"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
“Law360, New York (January 5, 2018, 9:27 PM EST) — The Board of Immigration Appeals has vacated an immigration judge’s denials of a Salvadoran native’s bids to secure asylum and to duck deportation, after finding that the judge used “hostile and bullying behavior” toward the individual’s attorney.
The BIA wants a different judge to review the case, essentially from scratch, after finding that the Immigration Judge Quynh V. Bain “screamed” at the lawyer for more than five minutes, mimicked her voice, called her “several disrespectful names,” said she was “unprofessional” and refused to allow a recess…”
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Those with complete Law360 access can read Penton’s full story at the link. Kudos to the BIA for “stepping up” to stop such abuses and protect due process!
Surprisingly, and sadly, Judge Quynh V. Bain is one of my former colleagues at the U.S. Immigration Court in Arlington, Virginia. The Arlington Immigration Court generally has had a well-deserved reputation for fairness, professionalism, respect, teamwork, and unfailing courtesy. In other words, it’s always been a court where lawyers on both sides enjoy practicing. Indeed, it often serves as a “training court” for student attorneys, interns, new Assistant Chief Counsel, and newly appointed U.S. Immigration Judges. So, I’d have to assume that this was an aberration in the context of Arlington.
Nevertheless, given the high stress levels that U.S. Immigration Judges are already working under, the plans of Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions to “torque up” the pressure on Immigration Judges to turn our final orders of removal without much, if any regard, for due process, the counter-pressure from the U.S. Courts of Appeals for Immigration Courts to function like “real” courts, the many newly appointed inexperienced Immigration Judges, and the lack of meaningful training for Immigration Judges, I would expect such incidents to increase in the future. Just another reason why it’s past time for an independent Article I U.S. immigration Court!
Changing to the topic of Law360, one of my favorite “immigration beat” reporters, Allissa Wickham (a/k/a the fabulous “AWick”) tells me that she has left Law360 for a “new gig” with HBO, working on a show featuring Wyatt Cenac (formerly of the “Daily Show”). The show is scheduled to air this spring. Allissa says that she will continue to do original reporting, so hopefully at least some immigration topics will find their way into her “portfolio.” Good luck Allissa, and thanks for all of your great immigration reporting, clear writing, and many contributions while at Law360!
For some time now, immigrant advocates have been fearing/expecting Attorney General Jeff Sessions to use his authority to “certify” BIA cases to himself as a means to undo or restrict BIA administrative precedents that might be helpful or favorable to migrants.
For those new to the practice, the U.S. immigration Court, including both the trial courts and the Appellate Division (“BIA”), is a “wholly owed subsidiary” of the Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice. The Attorney General gets to select U.S. Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges, and they basically serve in their judicial positions at his pleasure (although, for the most part, they can’t be removed from their positions as DOJ Attorneys without cause — in other words, they can be reassigned to non-judicial duties at the same pay and grade largely “at will”).
Additionally, the Attorney General has the authority to promulgate regulations governing the jurisdiction and authority of the Immigration Courts and the BIA. Beyond that, he can actually change the result in individual cases with which he disagrees by a regulatory device known as “certifying” cases to himself for final decision. This process, of course, also applies to BIA precedents, which otherwise are binding on U.S. Immigration Judges nationwide.
The process of certification has now begun. Today, Sessions “certified” a BIA case to himself for the apparent purpose of stripping or limiting the authority of the BIA and Immigration Judges to “administratively close” cases. “Administrative closure” is a method of removing the case from the court’s active docket (significantly, it then no longer counts toward the “backlog” of pending cases).
It is normally used for cases that are pending for adjudication somewhere within the USCIS. It had also been widely used, particularly during the Obama Administration, as a means of implementing decisions by the ICE Chief Counsel to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” or “PD” in particular humanitarian situations, as well as a way for removing so-called “DACA” grants from the courts’ active dockets.
The particular case certified is Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 87 (A.G. 2018). The BIA’s decision is unpublished (“non-precedcential”). However, Session’s real target appears to be the BIA’s precedents Matter of Avetisyan, 25 I&N Dec. 688 (BIA 2012), and Matter of W-Y-U-, 27 I&N Dec. 17 (BIA 2017), which gave Immigration Judges at least some independent authority to administratively close cases over the objection of a party (although, importantly, not the authority to close a case for “PD” without ICE Counsel’s consent). While Matter of Castro-Tum asks for briefing on a number of questions, it seems highly unlikely that Sessions went to the trouble of certifying the case to reaffirm, continue, or expand the use of “administrative closing.”
“Administrative closing” was initiated by the first EOIR Chief immigration Judge, the late William R. Robie, as a way of clearing court dockets of cases that were not actually under active consideration before the Immigration Court. It has been an effective way or reducing and prioritizing immigration Court dockets that has presented few problems in administration. Its elimination or restriction could lead to more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) or bigger backlogs.
Some advocates have even suggested that Sessions actually intends to maximize the Immigration Court’s already huge 660,000 case backlog to support a request for 1) a dramatic immediate increase in immigration Judge funding, or 2) a dramatic expansion of the number of individuals subject to so-called “Administrative (or “Expedited”) Removal” by DHS Enforcement officers without recourse to the immigration Court, or both.
Stay tuned to see which BIA precedents might be next on Session’s “chopping block.”
U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General
The Attorney General referred the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals to himself for review of issues relating to the authority to administratively close immigration proceedings, ordering that the case be stayed during the pendency of his review.
BEFORE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
Pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.l(h)(l)(i) (2017), I direct the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board”) to refer this case to me for review of its decision. The Board’s decision in this matter is automatically stayed pending my review. See Matter of Haddam, A.G. Order No. 2380-2001 (Jan. 19, 2001). To assist me in my review, I invite the parties to these proceedings and interested amici to submit briefs on points relevant to the disposition of this case, including:
1. Do Immigration Judges and the Board have the authority, under any statute, regulation, or delegation of authority from the Attorney General, to order administrative closure in a case? If so, do the Board’s decisions in Matter of Avetisyan, 25 I&N Dec. 688 (BIA 2012), and Matter of W-Y-U-, 27 I&N Dec. 17 (BIA 2017), articulate the appropriate standard for administrative closure?
2. If I determine that Immigration Judges and the Board currently lack the authority to order administrative closure, should I delegate such authority? Alternatively, if I determine that Immigration Judges and the Board currently possess the authority to order administrative closure, should I withdraw that authority?
3. The regulations governing removal proceedings were promulgated for “the expeditious, fair, and proper resolution of matters coming before Immigration Judges.” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.12 (2017). Are there any circumstances where a docket management device other than administrative closure—including a continuance for good cause shown (8 C.F.R. § 1003.29 (2017)), dismissal without prejudice (8 C.F.R. § 1239.2(c) (2017)), or termination without prejudice (8 C.F.R. § 1239.2(f))—would be inadequate to promote that objective? Should there be different legal consequences, such as eligibility to apply for a provisional waiver of certain grounds of inadmissibility under the immigration laws or for benefits under federal or state programs, where a case has been administratively closed rather than continued?
4. If I determine that Immigration Judges and the Board do not have the authority to order administrative closure, and that such a power is unwarranted or unavailable, what actions should be taken regarding cases that are already administratively closed?
