reasonable, unless you take into account the bad faith with which the administration has conducted this whole sordid exercise. In 22 cases, officials had “safety concerns posed by the adults in question,” presumably the parents; in 12 cases, parents have already been deported; in 11 cases, parents are in federal or state custody; and in one case, an adult believed to be the child’s parent cannot be found.

In a joint statement, Azar, along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, took credit for working “tirelessly” to reunite the children with their families — which is rich, given that the Trump administration deliberately and cynically created this crisis in the first place.

“Our message has been clear all along: Do not risk your own life or the life of your child by attempting to enter the United States illegally,” the statement said. Translation: Don’t come to the border seeking asylum because, when others did, we took away their kids.

Given that the intention from the beginning was clearly to frighten and intimidate would-be migrants from Central America, why should anyone believe that the administration is acting or speaking in good faith now? Why should we accept at face value that exactly 103 children under 5 were seized? How can we be sure there is only one case in which officials can’t find or identify the parents? Given that it has taken weeks to return just 57 children, what is the likelihood the government kept adequate records?

This is an administration, after all, that conducts immigration court proceedings, or travesties, in which children too young to know their ABCs are expected to represent themselves without the benefit of legal counsel. Imagine your 3-year-old child or grandchild in that situation. Now tell me how adopting child abuse as a policy is supposed to Make America Great Again.

And what about the children older than 5 who were taken from their families? Sabraw ordered that they be returned to their parents by July 26, but don’t hold your breath. We don’t even know how many there are, because the government doesn’t seem to know. Officials first gave the number as about 2,300, but the latest estimate is nearly 3,000. Why can’t they settle on a precise figure? What reason could there be for such vagueness, other than ignorance?

I don’t think they know how many kids they ripped away from their families, and I believe it is inevitable some children will never again see their parents. The fact that my government would commit such a crime weighs on my conscience as an American. President Trump and his accomplices, from all appearances, couldn’t be prouder.

“Judges run the system and illegals and traffickers know how it works. They are just using children!” Trump tweeted Wednesday. As usual, he was ascribing his own base motives to others: He is the one who is “just using children.”

Remember what this is really about. The main flow of undocumented migrants consists of Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans seeking to escape rampant, deadly gang violence that their home governments cannot or will not check. The Trump administration issued new instructions on Wednesday to officers who interview asylum seekers at the border, telling them that fear of gang violence, no matter how well-founded, is no longer grounds for asylum. The same new guidance applies to immigration judges, who take their orders from Sessions.

Kidnapping children. Failing even to account for them. Sending families home to be killed. Give us your huddled masses, this administration seems to say, and let us kick them in their little faces.

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

Yup.  Sessions and his group of fellow racists know very well that their actions violate the Constitution and the laws of our country governing both conditions for detention and reasons for detention. Yet, they walk free and smugly give press conferences at which they continue to lie about their actions. Their victims, on the other hand, largely languish in substandard prisons or are being removed to the dangerous situations they fled in their home countries without any pretense of Due Process or fundamental fairness.

PWS

07-14-18

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  2. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  3. MORE ARTICLES FEATURE “GANG OF RETIRED JUDGES’ STATEMENT” RE: SESSIONS’S OUTRAGEOUS ATTACK ON SETTLED PRINCIPLES OF PROTECTION LAW! — Media Exposing Corrupt, Inherently Unfair, Biased “Court” System Where The Prejudiced Prosecutor “Cooks” The Results to His Liking! — Jeff Sessions Degrades The American Legal System & Our National Values Each Day He Remains In Office!
  4. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”

INSTRUCTIONS TO THE FIRING SQUAD: USCIS ORDERS ASYLUM OFFICERS TO EFFECTIVELY “KILL OFF” ALL CENTRAL AMERICAN REFUGEES AND BURY THEIR CLAIMS IN BOGUS “CREDIBLE FEAR” PROCESS — Will The Article IIIs Ever Get The Backbone To Intervene In This Due Process Charade? — Or Will They Let The Slaughter Continue As Long As It’s Not Their Spouses, Siblings, Kids, Or Grandkids Being Sent Off To Be Abused, Tortured, Extorted, Or Killed In The Name Of The Trump/Sessions White Nationalist State?

Here’s the new “guidance:”

2018-06-18-PM-602-0162-USCIS-Memorandum-Matter-of-A-B

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Remember, folks, most of the intended “victims” of this policy are:

  • unrepresented
  • detained
  • traumitized
  • speaking through an interpreter (perhaps telephonic)
  • totally clueless as to what a “particular social group,” the “three criteria,” nexus,” or Matter of A-B- mean, and
  • Matter of A-B has never been tested or approved by any “real (Article III) court.”

Shoot first, ask questions later. This is America in the 21st Century. This is how we treat our fellow human beings —- most of them refugees seeking our help and protection under the law. This is what we are as human beings under Trump & Sessions. Someday, our descendants will look back on us and say “how could you!”

PWS

07-12-18

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  3. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS THERE IS A BETTER WAY TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS AT ICE

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/395646-theres-a-better-response-to-abuse-than-abolishing-ice

Family Pictures

Nolan writes:

. . . .

ERO shouldn’t terrorize anyone, but it has to be able to arrest deportable aliens where they can be found.

The main reason for wanting to abolish ICE is likely to prevent undocumented aliens who are here for a better life from being deported.

But if ICE were to be abolished, its responsibilities would be assigned to another agency and Trump would require the new agency to implement the same policies.

Trump’s enforcement policies

President Barack Obama focused his immigration enforcement programprimarily on aliens who had been convicted of crimes in the United States, had been caught near the border after an illegal entry, or had returned unlawfully after being deported.

Once an undocumented alien had succeeded in crossing the border without being apprehended, he did not have to worry about being deported unless he was convicted of a serious crime. He was home free.

This created a “home free magnet” which encouraged more undocumented aliens to come and do whatever they had to do to cross the border.

Trump acknowledged this problem in his Executive Order, Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States:

“We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”

He directed DHS “to employ all lawful means to ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States against all removable aliens.”

Nevertheless, he prioritized removing aliens who are inadmissibleon criminal and related grounds, on security and related grounds, and for misrepresentations, or who are deportable for criminal offenses or on security and related grounds, and removable aliens who:

  • Have been convicted of any criminal offense;
  • Have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved;
  • Have committed acts that constitute a criminal offense;
  • Have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or government application;
  • Have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits;
  • Are subject to a final order of removal but have not left the United States; or
  • In the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.