The parties’ briefs shall not exceed 15,000 words and shall be filed on or before February 2, 2018. Interested amici may submit briefs not exceeding 9,000 words on or before February 9, 2018. The parties may submit reply briefs not exceeding 6,000 words on or before February 20, 2018. All filings shall be accompanied by proof of service and shall be submitted electronically to AGCertification@usdoj.gov, and in triplicate to:
United States Department of Justice Office of the Attorney General, Room 5114 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530
All briefs must be both submitted electronically and postmarked on or before the pertinent deadlines. Requests for extensions are disfavored.
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If you want a copy of the BIA’s unpublished decision in Castro-Tum, go on over to LexisNexis Immigration Community at this link:
Calderon-Rodriguez v. Sessions, 9th Cir., 01-03-18, published
COURT’S HEADNOTE:
The panel granted Henri Calderon-Rodriguez’s petition for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision, concluding that the Board in two related ways abused its discretion in affirming the IJ’s competence evaluation and determination.
First, the Board affirmed the IJ’s inaccurate factual findings, failing to recognize that the medical record upon which the IJ and Board heavily relied was nearly a year old, and that it may have no longer reflected Calderon’s mental state.
Second, the Board affirmed the IJ’s departure from the standards set out by the Board for competency determinations in Matter of M-A-M-, 25 I. & N. Dec. 474 (BIA 2011). Specifically, the panel concluded that the IJ did not adequately ensure that the Department of Homeland Security complied with its obligation to provide the court with relevant materials in its possession that would inform the court about Calderon’s mental competency. In this respect, the panel noted that, importantly, neither the IJ nor the Board recognized that, as DHS was providing ongoing medical care to Calderon as a detainee, it necessarily possessed additional relevant, but not introduced, medical records.
The panel remanded to the Board with instructions to remand Calderon’s case to the IJ for a competence evaluation based on current mental health reviews and medical records, as well as any other relevant evidence.
** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
PANEL: A. Wallace Tashima and Marsha S. Berzon,Circuit Judges, and Matthew F. Kennelly,* District Judge.* The Honorable Matthew F. Kennelly, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, sitting by designation.
OPINION BY: Judge Berzon
KEY QUOTE:
“First, the BIA affirmed the IJ’s inaccurate factual finding about the mental health evidence in the record. Neither the IJ nor the BIA recognized that the medical record upon which they heavily relied was nearly a year old, and that it may have no longer reflected Calderon’s mental state. Instead, the IJ referred to the medical record as an “updated” reflection of Calderon’s present mental health condition, and stated that the record showed that Calderon “[p]resently . . . is not exhibiting any active PTSD symptoms, suicide ideation, hallucinations, or psychosis” (emphasis added). Those findings as to Calderon’s condition at the time of the hearing were not supported by the year-old date on the mental health record. As these critical factual findings were made “without ‘support in inferences that may be drawn from the facts in the record,’” Rodriguez v. Holder, 683 F.3d 1164, 1170 (9th Cir. 2012) (quoting Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 577 (1985) and citing United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247,M1262 (9th Cir. 2009) (en banc)), they constituted an abuse of discretion.
Second, the BIA abused its discretion by affirming the IJ’s departure from the standards set forth in Matter of M-A-M-, 25 I&N Dec. at 480–81. See Mejia, 868 F.3d at 1121. While the IJ did “take” at least some “measures” to determine whether Calderon was competent, Matter of M-A- M-, 25 I&N Dec. at 480, she did not adequately ensure that DHS complied with its “obligation to provide the court with relevant materials in its possession that would inform the court about the respondent’s mental competency,” as required by Matter of M-A-M-. Id.
Importantly, neither the IJ nor the BIA recognized that, as DHS was providing ongoing medical care to Calderon as a detainee, it necessarily possessed additional relevant, but not introduced, medical records. There were, indeed, specific indications that there were later medical records not provided to the IJ or the BIA that could have reflected a deterioration in Calderon’s condition.”
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This unrepresented Respondent has been in DHS custody for going on six years! This case previously reached the Court of Appeals and was remanded at the DOJ’s request for the holding of a competency hearing. Yet, the BIA still did not take the time and care necessary to properly apply their own precedent on how to conduct mental competency hearings consistent with due process!
Dec 28 Lawyer Files Disciplinary Complaint Against Chief Immigration Judge
On December 22, New York attorney Bryan S. Johnson filed a complaint with the Assistant Chief Immigration Judge for Conduct and Professionalism against Chief Immigration Judge MaryBeth Keller. The basis for the complaint was the Chief Judge’s issuance of guidelines to immigration judges on the handling of cases involving juveniles, including unaccompanied children (OPPM 17-03, Dec. 20, 2017). In that directive, Judge Keller instructed immigration judges that in spite of the sympathetic factors involved in children’s cases, “judges must remain neutral and impartial when adjudicating juvenile cases and shall not display any appearance of impropriety when presiding over such cases.” The complaint argues that such directive instructs immigration judges to violate federal statute, specifically the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”), which requires the Attorney General to train immigration judges to “work with unaccompanied alien children, including identifying children who are victims of severe forms of trafficking in persons, and children for whom asylum or special immigrant relief may be appropriate.” 8 U.S.C. § 1232(e).
Instructing judges to “remain neutral and impartial,” while open to interpretation, will be perceived by many as requiring passivity. As one senior judge explained to me when I was new to the bench, judges should consider themselves blank slates and only consider what the parties have chosen to write on that slate. However, exceptions exist. In a precedent decision issued 20 years ago, the BIA held that in asylum cases in which the parties have not presented enough evidence to provide an adequate record, immigration judges should themselves present country condition evidence into the record. The Board cited favorably to the UNHCR Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status which defines the role of the adjudicator as to “ensure that the applicant presents his case as fully as possible and with all available evidence.” Matter of S-M-J-, 21 I&N Dec. 722, 729 (BIA 1997). Decided by a BIA that possessed some brilliant minds and courage, the Board in S-M-J- established that there are times that an immigration judge must not remain neutral when doing so will deny an asylum seeker justice.
Ten years later, the Chief Immigration Judge issued guidance to immigration judges handling juvenile cases to take a proactive approach, due to the vulnerability of the child respondents. It bears noting that the 2007 guidelines were issued under a Republican administration. Obviously, a neutral, passive approach by the judge will not ensure a fair hearing where the two parties involved are the Department of Homeland Security, represented in court by one of its attorneys, and a young (and possibly unrepresented) child. In such circumstances, the judge must to some degree advocate for the child to “ensure that the applicant presents his case as fully as possible and with all available evidence,” to use the language of S-M-J-. In response to this need, EOIR created special juvenile dockets, and provided specialized training to the immigration judges chosen to preside over them. In 2008, Congress passed the TVPRA, the statute relied upon by attorney Johnson in his complaint. In 2013, EOIR created an Assistant Chief Immigration Judge position specifically dedicated to “vulnerable populations.”
EOIR has the additional opportunity to create a more level playing field by assigning counsel to all unrepresented juveniles appearing in immigration court. Yet the agency strongly opposed this solution in a class-action lawsuit filed by advocacy groups (including the ACLU and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project), J.E.F.M. v. Lynch. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dismissed the case last year, finding that the court lacked jurisdiction to decide the issue. However, the court’s majority opinion emphasized that it was not ruling on the merits of the claim, and in a concurring opinion, two of the three judges on the case’s panel acknowledged that “thousands of children are left to thread their way alone through the labarynthine maze of immigration laws, which, without hyperbole, ‘have been termed second only to the Internal Revenue Code in complexity.’” The judges continued that “given the onslaught of cases involving unaccompanied minors, there is only so much the most dedicated and judicious immigration judges…can do.” The court called on Congress and the Executive branch to take action to provide government-funded counsel to all children appearing in immigration court. The judges concluded that “to give meaning to “Equal Justice Under Law,” the tag line engraved in the U.S. Supreme Court building, to ensure the fair and effective administration of our immigration justice system, and to protect the interests of children who must struggle through that system, the problem demands action now.”
Democratic lawmakers have introduced draft legislation, entitled the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act, that would remedy this situation. Versions of the bill went nowhere in 2016; a 2017 version sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Cal.) and 31 co-sponsors was introduced on April 6, 2017 and has made no progress since. The website GovTrack.us states that the bill has a 3 percent chance of being enacted. In the meantime, the Chief Immigration Judge’s latest memo signals a move in the opposite direction under the present administration. Last week, the Trump administration confirmed that it is considering a policy of separating children from their parents upon arrival at the U.S. border. While the administration claims that the policy is designed to discourage Central Americans from making the dangerous journey north, it ignores the fact that those making such journey are refugees fleeing the threat of death in what has become one of the most violent and dangerous regions in the world.
The administration has not explained what alternatives exist to parents seeking to save their children from being murdered and raped by violent gangs, including MS-13, whose members Trump himself has referred to as “animals.” As reported by the New York Post, Trump stated during a speech last July in Long Island, NY of MS-13 members: “They kidnap. They extort. They rape and they rob. They prey on children. They stomp on their victims. They beat them with clubs. They slash them with machete. They stab them with knives.” It would therefore seem that the current administration should be seeking to do everything in its power to provide children fleeing the above-described treatment to have their claims for asylum considered as fully and fairly as possible. Restoring the 2007 guidelines, respecting the TVPRA requirements, refusing to separate children from their parents, and providing counsel at government expense to unrepresented children would all be welcome steps towards that goal.
Copyright 2017 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.
JEFF CHASE
Dec 8 The Impact of Returning Children on Well-Founded Fear
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Jeffrey S. Chase is an immigration lawyer in New York City. Jeffrey is a former Immigration Judge, senior legal advisor at the Board of Immigration Appeals, and volunteer staff attorney at Human Rights First. He is a past recipient of AILA’s annual Pro Bono Award, and previously chaired AILA’s Asylum Reform Task Force.
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I appreciate Judge Chase’s kind reference to Matter of S-M-J-, 21 I&N Dec. 722 (BIA 1997). I was on the en banc BIA that decided S-M-J-. (Yes, unlike now, most precedents were issued en banc, so that each Appellate Judge was required to take a public vote on the outcome. Something known as “transparency and accountability” that has disappeared from today’s BIA.)
Forget all the legal gobbledygook in the “Keller Memorandum.” Here’s what a straightforward policy from an Attorney General actually committed to upholding the Constitution and the “Rule of Law” might look like:
The first duty of a Judge is to insure Constitutional Due Process for each individual coming before the court.
A Judge should not conduct a merits hearing for any unrepresented child, including any individual the Judge reasonably believes to be a child.
The Judge and all court personnel should work cooperatively with nongovernmental organizations, bar associations, legal services groups, and community officials to insure that cases involving children are placed on the docket and scheduled in a manner that insures representation in each case
When in doubt, a Judge should always act in a manner that maximizes Due Process protections for each individual coming before the court.
Jesse Byrnes and Julia Manchester report for The Hill:
“A federal judge in Seattle has partially lifted a ban on certain refugees imposed by the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge James Robart issued a ruling on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Jewish Family Service on Saturday.
The groups had urged the judge, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, to halt the ban on refugees from some majority-Muslim nations.
Robart ruled that the federal government should process certain refugee applications, saying his order doesn’t apply to refugees who do not have a “bona fide” relationship with an individual or an entity in the U.S.
The ban originally went into effect after the president issued an executive order reinstating the refugee program “with enhanced vetting capabilities” in October.
The ACLU argued that a memo sent to the president from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats saying certain refugees should be banned unless security was enhanced did not provide enough evidence for why more security was needed.
The judge wrote Saturday that “former officials detailed concretely how the Agency Memo will harm the United States’ national security and foreign policy interests” and said his ruling restores “refuge procedures and programs to the position they were in prior” to the ban, which he noted included thorough vetting of individuals traveling to the U.S.
The lawsuits stemming from the ACLU and Jewish Family Services were consolidated and involved refugees who have been blocked from coming to the U.S.”
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Read the complete article over at The Hill at the link.
Like other recent lower court rulings against the Travel Ban, I expect this will be largely a “symbolic victory” for the plaintiffs. Based on the Supremes’ actions on other “Travel Ban” cases to date, I expect that the Administration will eventually prevail in its effort to restrict refugee admissions from abroad.
“Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday said President Donald Trump’s hotly contested travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries should not be applied to people with strong U.S. ties.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers several West Coast states, also said its ruling would be put on hold pending a decision on the latest version of the travel ban from the Trump administration by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since taking office in January, Trump has been struggling to enact a ban that passes court muster.
A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit narrowed a previous injunction from a lower federal court to those people “with a credible bona fide relationship with the United States.”
It also said that while the U.S. president has broad powers to regulate the entry of immigrants into the United States, those powers are not without limits.
“We conclude that the President’s issuance of the Proclamation once again exceeds the scope of his delegated authority,” the panel said.
The ban targets people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen seeking to enter the United States. The Republican president has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from terrorism.
The state of Hawaii, however, challenged it in court, and a Honolulu federal judge said it exceeded Trump’s powers under immigration law.
Trump’s ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but the lower courts had already allowed those provisions to go into effect.
The same three judge 9th Circuit panel, which limited a previous version of Trump’s ban, heard arguments earlier this month. Some of the judges appeared more cautious toward the idea of blocking the president’s policy.
Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries in January, which caused chaos at airports and mass protests.
He issued a revised one in March after the first was blocked by federal courts.
That expired in September after a long court fight, and was replaced with the current version.
The ban has some exceptions. Certain people from each targeted country can still apply for a visa for tourism, business or education purposes, and any applicant can ask for an individual waiver.
U.S. Justice Department officials were not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Tom Brown)”
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I think the result here is largely a symbolic protest against Trump by the 9th Circuit. The court stayed it’s own order, pending inevitable Supreme Court review; therefore, the ruling changes nothing.
But, in reality, although going through the motions of pressing the lower courts to rule, it appears that the majority of the Supremes have already decided Travel Ban 3.0 in favor of the Trump Administration. Otherwise, the Supreme’s recent decision to stay the lower court injunctions pending review would fall somewhere between inexplicable to indefensible on the scale of judicial conduct. Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented from the lifting of the stay. Therefore, I would expect a “split decision,” with the Administration’s margin of victory to be in the range of 5-4 to 7-2.