ERO officers are free to arrest aliens who are not in a prioritized category, but this wouldn’t be happening often if sanctuary policies had not required ERO officers to change their enforcement operations.

Sanctuary policies prevent local police departments from turning inmates over to ERO when they are released from custody, so ERO is spending more of its time looking for deportable aliens in communities. This resulted in arresting 40,000 noncriminal aliens in FY 2017.

But ERO should not be engaging in improper behavior to make these or any other arrests.

DHS has provided avenues for public feedback and complaints, and ICE has Community Relations Officers at every field office.

If you see an ICE officer doing something improper, report him. This is far more likely to improve the situation than calling for the abolishment of ICE.

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Go on over to The Hill at the link for Nolan’s complete article.

  • I agree with Nolan that ICE isn’t going anywhere under Trump.
  • I also agree that the essential functions of ICE will still need to be performed, regardless of the ultimate fate of the organization.
  • I think it’s great that the “Abolish ICE Movement” has focused more attention on the cruel, unnecessary, and highly counterproductive enforcement and prosecutorial policies of ICE under Trump.
  • Indeed, the counterproductive nature of the Trump/Sessions immigration enforcement is a major reason why a group of Senior ICE Agents who actually perform real law enforcement functions — anti-smuggling, anti-human trafficking, immigration fraud, anti-terrorism —  want to ditch the ICE label, because they know it’s inhibiting cooperation with other agencies and communities and thereby diminishing real law enforcement.
  • Most true law enforcement professionals that I have known don’t want to be associated with a group that glorifies cruelty and de-humanizes ordinary people. Having ICE on your resume today wouldn’t be a plus for most folks interested in a legitimate law enforcement career.
  • While the “essential functions” of ICE will continue, lots of today’s ICE enforcement has little to do with “essential enforcement.” The latter would be targeted at criminals, fraudsters, spouse abusers, traffickers, and recent arrivals who don’t have applications pending.
  • The lack of any semblance of common sense and responsibility in ICE’s abusive refusal to exercise prosecutorial discretion and actually putting properly closed cases back on the docket is a major contributor to the absolute mess in today’s Immigration Courts.
  • It’s also a reason why the Immigration Court mess is unlikely to be solved until Congress, the courts, and/or some future Executive force some fundamental changes in ICE enforcement and prosecutorial policies to reflect the same type of prudent, respectful, and realistic use of judicial time and prosecutorial discretion that is employed, to some extent, by every other major law enforcement agency in the U.S.
  • It never hurts to complain. I’m a big fan of making a “running record” of misconduct.
  • But, in the Trump Administration a record is about all you’ll get. Nothing is going to be done to correct misconduct because misconduct comes from the top.
  • My experience with ICE Chief Counsel’s Office in Arlington was highly positive. The attorneys were overwhelmingly fair, smart, responsive, respectful, and part of the “team” with the private, bar, the courts, and the interpreters that made the justice system work in Arlington in the past.
  • Indeed, working with the Arlington Chief Counsel’s Office made me proud to have led the major reorganization that established the forerunner to the “Modern Chief Counsel System” at the “Legacy INS” during the Carter and Reagan Administrations. The Arlington Chief Counsel’s Office was exactly what former General Counsels Dave Crosland, Mike Inman, Regional Counsel Bill Odencrantz, and I had envisioned when we planned and carried out the reorganization (over considerable internal opposition, I might add).
  • My overall experiences with the officers of ICE and it’s forerunner INS Investigations were positive. I found and worked with plenty of capable, dedicated, professional, and humane officers during my decades of dealing with immigration enforcement in some form or another.
  • All of that suggests that the major problems in ICE have arisen almost entirely under the Trump Administration. That’s because of truly horrible leadership from the top down.
  • ICE won’t improve until we get “regime change.” When that happens, ICE will have to be reorganized, reinvented, and “rebranded.” Professional management — one that pays particular attention to its relationship to local communities — must be reestablished. Sane enforcement and prosecutorial discretion policies will  have to be reinstated.
  • My experiences with ICE suggest that the right people to lead an “ICE-type” agency in the future are likely already somewhere in ICE. They just aren’t in the right leadership and management positions. Maybe they will all quit before the end of the Trump Administration If not, they could serve as a “professional core” for rebuilding and reforming ICE.
  • I’m skeptical that so-called “Catch and Release” has a significant effect on what’s happening on the Southern Border.
  • In the first place, the current situation is “a self-created crisis” initiated by Trump & Sessions. Otherwise it’s pretty much normal migration.
  • Seeking asylum at the border isn’t “illegal migration” at all. It’s asserting an internationally recognized right. Detention and family separation are not appropriate responses to individuals seeking in good faith to exercise their rights.
  • In any event, the primary drivers of migration outside the visa system are: 1) unmet needs of the U.S. labor market, and 2) political, social, and economic conditions in foreign countries. So-called “Catch and Release” has no established effect on either of these “drivers.” See, e.g., https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/crisis-border-not-numbers.

PWS

07-08-18

Related posts:

  1. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  2. NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: WHILE MANY RIGHT WING APOLOGISTS (ALONG WITH ALAN DERSHOWITZ) PAN NAZI COMPARISON, ACTUAL HOLOCAUST CHILD SURVIVOR YOKA VERDONER UNDERSTANDS THE PARALLELS! — Child Abuse Is Child Abuse —Evil Is Evil — Damage Is Irreparable!
  3. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  4. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories

BREAKING: FEDERAL JUDGE IN WASHINGTON STATE SLAMS TRUMP/SESSIONS POLICIES OF INDEFINITE DETENTION OF ASYLUM SEEKERS! – Corrupt & Immoral Government Officials Like Trump & Sessions Once Again Prove To Be Scofflaws!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/us-judge-blocks-trump-crackdown-on-asylum-seekers-bars-blanket-detentions-of-those-with-persecution-claims/2018/07/02/cdc707ba-7e36-11e8-b660-4d0f9f0351f1_story.html?utm_term=.6bf3dd67206d

Spencer Hsu reports for the Washington Post

A federal judge in Washington on Monday ordered the U.S. government to immediately release or grant hearings to more than 1,000 asylum seekers who have been jailed for months or years without individualized case reviews, dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrants.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ignored its own policy stating that asylum applicants who establish a “credible fear” of persecution in their native country must be granted a court hearing within seven days or released.

He granted a preliminary injunction preventing the government from carrying out blanket detentions of asylum seekers at five large U.S. field offices, including those currently held, pending resolution of the lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued in March after finding detention rates at the offices surged to 96 percent in the first eight months after President Trump took office in 2017, up from less than 10 percent in 2013.

[ACLU sues Trump administration over detaining asylum seekers]

The ACLU says the mass imprisonment of people seeking refuge while awaiting immigration court hearings stems from policies promoted by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions that amount to a deterrent to using the asylum provision. The policy, the ACLU argued, unlawfully denies asylum seekers as a group based on only one of the factors used to assess the danger an individual poses: how long they have been in the United States.

“As the events of recent months make clear, the question of how this nation will treat those who come to our shores seeking refuge generates enormous debate,” Boasberg wrote in a 38-page opinion, an allusion to the administration’s family-separation policy recently implemented and then abandoned amid international condemnation.

“This Opinion does no more than hold the Government accountable to its own policy, which recently has been honored more in the breach than the observance. Having extended the safeguards of the Parole Directive to asylum seekers, ICE must now ensure that such protections are realized,” Boasberg said.

[U.S. judge appears inclined to block Trump administration crackdown on asylum seekers]

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of nine detained asylum seekers from Haiti, Venezuela and other countries who were initially determined to have credible stories and have been jailed for up to two years awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, lawyers said. Two have been granted asylum and released since the case was filed in March, said attorneys with the ACLU and the Covington & Burling law firm.

The court action named the Department of Homeland Security and its sub-agency ICE, which detains immigrants, and the Justice Department, which runs the immigration courts where immigrants can seek bond hearings.

. . . .

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

Read Hsu’s full report at the link!

Lies, illegal actions, and human rights abuses have become a way of life for Trump & Sessions. Notably, EOIR has also joined this “Unholy Alliance.” Just more reasons why 1) we need an Article I Immigration Court; 2) we need regime change through the ballot box this Fall!

Once again, what I have been saying all along has been proved correct.  There isn’t a problem with the legal structure of U.S. asylum and protection laws. There is a huge problem with the way our dishonest, immoral, White Nationalist regime abuses those laws and tramples on the rights of individual asylum seekers!

Join the New Due Process Army today!

PWS

07-02-18

Related posts:

  1. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  2. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  3. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  4. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!

PROFESSOR CASS SUNSTEIN WITH THE UGLY TRUTH: IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND TRUMPISM, YOU MUST UNDERSTAND ITS ANTECEDENT, NAZISM – Many Ordinary Germans Were Enthusiastic About Life Under Hitler Prior To The War – Fat, Happy, Satisfied, & Willfully Indifferent To The Torture & Suffering Of Their Fellow Human Beings – They Chose To Bury All Morality & Believe Reich Propaganda and Lies That Any Reasonable Person Would Have Known Were Untrue!

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/06/28/hitlers-rise-it-can-happen-here/?mbid=nl_hps_5b368db0384c1d5c5734bfbc&CNDID=48297443

Professor Cass Sunstein in the NY Review of Books:

It Can Happen Here

Cass R. Sunstein
‘National Socialist,’ circa 1935; photograph by August Sander from his People of the Twentieth Century. A new collection of his portraits, August Sander: Persecuted/Persecutors, will be published by Steidl this fall.

Liberal democracy has enjoyed much better days. Vladimir Putin has entrenched authoritarian rule and is firmly in charge of a resurgent Russia. In global influence, China may have surpassed the United States, and Chinese president Xi Jinping is now empowered to remain in office indefinitely. In light of recent turns toward authoritarianism in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines, there is widespread talk of a “democratic recession.” In the United States, President Donald Trump may not be sufficiently committed to constitutional principles of democratic government.

In such a time, we might be tempted to try to learn something from earlier turns toward authoritarianism, particularly the triumphant rise of the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s. The problem is that Nazism was so horrifying and so barbaric that for many people in nations where authoritarianism is now achieving a foothold, it is hard to see parallels between Hitler’s regime and their own governments. Many accounts of the Nazi period depict a barely imaginable series of events, a nation gone mad. That makes it easy to take comfort in the thought that it can’t happen again.

But some depictions of Hitler’s rise are more intimate and personal. They focus less on well-known leaders, significant events, state propaganda, murders, and war, and more on the details of individual lives. They help explain how people can not only participate in dreadful things but also stand by quietly and live fairly ordinary days in the midst of them. They offer lessons for people who now live with genuine horrors, and also for those to whom horrors may never come but who live in nations where democratic practices and norms are under severe pressure.

Milton Mayer’s 1955 classic They Thought They Were Free, recently republished with an afterword by the Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans, was one of the first accounts of ordinary life under Nazism. Dotted with humor and written with an improbably light touch, it provides a jarring contrast with Sebastian Haffner’s devastating, unfinished 1939 memoir, Defying Hitler, which gives a moment-by-moment, you-are-there feeling to Hitler’s rise. (The manuscript was discovered by Haffner’s son after the author’s death and published in 2000 in Germany, where it became an immediate sensation.)* A much broader perspective comes from Konrad Jarausch’s Broken Lives, an effort to reconstruct the experience of Germans across the entire twentieth century. What distinguishes the three books is their sense of intimacy. They do not focus on historic figures making transformative decisions. They explore how ordinary people attempted to navigate their lives under terrible conditions.

Haffner’s real name was Raimund Pretzel. (He used a pseudonym so as not to endanger his family while in exile in England.) He was a journalist, not a historian or political theorist, but he interrupts his riveting narrative to tackle a broad question: “What is history, and where does it take place?” He objects that most works of history give “the impression that no more than a few dozen people are involved, who happen to be ‘at the helm of the ship of state’ and whose deeds and decisions form what is called history.” In his view, that’s wrong. What matters are “we anonymous others” who are not just “pawns in the chess game,” because the “most powerful dictators, ministers, and generals are powerless against the simultaneous mass decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large.” Haffner insists on the importance of investigating “some very peculiar, very revealing, mental processes and experiences,” involving “the private lives, emotions and thoughts of individual Germans.”