But so many foreigners had flooded into the country since January, he vented to his national security team, that it was making a mockery of his pledge. Friends were calling to say he looked like a fool, Mr. Trump said.
According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.
More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.
Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.
Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.
As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.
Tempers flared and Mr. Kelly asked that the room be cleared of staff members. But even after the door to the Oval Office was closed, aides could still hear the president berating his most senior advisers.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, denied on Saturday morning that Mr. Trump had made derogatory statements about immigrants during the meeting.
“General Kelly, General McMaster, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Nielsen and all other senior staff actually in the meeting deny these outrageous claims,” she said, referring to the current White House chief of staff, the national security adviser and the secretaries of state and homeland security. “It’s both sad and telling The New York Times would print the lies of their anonymous ‘sources’ anyway.”
While the White House did not deny the overall description of the meeting, officials strenuously insisted that Mr. Trump never used the words “AIDS” or “huts” to describe people from any country. Several participants in the meeting told Times reporters that they did not recall the president using those words and did not think he had, but the two officials who described the comments found them so noteworthy that they related them to others at the time.
The meeting in June reflects Mr. Trump’s visceral approach to an issue that defined his campaign and has indelibly shaped the first year of his presidency.
How We Reported This Story
The Times conducted over three dozen interviews with current and former administration officials, lawmakers and others close to the process.
Seizing on immigration as the cause of countless social and economic problems, Mr. Trump entered office with an agenda of symbolic but incompletely thought-out goals, the product not of rigorous policy debate but of emotionally charged personal interactions and an instinct for tapping into the nativist views of white working-class Americans.
Like many of his initiatives, his effort to change American immigration policy has been executed through a disorderly and dysfunctional process that sought from the start to defy the bureaucracy charged with enforcing it, according to interviews with three dozen current and former administration officials, lawmakers and others close to the process, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private interactions.
But while Mr. Trump has been repeatedly frustrated by the limits of his power, his efforts to remake decades of immigration policy have gained increasing momentum as the White House became more disciplined and adept at either ignoring or undercutting the entrenched opposition of many parts of the government. The resulting changes have had far-reaching consequences, not only for the immigrants who have sought to make a new home in this country, but also for the United States’ image in the world.
“We have taken a giant steamliner barreling full speed,” Mr. Miller said in a recent interview. “Slowed it, stopped it, begun to turn it around and started sailing in the other direction.”
It is an assessment shared ruefully by Mr. Trump’s harshest critics, who see a darker view of the past year. Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group, argues that the president’s immigration agenda is motivated by racism.
“He’s basically saying, ‘You people of color coming to America seeking the American dream are a threat to the white people,’” said Mr. Sharry, an outspoken critic of the president. “He’s come into office with an aggressive strategy of trying to reverse the demographic changes underway in America.”
. . . .
Even as the administration was engaged in a court battle over the travel ban, it began to turn its attention to another way of tightening the border — by limiting the number of refugees admitted each year to the United States. And if there was one “deep state” stronghold of Obama holdovers that Mr. Trump and his allies suspected of undermining them on immigration, it was the State Department, which administers the refugee program.
At the department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, there was a sense of foreboding about a president who had once warned that any refugee might be a “Trojan horse” or part of a “terrorist army.”
Mr. Trump had already used the travel ban to cut the number of allowable refugees admitted to the United States in 2017 to 50,000, a fraction of the 110,000 set by Mr. Obama. Now, Mr. Trump would have to decide the level for 2018.
At an April meeting with top officials from the bureau in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room, Mr. Miller cited statistics from the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies that indicated that resettling refugees in the United States was far costlier than helping them in their own region.
Mr. Miller was visibly displeased, according to people present, when State Department officials pushed back, citing another study that found refugees to be a net benefit to the economy. He called the contention absurd and said it was exactly the wrong kind of thinking.
But the travel ban had been a lesson for Mr. Trump and his aides on the dangers of dictating a major policy change without involving the people who enforce it. This time, instead of shutting out those officials, they worked to tightly control the process.
In previous years, State Department officials had recommended a refugee level to the president. Now, Mr. Miller told officials the number would be determined by the Department of Homeland Security under a new policy that treated the issue as a security matter, not a diplomatic one.
When he got word that the Office of Refugee Resettlement had drafted a 55-page report showing that refugees were a net positive to the economy, Mr. Miller swiftly intervened, requesting a meeting to discuss it. The study never made it to the White House; it was shelved in favor of a three-page list of all the federal assistance programs that refugees used.
At the United Nations General Assembly in September, Mr. Trump cited the Center for Immigration Studies report, arguing that it was more cost-effective to keep refugees out than to bring them into the United States.
“Uncontrolled migration,” Mr. Trump declared, “is deeply unfair to both the sending and receiving countries.”
. . . .
As the new year approached, officials began considering a plan to separate parents from their children when families are caught entering the country illegally, a move that immigrant groups called draconian.
At times, though, Mr. Trump has shown an openness to a different approach. In private discussions, he returns periodically to the idea of a “comprehensive immigration” compromise, though aides have warned him against using the phrase because it is seen by his core supporters as code for amnesty. During a fall dinner with Democratic leaders, Mr. Trump explored the possibility of a bargain to legalize Dreamers in exchange for border security.
Mr. Trump even told Republicans recently that he wanted to think bigger, envisioning a deal early next year that would include a wall, protection for Dreamers, work permits for their parents, a shift to merit-based immigration with tougher work site enforcement, and ultimately, legal status for some undocumented immigrants.
The idea would prevent Dreamers from sponsoring the parents who brought them illegally for citizenship, limiting what Mr. Trump refers to as “chain migration.”
“He wants to make a deal,” said Mr. Graham, who spoke with Mr. Trump about the issue last week. “He wants to fix the entire system.”
Yet publicly, Mr. Trump has only employed the absolutist language that defined his campaign and has dominated his presidency.
After an Uzbek immigrant was arrested on suspicion of plowing a truck into a bicycle path in Lower Manhattan in October, killing eight people, the president seized on the episode.
Privately, in the Oval Office, the president expressed disbelief about the visa program that had admitted the suspect, confiding to a group of visiting senators that it was yet another piece of evidence that the United States’ immigration policies were “a joke.”
Even after a year of progress toward a country sealed off from foreign threats, the president still viewed the immigration system as plagued by complacency.
“We’re so politically correct,” he complained to reporters in the cabinet room, “that we’re afraid to do anything.”
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Read the full, much more comprehensive and detailed, article at the link.
Disturbing for sure, but unfortunately not particularly surprising for those of us who have watched the Administration roll out its toxic, ill-informed immigration policies. Perhaps ironically, while the immigration issue has certainly allowed Trump to capture and control the GOP, polls show that his extreme restrictionist, xenophobic views on immigration are generally out of line with the majority of Americans (although not necessarily the majority of GOP voters).
“Earlier this month, the DHS Office of Inspector General (IG) released a report on “Concerns about ICE Detainee Treatment and Care at Detention Facilities.” According to the ACLU, the way to address the violationsdescribed in this “damning new report” is to “release people from immigration detention and prohibit ICE from using dangerous and inhumane jails.”
The IG found problems at four of the five detention centers it inspected, but it is a stretch to call the report “damning” or to claim that ICE is “using dangerous and inhumane jails.” Many of the problems were relatively minor, and, apparently, all of them are going to be corrected.
The immigration court backlog is so long that, as of October 2017, the average wait for a hearing was 691 days, and Trump’s backlog reduction plan isn’t going to bring it under control.
ICE cannot release detainees because wait-times are too long. Many of them will not return for their hearings. During FY2015, 23.4 percent of the aliens who were released from custody did not return for their hearings, and releases were limited to cases in which there was reason to expect the aliens to return.
Which alternative do you expect the Republicans to choose?”
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Go on over to The Hill to read Nolan’s complete article.
Why Expedited Removal Isn’t the Answer (Leaving Aside The Substantial Legal and Moral Issues Involved):
Under Trump, DHS has already “maxed out” the use of expedited removal at the border.
While Trump’s Executive Order called for an expansion of expedited removal to individuals who have been in the country for less than two years, that requires a regulatory change which, curiously, the DH’s has failed to accomplish in the nearly one year since the Executive Order.
Even with expedited removal expanded to two years, the vast majority of individuals comprising the “court backlog” have been there at least that long and therefore wouldn’t be candidates for expedited removal.
Of those limited number who have been in the U.S. for less than two years, many have already passed “credible fear” or “reasonable fear” and are, therefore, entitled to Individual hearings.
Some of those removed from the docket for expedited removal could still pass the “credible fear” or “reasonable fear” process before the Asylum Office and have their cases restored to the Immigraton Court docket (with an entirely new proceedings that would have to “start from scratch”).
Under BIA rulings, once proceedings have commenced before the Immigration Court, the DHS can’t unilaterally remove them from the court’s docket for expedited removal. It requires a DHS motion to terminate, a chance for the respondent to be heard in opposition, and a decision by the Immigration Judge. Given the administrative mess at both EOIR and DHS Chief Counsel, filing and responding to those motions can be an administrative problem. Moreover, although almost all motions to terminate for expedited removal ultimately are granted by the Immigraton Judges, the termination is a “final order” subject to appeal to the BIA.
Individuals placed in expedited removal whose “credible fear’ or “reasonable fear” claims are rejected, have a right to expedited review before an Immigraton Judge. Such reviews generally take precedence over other types of cases, but do not produce “final orders” from the Immigraton Judge. At some level, ratcheting up the expedited removal process actually inhibits the processing of previously scheduled cases before the Immigration Court.
What Does Work:
Alternatives to Detention (“ADT) such as ankle bracelet monitoring. See, e.g., http://lirs.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/The-Real-Alternatives-to-Detention-FINAL-06.27.17.pdf
This strongly suggests that immigration hearings conducted for unrepresented individuals are inherently unfair and a denial of due process, something that should be (but isn’t) the number one concern of the DOJ and EOIR.
My own experience at the Arlington Immigration court was that individuals 1) represented by counsel , and 2) with applications for relief filed showed up for their hearings nearly 100% of the time. Indeed, beyond criminal record and family ties, those were the two most significant factors for me in setting immigration bonds.
An Administration truly interested in improving the performance of the Immigration Courts, achieving due process, and lessening the need for immigration detention would be working closely with NGOs, bar associations, states and localities, and ADT providers to develop cooperative ways of maximizing representation in Immigraton Court, But, this Administration is far more interested in advancing a xenophobic, White Nationalist agenda than it is in fairness, due process, or solving problems.
“A Dec. 20 memo, issued by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) replaces 2007 guidelines, spelling out policies and procedures judges should follow in dealing with children who crossed the border illegally alone and face possible deportation.
The new memo removes suggestions contained in the 2007 memo for how to conduct “child-sensitive questioning” and adds reminders to judges to maintain “impartiality” even though “juvenile cases may present sympathetic allegations.” The new document also changes the word “child” to “unmarried individual under the age of 18” in many instances.
An EOIR official said the new memo contained “clarifications and updates” to 10-year-old guidance “in order to be consistent with the laws as they’ve been passed by Congress.” The new memo was posted on the Justice Department website but has not been previously reported.
Immigration advocates said they worry the new guidelines could make court appearances for children more difficult, and a spokeswoman for the union representing immigration judges said judges are concerned about the tone of the memo.
President Donald Trump has made tougher immigration enforcement a key policy goal of his administration, and has focused particularly on trying to curb the illegal entry of children. The administration says it wants to prevent vulnerable juveniles from making perilous journeys to the United States and eliminate fraud from programs for young immigrants.
One changed section of the memo focuses on how to make children comfortable in the court in advance of hearings. The old guidance says they “should be permitted to explore” courtrooms and allowed to “sit in all locations, (including, especially, the judge’s bench and the witness stand).”
The new guidance says such explorations should take place only “to the extent that resources and time permit” and specifically puts the judge’s bench off limits.
The new memo also warns judges to be skeptical, since an unaccompanied minor “generally receives more favorable treatment under the law than other categories of illegal aliens,” which creates “an incentive to misrepresent accompaniment status or age in order to attempt to qualify for the benefits.” It also says to be on the lookout for “fraud and abuse,” language that was not in the previous memo.
‘WOLVES IN SHEEP CLOTHING’
Immigration judges are appointed by the U.S. Attorney General and courts are part of the Department of Justice, not an independent branch. The only sitting immigration judges routinely allowed to speak to the media are representatives of their union, the National Association of Immigration Judges.
Dana Marks, a sitting judge and spokeswoman for the union, said the “overall tone” of the memo “is very distressing and concerning to immigration judges.”
“There is a feeling that the immigration courts are just being demoted into immigration enforcement offices, rather than neutral arbiters,” Marks said. “There has been a relentless beating of the drum toward enforcement rather than due process.”
Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur, who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes lower levels of immigration overall, said the new guidelines were needed.
In their previous form, he said, “so much emphasis was placed on the potential inability of the alien to understand the proceedings … that it almost put the judge into the position of being an advocate.”
The courts have had to handle a surge in cases for unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America, after their numbers sky-rocketed in 2014 as violence in the region caused residents to flee north.
While illegal crossings initially fell after Trump took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that since May, each month has seen an increase in children being apprehended either alone or with family members.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech in Boston in September that the special accommodations for unaccompanied minors had been exploited by “gang members who come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing.”
Echoing some of these concerns, the new memo notes in a preamble that not all child cases involve innocents, and that the courts might see “an adolescent gang member” or “a teenager convicted as an adult for serious criminal activity.”
Jennifer Podkul, policy director of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) said Congress included special procedural protections for immigrant children in a 2008 anti-trafficking bill to “make sure that a kid gets a fair shot in the courtroom.”
“These kids are by themselves telling a very complicated and oftentimes very traumatic story,” said Podkul. “The approach of this memo, which is much more suspicious, is not going to help get to the truth of a child’s story.”
In cases where children are called to testify, the old guidance instructed judges to “seek to limit the amount of time the child is on the stand.” The new guidance says that judges should “consider” limiting the child’s time on the stand “without compromising due process for the opposing party,” which is generally a government prosecutor.