Mayer had the same aim. An American journalist of German descent, he tried to meet with Hitler in 1935. He failed, but he did travel widely in Nazi Germany. Stunned to discover a mass movement rather than a tyranny of a diabolical few, he concluded that his real interest was not in Hitler but in people like himself, to whom “something had happened that had not (or at least not yet) happened to me and my fellow-countrymen.” In 1951, he returned to Germany to find out what had made Nazism possible.

In They Thought They Were Free, Mayer decided to focus on ten people, different in many respects but with one characteristic in common: they had all been members of the Nazi Party. Eventually they agreed to talk, accepting his explanation that he hoped to enable the people of his nation to have a better understanding of Germany. Mayer was truthful about that and about nearly everything else. But he did not tell them that he was a Jew.

In the late 1930s—the period that most interested Mayer—his subjects were working as a janitor, a soldier, a cabinetmaker, an office manager, a baker, a bill collector, an inspector, a high school teacher, and a police officer. One had been a high school student. All were male. None of them occupied positions of leadership or influence. All of them referred to themselves as “wir kleine Leute, we little people.” They lived in Marburg, a university town on the river Lahn, not far from Frankfurt.

Mayer talked with them over the course of a year, under informal conditions—coffee, meals, and long, relaxed evenings. He became friends with each (and throughout he refers to them as such). As he put it, with evident surprise, “I liked them. I couldn’t help it.” They could be ironic, funny, and self-deprecating. Most of them enjoyed a joke that originated in Nazi Germany: “What is an Aryan? An Aryan is a man who is tall like Hitler, blond like Goebbels, and lithe like Göring.” They also could be wise. Speaking of the views of ordinary people under Hitler, one of them asked:

Opposition? How would anybody know? How would anybody know what somebody else opposes or doesn’t oppose? That a man says he opposes or doesn’t oppose depends upon the circumstances, where, and when, and to whom, and just how he says it. And then you must still guess why he says what he says.

When Mayer returned home, he was afraid for his own country. He felt “that it was not German Man that I had met, but Man,” and that under the right conditions, he could well have turned out as his German friends did. He learned that Nazism took over Germany not “by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler.” Many Germans “wanted it; they got it; and they liked it.”

Mayer’s most stunning conclusion is that with one partial exception (the teacher), none of his subjects “saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect.” Where most of us understand Nazism as a form of tyranny, Mayer’s subjects “did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now.” Seven years after the war, they looked back on the period from 1933 to 1939 as the best time of their lives.

Mayer suggests that even when tyrannical governments do horrific things, outsiders tend to exaggerate their effects on the actual experiences of most citizens, who focus on their own lives and “the sights which meet them in their daily rounds.” Nazism made things better for the people Mayer interviewed, not (as many think) because it restored some lost national pride but because it improved daily life. Germans had jobs and better housing. They were able to vacation in Norway or Spain through the “Strength Through Joy” program. Fewer people were hungry or cold, and the sick were more likely to receive treatment. The blessings of the New Order, as it was called, seemed to be enjoyed by “everybody.”

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

As a historical footnote, I crossed paths with Cass Sunstein at the DOJ during the Carter Administration in 1980-81, when he was an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel and I was the Acting General Counsel/Deputy General Counsel of the “Legacy INS.” About all I remember is that: 1) he was brilliant, 2) he wrote really well; 3) everyone had him pegged as among “the most likely to succeed;” and 4) we both had lots, lots more hair then.

I agree with pretty much everything Sunstein says. Except for one major point. I don’t think “it can happen here.” It is happening here!

Cass says “Thus far, President Trump has been more bark than bite.” Really! With all due respect, that seems like a view directly from the “Ivory Tower.” 

Ask U.S. citizens children whose parents have been deported for no rational reason without any consideration of what will happen to those left behind; ask those children intentionally abused and probably damaged for life by the likes of Jeff Sessions; ask communities that have been terrorized by the Homan-led “ICE Gestapo” that strikes terror, performs few if any “real” law enforcement functions these days, while insuring that whole segments of the population are “easy marks” for crime and abuse; ask women and children refugees from Central American who are essentially being railroaded back to the “death camps” from which they fled by the noxious White Nationalist racists Trump, Miller, & Sessions, with the assistance of morally vapid sycophants like Nielsen and Kelly, without even the semblance of due process; ask Dreamers who are slurred by the  always disingenuous Sessions while being held as hostages by Trump, and hung out to dry by the GOP Congress; ask the kids and families being held in the “New American Gulag” established by Sessions — combined with his intentional distortion of asylum law, they are basically being held in concentration camps waiting to be shipped off to death camps in the Northern Triangle! And we haven’t even gotten to Sessions’s absolutely outrageous, lawless, unconstitutional, and totally immoral plan to rewrite asylum law so that nobody who needs protection actually gets it! Or how about not taking any Syrian refugees, even though they are dying in refugee camps awaiting resettlement every day. Just because the actual deaths, rapes, torture, US-caused human trafficking, and other unspeakable abuses take place outside our national boundaries doesn’t mean that we aren’t just as responsible for them as the fat & happy Burghers of the Third Reich!

I wrote about Sunstein’s timely, yet totally disturbing, article in  my response to a comment from my good friend, colleague, and fellow member of the “Gang of Retired Immigration Judges,”  Judge Gus Villageliu in response to one of his “right on”  comments today.  Here’s what I said:

There is a great article by Professor Cass Sunstein about the parallels between Nazism and Trumpism. The key: Germans who supported Hitler were fat, happy, and satisfied with their lives under Nazism and were willfully indifferent to the torture and suffering of their fellow human beings. They happily accepted the Nazi propaganda that Jews were either traitors or had voluntarily left the country after being fairly compensated for their property. Even after the war, some ordinary Germans looked back on the 1933-39 era of Nazi rule as the best time of their lives.

Another key observation by Sunstein: resistance is never futile and every individual act of resistance, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem at the time, is important. The little acts and persistence add up over time.

In my view, they also establish an important record for historians and future generations. I want my grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren to know where I stood in the era of Trump, Sessions, Miller & the rest of the White Nationalist neo-Nazis and their utterly disgusting perversion of Western Judeo-Christian values!

Due Process, tolerance, courage, standing up for the less fortunate, and recognizing the human rights and dignity of every person are eternal values that are always worth fighting for!