The memo leaves in a range of special accommodations made for children, including allowing them to bring a pillow or booster seat or a “toy, book, or other personal item.” It also maintains that cases involving unaccompanied minors should be heard on a separate docket when possible and that children should not be detained or transported with adults.
Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Sue Horton and Mary Milliken”
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Yes, my dear friend Judge Dana Leigh Marks, Gonzo sees and treats the U.S. Immigration Courts as part of DHS Enforcement — “Just a Whistlestop on The Deportation Express.”
After 35 years of flawed DOJ stewardship and improper political meddling by all Administrations, the U.S. Immigration Courts are largely back in the same hopeless, understaffed, incompetently administered, enforcement-dominated mess that they were in 1983 when the Reagan Administration created EOIR to provide at least some actual and apparent separation between prosecutorial and judicial functions.
The only solution is an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court. Until that happens, failure, inefficiency, ands unfairness will continue to plague the immigration Court system.
Eventually, the Article III reviewing courts are going to have to decide whether 1) to simply put the Constitution and their judicial oaths in the drawer and give the Executive a “free pass” on immigration; or 2) do their duty, stop the train, and essentially take over the administration of the immigration Courts by ordering Immigration Judges and the BIA to conform to certain basic due process requirements or face the prospect of having almost every Petition for Review returned for a “redo.” If you think the backlog is bad now, wait till that happens.
At this point, I hope for #2, but see #1 as a distinct possibility, particularly as Trump continues to co-opt the Article III judiciary with judges for whom loyalty to Trump and his agenda appears a more important qualification that a reputation for scholarship, legal excellence, collegiality, impartiality, and fairness.
I also found the comments of my former colleague Judge (Retired) Andrew Arthur somewhat puzzling. If you are a judge in a courtroom actually trying to carry out your constitutional duty to provide due process and fairness; the DHS is represented by an experienced Assistant Chief Counsel; and you have an unrepresented kid who is scared to return his or her home country, who is going to be that child’s advocate if not the Immigration Judge?
Rather than bogus guidelines, the Administration should be doing the right thing and the smart thing — working with the private bar to insure that cases involving claims for asylum and other protection are docketed and scheduled in a manner that insures that each applicant will have reasonable access to pro bono or low bono counsel before filing the Form I-589 for asylum.
To take the most obvious example, Jennifer Podkul, Policy Director of Kids in Need of Defense (“KIND), and Wendy Young, Executive Director of KIND are as smart as any lawyers around. They want the Immigration Court system to succeed in a fair and efficient manner. They have spent more time thinking about the problems of kids in Immigraton Court and how to solve them than any individual or group of individuals now in the US. Government.
So, instead of “trashing” immigration lawyers, why don’t Sessions and his subordinates at DOJ sit down with Young, Podkul, and some of their other high-powered NGO colleagues, and Judge Marks and the NAIJ and work out a solutionfor getting kids through the Immigraton Court system in a fair manner consistent with Due Process? Why is Sessions so afraid to venture outside of his little “restrictionist world” in trying to solve problems?
But, unfortunately, this Administration is much more interested in forcing failure on the system and then pointing fingers at the victims, that is, the migrants seeking justice, than it is in achieving the real reformsnecessary to get our U.S. Immigration Courts operating in a fair, impartial, and efficient manner, consistent with the law and Constitutional Due Process.
They will come to power with a campaign based on fear, scaremongering and distorting the truth. Nevertheless, their victory will be achieved through a democratic electoral process. But beware, as this will be their argument every time you question the legitimacy of their actions. They will claim a mandate from the People to change the system.
Remember – gaining power through a democratic system does not give them permission to cross legal boundaries and undermine said democracy.
They will divide and rule. Their strength lies in unity, in one voice and one ideology, and so should yours. They will call their supporters Patriots, the only “true Americans”. You will be labelled as traitors, enemies of the state, unpatriotic, the corrupt elite, the old regime trying to regain power. Their supporters will be the “People”, the “sovereign” who chose their leaders.
Don’t let them divide you – remember you’re one People, one Nation, with one common good.
Through convoluted laws and threats they will try to control mainstream media and limit press freedom. They will ban critical press from their briefings, calling them “liars”, “fake news”. They will brand those media as “unpatriotic”, acting against the People (see point 2).
Fight for every media outlet, every journalist that is being banned, censored, sacked or labelled an “enemy of the state” – there’s no hope for freedom where there is no free press.
They will create chaos, maintain a constant sense of conflict and danger. It will be their argument to enact new authoritarian laws, each one further limiting your freedoms and civil liberties. They will disguise them as being for your protection, for the good of the People.
See through the chaos, the fake danger, expose it before you wake up in a totalitarian, fascist state.
They will distort the truth, deny facts and blatantly lie. They will try to make you forget what facts are, sedate your need to find the truth. They will feed “post-truths” and “alternative facts”, replace knowledge and logic with emotions and fiction.
Always think critically, fact-check and point out the truth, fight ignorance with facts.
They will incite and then leak fake, superficial “scandals”. They will smear opposition with trivial accusations, blowing them out of proportion and then feeding the flame. This is just smokescreen for the legal steps they will be taking towards totalitarianism.
See through superficial topics in mainstream media (see point 3) and focus on what they are actually doing.
They will propose shocking laws to provoke your outrage. You will focus your efforts on fighting them, so they will seemingly back off, giving you a false sense of victory. In the meantime they will push through less “flashy” legislation, slowly dismantling democracy (see points 4 and 6).
Focus your fight on what really matters.
When invading your liberal sensibilities they will focus on what hurts the most – women and minorities. They will act as if democracy was majority rule without respect for the minority. They will paint foreigners and immigrants as potential threats. Racial, religious, sexual and other minorities will become enemies to the order and security they are supposedly providing. They will challenge women’s social status, undermine gender equality and interfere with reproductive rights (see point 7). But it means they are aware of the threat women and minorities pose to their rule, so make it your strength.
Women and minorities should fight the hardest, reminding the majority what true democracy is about.
They will try to take control of the judiciary. They will assault your highest court. They need to remove the checks and balances to be able to push through unconstitutional legislation. Controlling the judiciary they can also threat anyone that defies them with prosecution, including the press (see point 3).
Preserve the independence of your courts at all cost, they are your safety valve, the safeguard of the rule of law and the democratic system.
They will try to limit freedom of assembly, calling it a necessity for your security. They will enact laws prioritizing state events and rallies, or those of a certain type or ideology. If they can choose who can demonstrate legally, they have a legal basis to forcefully disperse or prosecute the rest.
Oppose any legislation attempting to interfere with freedom of assembly, for whatever reason.
They will distort the language, coin new terms and labels, repeat shocking phrases until you accept them as normal and subconsciously associate them with whom they like. A “thief”, “liar” or “traitor” will automatically mean the opposition, while a “patriot” or a “true American” will mean their follower (see point 2). Their slogans will have double meaning, giving strength to their supporters and instilling angst in their opponents.
Fight changes in language in the public sphere, remind and preserve the true meaning of words.
They will take over your national symbols, associate them with their regime, remake them into attributes of their power. They want you to forget that your flag, your anthem and your symbols belong to you, the People, to everyone equally. Don’t let them be hijacked. Use and expose them in your fight as much as they do.