Join the New Due Process Army. Resist the White Nationalist Regime every step of the way. Force “go along to get along” courts (like the Supremes) to face up to the horrible immorality of their appeasement of the cruel, inhuman, and illegal actions of the Trump Administration. Write the historical record that even the Trumpsters and their followers won’t be able to escape so that we might never, ever again have a Neo-Nazi revival like the Trump Administration!

PWS

07-01-18

 

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

“JIM CROW REVIVAL” — ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT IT PLANS “FAMILY GULAG” AS AMERICA’S COLLECTIVE MORALITY SINKS TO LOWS NOT SEEN SINCE FIRST JIM CROW ERA – Then It Was Blacks, Now It’s Browns — America’s White Nationalist Rulers Continue To Abuse Children, Persecute People Of Color, Debase Our Country, Violate Human Rights & Human Decency!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-plans-to-detain-migrant-families-for-months/2018/06/29/f9ffecb6-7bf7-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html?utm_term=.5fe0b6c4ad14

Devlin Barrett reports for the WashPost:

The Trump administration plans to detain migrant families together in custody rather than release them, according to a new court filing that suggests such detentions could last longer than the 20 days envisioned by a court settlement.

“The government will not separate families but detain families together during the pendency of immigration proceedings when they are apprehended at or between ports of entry,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a legal notice to a federal judge in California who has been overseeing long-running litigation about the detention of undocumented immigrants.

The filing comes as the Justice Departments seeks to navigate two different court edicts — an injunction issued this week by a federal judge in San Diego that required the government to begin reuniting the roughly 2,000 migrant children still separated from their families, and an older court settlement in federal court in Los Angeles that requires the immigration agencies to release minors in their custody if they are held for more than 20 days.

In the weeks since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a zero-tolerance policy toward immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. border, roughly 2,500 migrant children were separated from their parents. About 500 of those children have since been reunited with their parents.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Dana M. Sabraw in San Diego issued a preliminary injunction ordering the government to quickly reunite migrant children with their parents, saying that children separated from their families must be returned within 30 days, and allowing just 14 days for the return of children under age 5.

Under the framework of a previous court settlement in the Los Angeles case, the Department of Homeland Security has followed a general practice of not keeping migrant children in the custody of immigration agents for more than 20 days.

3:04
‘Far away from me crying’: A family torn apart at the border

Buena Ventura Martin came from Guatemala with her infant son to claim asylum in the U.S. Her husband and daughter followed, but were separated at the border.(Video: Jon Gerberg /Photo: Alfredo De Lara/The Washington Post)

The new filing does not explicitly say the Trump administration plans to hold families in custody beyond the 20-day limit, but by saying officials plan to detain them “during the pendency” of immigration proceedings, which in many cases can last months, it implies that families will spend that time in detention.

The Justice Department argued that while the previous settlement had compelled it to release minors “without unnecessary delay,” the new court order, “which requires that the minor be kept with the parent, makes delay necessary in these circumstances.”

President Trump has demanded an end to what critics call “catch and release” — the practice of releasing migrants from immigration detention, many of whom do not show up later for their court hearings. The administration has said 40,579 deportation orders were issued because foreigners did not appear for their hearing in the last budget year.

Civil rights groups and immigrant advocates are likely to seek additional legal action if migrant families are detained for months. What’s less clear is how the judge in the Los Angeles case, Dolly M. Gee, will view the new approach by the government, and whether she will order it changed.

The filing could spur the judge to approve long-term family detentions. Alternately, the judge may order the administration to release families with monitoring bracelets — though that could provide a political opening for President Trump and other administration officials to blame the judiciary for forcing them to let illegal immigrants into the country.

Leon Fresco, who served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Immigration Litigation in the Obama administration, said officials had always had the ability to hold kids with families past 20 days — if the parents consented to it. But under President Barack Obama, Fresco said, officials felt it would be too cruel to present mothers with a Sophie’s choice between turning their child over to refugee resettlement authorities, or keeping them detained.

The latest filing, he said, indicated that the Trump administration would be at least willing to do that.

“What they want to do is put the choice to the mom, separate or not separate, but make the choice so onerous that there really is no option other than to stay in family detention,” Fresco said.

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

It would be great if Judge Gee freed the families and sent Sessions, Nielsen, and the DOJ lawyers to jail for contempt! Not going to happen. Hopefully, however she will stay with the 20 day release period for kids, require the Government to use licensed facilities, and prohibit the DHS from detaining family members unless there is a demonstrated reason to deny them an affordable bond or “alternatives to detention.”

Why wouldn’t U.S. Immigration Judges release all of these folks on low bonds pending hearings? They are neither flight risks nor dangers to society under a non-biased application of the legal standards. Looks like Sessions believes he has the “Kangaroo Division” of the U.S. Immigration Courts in his pocket and has intimidated the judges into violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution. I believe that there is already a ruling in the 9th Circuit that U.S. Immigration Judges must consider “ability to pay” in setting bonds, something that obviously isn’t being done in places outside the 9th Circuit, like Texas in the 5th Circuit, where preposterous bonds, as high as $25,000, are being set by some judges in routine asylum cases!

In the meantime, as I always say, we are diminishing ourselves as a nation but it won’t stop human migration. The Trump Administration is, however, “sending a message” that the U.S. legal system is just as much a fraud as those in their home countries. So, if folks need refuge, they should pay a smuggler to get them into the interior where ICE probably will never find them. Smugglers will get rich, folks will die, refugees will have to live underground subject to exploitation, and Putin will be delighted.

The corrupt Trump and his minority White Nationalist regime are overthrowing the American Republic and burying the Constitution. And, Putin hasn’t had to fire a shot. The Republican Party and their supporters are handing our country over to him quite willingly.

PWS

06-30-18

Related posts:

  1. MORE ARTICLES FEATURE “GANG OF RETIRED JUDGES’ STATEMENT” RE: SESSIONS’S OUTRAGEOUS ATTACK ON SETTLED PRINCIPLES OF PROTECTION LAW! — Media Exposing Corrupt, Inherently Unfair, Biased “Court” System Where The Prejudiced Prosecutor “Cooks” The Results to His Liking! — Jeff Sessions Degrades The American Legal System & Our National Values Each Day He Remains In Office!
  2. GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE: JUST AS I’VE BEEN SAYING, THE SOUTHERN BORDER PROBLEM ISN’T ASYLUM LAW — IT’S THE CRUEL, CORRUPT, & IGNORANT TRUMP KAKISTOCRATS ADMINISTERING IT — ELISE FOLEY & JENNIFER BENDERY @ HUFFPOST TELL US ABOUT ANOTHER GREAT IMMIGRATION SOLUTION THAT WORKS — At Least It Did Work Until Trump & His Fellow White Nationalists Dismantled It For No Reason (Except Xenophobia & Racism)!
  3. DOUG CRISS @ CNN: NEWS FROM THE KAKISTOCRACY: EXPOSING AMERICA’S “KIDDIE GULAG” — PUBLIC FINALLY STARTING TO GRASP THE UGLY TRUTH — SESSIONS, TRUMP, & NIELSEN HAVE INSTITUTED A NATIONAL POLICY OF CHILD ABUSE – BROAD SPECTUM IS FINALLY SPEAKING OUT AGAINST IMMORAL AND DISINGENUOUS ACTIONS OF OUR SO-CALLED “LEADERS!”
  4. LAND OF THE NOT SO BRAVE & NOT SO WISE: AS USUAL, TRUMP’S CLUMSY EXECUTIVE ORDER ON DETAINING FAMILIES LIKELY TO CAUSE MORE PROBLEMS THAN IT SOLVES — Strategy Appears Designed To Fail & (Dishonestly) Shift Blame Elsewhere!

NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY CONTINUES TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST ADMINISTRATION’S STUPID AND ILLEGAL ACTIONS & POLICIES! — Jesica Yanez On NPR — I Speak With Sally Kidd @ Hearst News TV!

Jessica Yanez leads Yanez Immigration Law in Greensboro, NC.

Here’s her bio:

About Attorney Yañez

Attorney Yañez earned a Bachelor’s of Arts Degree in Spanish from UNC Greensboro and her Juris Doctor Degree from Elon University School of Law.

Since founding her practice in 2012, she and her team of legal assistants have assisted individuals from approximately 40 different countries in a broad range of immigration matters including family-based petitions, waivers, consular processing, removal defense, U visas, VAWA, naturalization and asylum cases.

In 2016, Attorney Yañez became a NC Board Certified Specialist in Immigration Law. For more information about the benefits of hiring a Board-Certified Specialist, click here: http://www.nclawspecialists.gov/for-the-public/the-benefit-of-hiring-a-specialist/#standards.

Attorney Yañez also serves an Adjunct Professor of immigration law at Elon University School of Law.

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

Here is Sally Kidd, National Correspondent for Hearst News:

And, here’s the clip containing my interview:

http://www.wmur.com/article/president-trump-blasts-judicial-system/22003693

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

Thanks To Jessica and many other members of the NDPA for leading the charge against the Administration’ s cruel, immoral, and illegal policies!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-30-18

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. NATION OF CHILD ABUSERS: WHILE MANY RIGHT WING APOLOGISTS (ALONG WITH ALAN DERSHOWITZ) PAN NAZI COMPARISON, ACTUAL HOLOCAUST CHILD SURVIVOR YOKA VERDONER UNDERSTANDS THE PARALLELS! — Child Abuse Is Child Abuse —Evil Is Evil — Damage Is Irreparable!
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: THIS IS WHY HE STAYS: UNDERNEATH ALL THE “TRUMP NOISE” SESSIONS IS METHODICALLY ERADICATING DUE PROCESS, PERVERTING THE LAW, & TURNING ONE OF THE LARGEST FEDERAL COURT SYSTEMS INTO A “KILLING FLOOR” TARGETING OUR MOST VULNERABLE & DESERVING REFUGEES! — “[Sessions] is dumbing down the judges and treating them like assembly-line workers whose only job is to stamp out final orders of removal.”
  4. TRUMP TREATS KIDS AS HUMAN PAWNS IN UGLY POLITICAL CHESS GAME – Administration’s Continued Spreading Of False Narrative On Migration Makes Continuing Migration Outside of Legal System Inevitable!

GOOD NEWS FROM THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT IN ARLINGTON, VA BY TAL @ CNN: U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGE JOHN MILO BRYANT SHOWS CONGRESS, PUBLIC, PRESS HOW IMMIGRATION COURT COULD & SHOULD WORK IF JEFF SESSIONS & THE DOJ WERE REMOVED FROM THE PICTURE & THE JUDGES WERE INDEPENDENT RATHER THAN BEING UNETHICALLY TOLD BY SESSIONS THAT THEY ARE “PARTNERS WITH DHS!”

The Wonderful Tal Kopan of CNN

Judge Roger Harris, Me, Judge Thomas Snow, & Judge John Milo Bryant (“The Non-Conformist”) head out to lunch on my last day at the Arlington Immigration Court, June 30, 2016

http://www.cnn.com/2018/06/28/politics/immigration-court-hearings/index.html

‘Just be a kid, OK?’: Inside children’s immigration hearings

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

As each immigrant child took their seat in his courtroom for their hearing, Judge John M. Bryant started the same way.

“How are you doing today?” he’d ask.

“Muy bien,” most would answer.

In a span of about 45 minutes, Bryant — an immigration judge in Arlington, Virginia — checked in on the cases of 16 immigrants under the age of 20, all with attorneys and some with parents.

The day was known as a “master calendar hearing” — a swift introduction in court and the beginning of court proceedings for immigrants facing deportation.

The children had largely been in the country for some time, each fighting in court for the right to stay.

But though the immigration courts have long dealt with immigrant children, even those barely school age or younger, their turn through the unique, stand-alone immigration courts is getting new attention as the government’s “zero tolerance” border policy has sent thousands more children into the system without their parents.

The hearings were observed by six Democratic members of Congress: Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland; Rep. Don Beyer, whose Virginia district includes the court; Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico; and Reps. Pete Aguilar, Nanette Diaz Barragán and Norma Torres, all of California.

At a news conference afterward, Beyer called the session “One of the best-case scenarios of a master calendar hearing, a sympathetic judge with kids with lawyers.”

The lawmakers said they had wanted to come to the court to witness it for themselves, because they fear that around the country there are too many courtrooms that are the opposite.