Show your national symbols with pride, let them give you strength, not associate you with the tyranny they brought onto your country.
They will try to rewrite history to suit their needs and use the education system to support their agenda. They will smear any historical or living figure who wouldn’t approve of their actions, or distort their image to make you think they would. They will place emphasis on historical education in schools, feeding young minds with the “only correct” version of history and philosophy. They will raise a new generation of voters on their ideology, backing it with a distorted interpretation of history and view of the world.
Guard the education of your children, teach them critical thinking, ensure their open-mindedness and protect your real history and heritage.
They will alienate foreign allies and partners, convincing you don’t need them. They won’t care for the rest of the world, with their focus on “making your country great again”. While ruining your economy to fulfil their populist promises, they will omit the fact that you’re part of a bigger world whose development depends on cooperation, on sharing and on trade.
Don’t let them build walls promising you security instead of bridges giving you prosperity.
They will eventually manipulate the electoral system. They might say it’s to correct flaws, to make it more fair, more similar to the rest of the world, or just to make it better. Don’t believe it. They wouldn’t be messing with it at all if it wasn’t to benefit them in some way.
Oppose any changes to electoral law that an authoritarian regime wants to enact – rest assured it’s only to help them remain in power longer.
And above all, be strong, fight, endure, and remember you’re on the good side of history.
EVERY authoritarian, totalitarian and fascist regime in history eventually failed, thanks to the PEOPLE.
– With love, your Eastern European friends
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Martin Mycielski is a journalist, serving as Brussels correspondent for leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. Before that he was one of the leaders of the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD) NGO and protest movement, which has organized the largest mass demonstrations in Poland since the fall of communism, opposing the authoritarian and unlawful actions of the Law and Justice (PiS) government and its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński (read more here and here, or just Google). In 2016 KOD’s efforts to defend democracy, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law were recognized by the European Parliament which awarded it the European Citizen’s Prize.
Since childhood Martin has been enamoured with the US, it’s culture, politics and people. Tragically, January events have put the worlds greatest democracy at risk, as they have clearly undermined the fundamental values the States were build upon, such as freedom, democracy, equality & diversity. As these values form the idea of America Martin has been raised on, he has decided to step in and help to defend them the only way he knows how – by sharing with you his experiences from a continent being currently torn apart by populists, authoritarians and tinpot dictators.
His message to President Donald J. Trump is therefore a paraphrased fragment from W. B. Yeats:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams; And if you don’t, we the People will push you off them.
Scary, but important points to remember if we want “liberal Western democracy” to survive the Trump era.
Points 8, 9, an 14 have particular relevance to what is happening in our legal and immigration systems now. thus, I reiterate them in full here:
Point 8
When invading your liberal sensibilities they will focus on what hurts the most – women and minorities. They will act as if democracy was majority rule without respect for the minority. They will paint foreigners and immigrants as potential threats. Racial, religious, sexual and other minorities will become enemies to the order and security they are supposedly providing. They will challenge women’s social status, undermine gender equality and interfere with reproductive rights (see point 7). But it means they are aware of the threat women and minorities pose to their rule, so make it your strength.
Women and minorities should fight the hardest, reminding the majority what true democracy is about.
Point 9
They will try to take control of the judiciary. They will assault your highest court. They need to remove the checks and balances to be able to push through unconstitutional legislation. Controlling the judiciary they can also threat anyone that defies them with prosecution, including the press (see point 3).
Preserve the independence of your courts at all cost, they are your safety valve, the safeguard of the rule of law and the democratic system.
Point 14
They will alienate foreign allies and partners, convincing you don’t need them. They won’t care for the rest of the world, with their focus on “making your country great again”. While ruining your economy to fulfil their populist promises, they will omit the fact that you’re part of a bigger world whose development depends on cooperation, on sharing and on trade.
Don’t let them build walls promising you security instead of bridges giving you prosperity.
Responding to several recent “hate speeches” by Attorney General Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, EOIR issued a new memorandum basically telling U.S. immigration Judges to revise their thinking and look for any way possible to “shaft” unaccompanied minors fleeing for their lives and asserting claims for protection under U.S. laws.
The memorandum from Chief U.S. mmigration Judge Marybeth Keller, dated Dec. 21, 2017, is available in full at this link:
However, because it is drafted in dense bureaucratic doublespeak with a just a touch of “lip service” to the law, I will give you the “high points” as they would appear to most Immigration Judges:
The Attorney General hates UACS, and so should you if you want to keep your job.
While this Administration works on its announced plans to strip UACS of all statutory and Constitutional rights, you must always look for ways to effectively eliminate such “false rights” administratively in advance of any changes in the law.
Always look for ways to find that someone previously determined by DHS or the ORR to be a “UAC” is no longer, or never should have been, entitled to UAC benefits.
The “best interests of the child” should NOT be an important consideration in an Immigration Court proceeding involving a UAC.
Conversely, the “best interests of the Administration” should generally be given conclusive weight.
Never let considerations of human empathy, misplaced kindness, false compassion, common sense, decency, or any other human emotion lead you to give a break or the benefit of the doubt to a UAC.
Is is permissible, however, to create a false sense of informality and friendliness in your courtroom, so long as it doesn’t result in a grant of any type of protection or relief to the UAC. (Indeed, lulling a UAC into a false sense of comfort or security can be an effective strategy for insuring that he or she will not attempt to find a lawyer and will sign away or waive any rights.)
Remember that no matter how young, immature, discombobulated, confused, inarticulate, traumatized, or scared a UAC might be, he or she is NEVER entitled to appointed counsel or to any meaningful help from you in stating or supporting a claim for protection.
While all DHS requests should generally be treated as “priorities,” the only request from a UAC or his or her representative that should receive “priority” consideration is a request for immediate voluntary departure from the US. (You should never hesitate to grant such a request even if it appears to be the product of duress or against the UAC’s best interests.)
A good way to overcome the unfortunate tendency of some reviewing courts to find testimony of UACS “credible”” is to conclude that even if credible and facially sufficient to establish a claim for relief, the UAC’S testimony is “too generalized” or “not sufficiently detailed” (or any other kind of meaningless legal jargon you might come up with) to satisfy the “burden of proof” for protection.
Your main responsibility as an Immigration Judge, and the one for which you will be held accountable, is to ferret out and report fraud, not to insure fairness or due process for the UAC.
In discharging your duties as an Immigration Judge, you must always give primacy to the enforcement priorities of the Administration (including the overriding objective of deterrence and how it is advanced by REMOVAl orders, not relief) and the DHS over any legal claims advanced by a UAC.
You should presume that all UACS and particularly any with “dirty” attorneys representing them are “fraudsters” unless and until otherwise established beyond a reasonable doubt.
While it is permissible to present yourself to the public, and particularly to any reviewing courts Congressional, or media representatives as a “judge of a full due process court,” for all other purposes, you should always remember that you are a mere subordinate of the Attorney General, sworn to carry out his policies, and never, under any circumstances, should you consider yourself to be a “real judge” exercising independent judgement.
If you have any questions about this memorandum, please consult your ACIJ (who is specially trained to help you maximize final removals orders) rather than your conscience.