“We know that in vast numbers of cases, there is not proper representation,” Hoyer said, adding that some kids are “not old enough to spell their own names, let alone represent themselves in court.”

In each case, the attorneys described waiting for applications filed with the government, and all were quickly given court dates into 2019 to come back for another check-in. One, a boy named José who had just finished ninth grade, was there for his second check-in and for his full asylum hearing received a court date of May 11, 2021 — likely to be just as he is finishing high school in the US.

The youngest was a 6-year-old boy, Rodolfo, who was there with his attorney and father, though Rodolfo’s case was being heard by itself. As he did with most of the children, Bryant asked Rodolfo if he was in school, translated by an interpreter via headphones provided to every immigrant facing the court.

“Hoy?” Rodolfo asked, confused — “Today?”

Bryant cheerfully prompted Rodolfo about what grade he had finished — kindergarten — and his teacher’s name — Ms. Dani. Bryant said he still remembered his own kindergarten teacher, Ms. Sweeney, from many years prior. “Hasta luego,” Bryant told Rodolfo, giving him a next court date of May 30, 2019.

While all the children in Bryant’s courtroom on this afternoon had attorneys, the Arlington Immigration Court is not typical of the country, where closer to 1-in-3 children are represented in court. Bryant was also generous with the continuances requested by attorneys as they waited to hear from the government on applications for other visas for the children, despite uniform opposition by the government attorney in court.

“Mr. Wagner, your turn,” Bryant joked at one point to the government attorney present, who dutifully recited the government’s opposition to granting continuances solely on the basis of waiting to hear back on a visa application. Bryant than immediately picked a day on his calendar for the immigrant and attorney to return.

One attorney for a 12-year-old girl, Rosemary, who was there with her mother, said they had applied for a Special Immigrant Juvenile visa, which is for minors who have been abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent. Bryant asked the attorney if the application was before a “sweet or sour judge.”

“I think it’s going to be a problem. It may have to be appealed,” the attorney replied.

The judge granted them a court date on February 28 of next year.

“Have a nice summer,” he said to the girl. “Just be a kid, OK?”

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

“The lawmakers said they had wanted to come to the court to witness it for themselves, because they fear that around the country there are too many courtrooms that are the opposite.” And, with very good reason!

No trace of the Jeff Sessions’s paranoia, xenophobia, bias, child abuse, and de-humanization of migrants here. It’s like one would expect a “real” U.S. Court to be run! Sadly, that’s not what’s happening in the rest of the country. Just ask folks in Charlotte, Atlanta, Stewart, Ga., or Houston how they are treated by Immigration Judges. It’s ugly, abusive, well documented, highly inappropriate, and needs to end!

Even more outrageously, rather than building on and replicating successful judicial models like Arlington, Sessions has actually adopted some of the worst imaginable “judicial” practices, encouraged bias, and has actually endorsed and empowered the actions of some of the most clearly biased and anti-immigrant, anti-asylum Immigraton Judges in the system. It’s a simply unacceptable waste of taxpayer money and abuse of our legal system by someone incapable of fulfilling his oath of office.

Imagine, with judges actually in control, lawyers for the respondents, time to prepare and file applications, empathy, courtesy, knowledge, kindness, concern for fairness, efficiency, and giving ICE’s obstructionist “rote objections” and other dilatory tactics encouraged and enabled by this Administration exactly the short shrift they so richly deserve, the U.S. Immigration Courts could potentially fulfill their original vision of “becoming the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.”

And, ICE could be once again required to function in the same highly-professional, courteous, collegial, respectful, and helpful manner that they did in Arlington during the last Administration. It’s disgraceful that rudeness and unfairness have become the norm under Trump. Things like that used to get even Government lawyers fired, disbarred, or disciplined. Now they appear to win kudos.

And, having dockets run by experienced judicial professionals like Judge Bryant with the help of professional staff responsible to him and his colleagues would promote fairness, quality, and efficiency over the “Amateur Night at the Bijou” atmosphere created by a biased, politicized, and totally incompetent Department of Justice and carried out by agency bureaucrats who aren’t judges themselves and are not qualified to administer a major court system.

Why not design a system “built for success” rather one that is built for failure and constant crisis? A well-functioning court system where “Due Process and Quality Are Job One” and which serves as a “level playing field” would actually help DHS Enforcement as well as the immigrants whose lives depend upon it. Fairness and Due Process are good for everyone. It’s also what our Constitution requires! Play the game fairly and professionally and let the chips fall where they may, rather than trying to “game the system” to tilt everything toward enforcement. 

But, it’s not going to happen until either 1) Congress creates an independent U.S. Immigration Court, or 2) the Article III Courts finally step up to the plate, put an end to this travesty, remove the DOJ from its totally improper and unethical supervisory role, and place the Immigration Courts under a court-appointed “Special Master” to manage them with the goal of Due Process and judicial efficiency until Congress reorganizes them outside of the Executive Branch! Otherwise, the Article IIIs will have to do the job that Sessions won’t let the Immigration Courts perform!

Compare Judge Bryant’s professional performance with the “judicial meat processing plant/Due Process Denial Factory” being operated by U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby on the Southern Border as described by Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post in my post from yesterday:

http://immigrationcourtside.com/2018/06/28/karen-tumulty-washpost-assembly-line-justice-is-already-the-norm-in-u-s-district-courts-at-the-border-as-go-along-to-get-along-u-s-magistrate-convicts-bewilder/

Who is the “real” judge here? It doesn’t take a “rocket scientist” to answer that one! Just some judges with the backbone, courage, and integrity not to “go along to get along” with Sessions’s assault on the integrity and independence of our justice system.

PWS

06-30-18

 

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

KAREN TUMULTY @ WASHPOST: “ASSEMBLY LINE JUSTICE” IS ALREADY THE NORM IN U.S. DISTRICT COURTS AT THE BORDER AS “GO ALONG TO GET ALONG” U.S. MAGISTRATE CONVICTS BEWILDERED AND DAZED NON-CRIMINALS WHILE MUTTERING MISLEADING PLATITUDES!

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-what-trumps-assembly-line-justice-looks-like/2018/06/27/16a67354-7a12-11e8-aeee-4d04c8ac6158_story.html?utm_term=.92044d40e736

MCALLEN, Tex.

When Magistrate Judge Peter E. Ormsby stepped into the federal courtroom here Tuesday morning, 75 defendants rose to their feet.

Their ankles were shackled, and they wore headsets through which the proceedings would be translated into Spanish. In the hallway, just beyond the door, was a pile of handcuffs that had been removed before they entered the courtroom.

Most of the defendants appeared dressed in the same filthy, sweat-saturated clothes they had been wearing two days before, when they were apprehended crossing the Rio Grande aboard rafts.

CONTENT FROM PRIME VIDEO

“When you have diverse views, it makes the outcome for all people better.” – Justice Anne McKeigRead More 

In all but 11 of their cases, this criminal misdemeanor was the first time they had ever been found to have violated U.S. law.

Ormsby informed them his was not an immigration court. Many had already signed away their rights to further proceedings and had orders for what is known as “expedited removal.” They had done that before the 17 lawyers of the public defender’s office had met with any of them for the first time, just hours before.

The next two hours would see each one of them plead guilty and be sentenced, most to time already served.

With few exceptions, each case would be dealt with in under 75 seconds.

This was just the morning docket. It is what President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy looks like here, where busloads of recently detained migrants roll up to the federal courthouse several times a day. Ormsby invited me and a handful of other observers there to sit in the jury box, because there was no room anywhere else.

The president contends that even this assembly-line version of justice is more than what those caught entering the country illegally should get.

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”

On that latter point, the president is correct — but it is for the reverse of the reasoning he offers. His zero-tolerance policy is putting even more stress on a legal system that already gives migrants far less than their day in court.

The outcome for many might be different if they had fuller access to the legal system, to which they are entitled in theory if not practice, and given an opportunity to make their case to stay in this country.

Trump has mocked proposals for adding to the number of immigration judges, who handle separate proceedings for those who want to remain.

“We have thousands of judges already,” he has claimed. That is incorrect. The number actually stands at fewer than 350 across the country. They are facing a backlog of more than 700,000 cases.

Just as critical as the scarcity of judges is the fact that so few migrants ever have a chance to consult an attorney.

Only about 14 percent of those who are detained have access to counsel, says American Bar Association President Hilarie Bass, who was here from Miami. She added that migrant adults with lawyers win slightly more than half their cases and get to stay in this country, while 9 out of 10 of those without representation lose and are deported.

For unaccompanied children, the disparity in outcomes is even greater. As Bass noted: “How can you ask a 12-year-old to walk into court and make a case for themselves?”

Under Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, more migrants are being prosecuted and deported on the border, rather than being sent to other parts of the country where they can await trial while staying with relatives or others who can take them in. That has compounded the challenge, because it adds to the backlog in this region and makes it more difficult for migrants to find lawyers.

In the current crisis, platoons of lawyers are arriving weekly to volunteer their services, but there are not nearly enough, says Kimi Jackson, director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project. “What we need most here are Spanish-speaking immigration attorneys, particularly ones who can stay a little longer.” The need will remain for the foreseeable future, long after the journalists and cameras have moved on to the next story.

And even if help comes, it will be too late for most of those who appeared before Ormsby. As he worked his way through their cases, he expressed sympathy for the circumstances of poverty and violence that brought them from dangerous places in Honduras and El Salvador and Mexico to his courtroom. He wished them and their families well and urged them to go through the process of coming to the United States legally.

“Seeing the type of people you appear to be,” the magistrate added, “I hope that you will be successful with that.”

But everyone there knew that was a wish, and one unlikely to come true.

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

  • Mostly first offenders who didn’t belong in criminal court anyway.
  • Why would nonviolent first offenders be shackled in court?
  • Anybody understand what they are pleading guilty to?
  • Everybody understand that they have a right to a full trial at which the Government would have to prove guilt?
  • Anybody understand what a port of entry is?
  • Anybody just looking for an officer to apply for asylum?
  • Anybody realize there are strong legal arguments that criminal sanctions can’t be invoked against good faith asylum seekers under international treaties to which the U.S. is party?
  • Anybody know the name of their court-appointed lawyer?
  • Anybody have a chance to speak with their lawyer in private in Spanish?
  • Anybody have a “know your rights” presentation about the immigration system?
  • Anybody know what a “credible fear” interview is, how to request one from the DHS, and how to get review of a denial?
  • Anybody know that asylum applicants who pass credible fear can request bond?
  • Anybody understand the consequences of a conviction?
  • Anybody pressured to plead guilty to get their kids back or get out of detention?
  • Anybody know how the asylum process works and how to apply?
  • Anybody know how important lawyers are for asylum seekers and how to get in touch with local pro bono lawyers?
  • Anybody separated from kids?
  • Anybody know that the Government has been ordered by a more conscientious Federal Judge to reunite families?

We’ll probably never know the answers, because that might have exceeded Judge Ormsby’s 75 second attention span and cut into his productivity stats.

I’ve commented before on the Judge Ormsby’s judicial performance (or lack thereof).

https://wp.me/p8eeJm-2E9

Judge Ormsby should be in line for a Jeff Sessions “Volume Is Everything — Due Process Is Nothing” award! He appears to be just the type of subservient judicial toady Trump & McConnell would love to have on the Supremes. And, I wouldn’t let the U.S. District Judges who are in charge of this judicial farce off the hook either.

Someday, the true history of the abuses of human values, human rights, and our Constitution now going on at our border under a White Nationalist regime will be written. And the “go along to get along” crowd will be held accountable for their conduct; by the judgment of history, if not by the law.

PWS

06-29-18

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  3. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

I TAKE TO THE AIRWAVES TO DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION, DUE PROCESS, RULE OF LAW, ASYLUM, KIDS, HUMANITY, IMMIGRATION JUDGES! – Weekend Clips

1. NPR WEEKEND EDITION WITH SCOTT SIMON, JUNE 23, 2018

Click here:

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/23/622795409/a-former-immigration-judge-on-the-current-situation

2.  WITH SOLEDAD O’BRIEN, JUNE 24, 2018

Click here:

http://matteroffact.tv/retired-immigration-judge-there-is-still-a-right-to-asylum-after-illegal-entry/

 

3. MSNBC, VELSHI & RUHLE WITH ALI VELSHI, JUNE 25, 2018

Click here:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fmr-immigration-judge-migrants-are-not-invaders/vp-AAz9ENo

PWS

06-26-18

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”