Remember: “When In Doubt, Kick ‘Em Out!”
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There was a time in the (seemingly now distant) past when children and other vulnerable individuals were considered appropriate for “special humanitarian consideration,” and treatment. Now, they are “special targets” for Gonzo and his White Nationalist storm troopers: “Fish in a barrel,” “easy numbers, “low hanging fruit,” “roadkill.”
I was particularly impressed (not necessarily favorably) by the straightforward exhortation for the Immigration Court to establish itself as perhaps the only court in the America where the widely accepted principle of “the best interests of the child” is specifically to be given short shrift.
On the other hand, you should think about the possibility that some day you’ll get the question “What did you do during Trump’s War on America, Mommy (or Daddy)?” Do you really want to say: “I stood by and watched Gonzo Apocalypto abuse, harm, and in some cases kill, helpless children?” We all have choices to make!
“In a little noted, but quite extraordinary move, the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”) has asked Congress to protect its members (Immigration Judges) from the Trump Administration (their employer). The reason? The Trump Administration is seeking to “evaluate judges’ performance based on numerical measures or production quotas.” According to NAIJ, “If EOIR is successful in tying case completion quotas to judge performance evaluations, it could be the death knell for judicial independence in the Immigration Courts.” “Judges can face potential termination for good faith legal decisions of which their supervisors do not approve.”
EOIR is developing a more efficient way to adjudicate cases (and it comes with a free drink!).
Let’s start with a bit of background. NAIJ is a voluntary organization of United States Immigration Judges. It also is the recognized representative of Immigration Judges for collective bargaining purposes(in other words, the IJs’ union): “Our mission is to promote the independence of Immigration Judges and enhance the professionalism, dignity, and efficiency of the Immigration Courts, which are the trial-level tribunals where removal proceedings initiated by the Department of Homeland Security are conducted.”
According to NAIJ, the most important regulation governing IJ decision-making is 8 C.F.R. § 1003.10(b). This regulation requires that immigration judges exercise judicial independence. Specifically, “in deciding the individual cases before them, and subject to the applicable governing standards, immigration judges shall exercise their independent judgment and discretion and may take any action consistent with their authorities under the Act and regulations that is appropriate and necessary for the disposition of such cases.” 8 C.F.R. §1 003.10(b).
Up until now, IJs were exempted from quantitative performance evaluations. According to NAIJ, “The basis for this exemption was rooted in the notion that ratings created an inherent risk of actual or perceived influence by supervisors on the work of judges, with the potential of improperly affecting the outcome of cases.”
The Trump Administration is now moving to change the way it evaluates IJs. The main reason for the change is the Administration’s goal of reducing the very-large backlog of cases in Immigration Court (currently, there are about 640,000 pending cases). The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR – the office that administers the nation’s Immigration Courts) recently announced a plan to “transform[] its institutional culture to emphasize the importance of completing cases.” In other words, EOIR will judge its judges based–at least in part–on the number of cases completed.
NAIJ has called this development “alarming” and a threat to judicial independence. Why? Because when judges are forced to complete a certain number of cases, they may be unable to devote the necessary time to each case. As a result, the ability to make proper, well-thought-out decisions will suffer.
This is already a problem in Immigration Court. One IJ famously quipped that his job involved adjudicating death penalty cases in a traffic court setting. And so pushing judges to do more cases in less time will potentially impact the alien’s due process rights, and the integrity of our Immigration Courts.
NAIJ has long believed that the system needs a “structural overhaul” and has advocated for converting the Immigration Courts into Article I courts. Article I refers to the first article in the U.S. Constitution, the section on legislative (i.e., Congressional) powers. The idea is that Congress would establish an independent immigration court, much like it created a tax court and a court of veterans appeal. Such a court would be independent of the Executive Branch–the branch of government tasked with enforcing immigration law (currently, IJs are employees of the Department of Justice, a part of the Executive Branch).
NAIJ recognizes that creating Article I immigration courts “may not be feasible right now,” but it nevertheless urges Congress to protect the nation’s IJs from the new Trump Administration policy:
Congress can… easily and swiftly resolve this problem through a simple amendment to the civil service statute on performance reviews. Recognizing that performance evaluations are antithetical to judicial independence, Congress exempted Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) from performance appraisals and ratings by including them in the list of occupations exempt from performance reviews in 5 U.S.C. § 4301(2)(D). This provision lists ALJs as one of eight categories (A through H) of employees who are excluded from the requirement of performance appraisals and ratings. To provide that same exemption to Immigration Judges, all that would be needed is an amendment to 5 U.S.C. § 4301(2), which would add a new paragraph (I) listing Immigration Judges in that list of exempt employees.
The fact that IJs themselves are concerned about the Administration’s move is worrying. The Immigration Judges I know are conscientious and take their jobs very seriously (in contrast to the Trump Administration, which seems utterly lacking in seriousness). If EOIR is making it more difficult for IJs to do their duty, as they understand it, then something is clearly wrong.
Perhaps the IJs’ concerns are overblown. Maybe EOIR will implement the new case completion standards in a way that does not damage judicial independence or due process. But given the Administration’s track record in general, and the inexperienced acting director appointed to head EOIR, it’s difficult to have much confidence in the new policy. Since Congress is unlikely to act on NAIJ’s request for protection, I suppose we will see soon enough how these changes affect the Immigration Courts.
Finally, in my opinion, EOIR has largely misdiagnosed the problem. While some delay may be caused by IJs kicking the can down the road, or by aliens “playing” the system, most delay is systematic–it is caused by reshuffling Administration priorities, which affect how DHS and DOJ schedule cases. I doubt that imposing numerical quotas on IJs will do much to improve the situation. Other solutions–facilitating pre-trial conferences, reforming the Master Calendar system, better use of technology, imposition of costs, premium processing for certain applicants–might be more effective. Everyone agrees that reducing the backlog is a worthy goal, but case completion requirements are probably not the best way to achieve that end.”
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“Extraordinary” to be sure! Folks, this isn’t the Ninth Circuit or even the Seventh, Second, or Fourth Circuit, all of which from time to time have “stood tall” for the Due Process rights of migrants.
For those unfamiliar with the process, the U.S. immigration Court is a “captive Administrative Court” functioning as part of the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) rather as an independent judiciary established under Article III or Article I of the U.S. Constitution.
For the past 17 years, the DOJ (with the exception of an ill-fated move by the Bush II Administration to hand out Immigration Judgeships as political rewards to their faithful) has gone out of its way to insure that those selected as Immigration Judges have a record demonstrating a “commitment to achieving agency priorities.” Translated from bureaucratese, that means that they understand the DHS immigration enforcement objectives and will not “rock the boat” by expanding or recognizing any new rights for migrants unless given permission to do so by the DOJ or DHS.
Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a judiciary where the overwhelming number of new U.S, immigration Judges appointed since 2000 — nearly 90% — come from “safe” government backgrounds, primarily from the DHS. Moreover, no “Appellate Immigration Judge” (or, “Board Member”) at the BIA has been appointed directly from outside the U.S. Government since the pre-21st Century “Schmidt Era” at the BIA. (For “EOIR trivia buffs,” the last two outside appointments to the BIA in 2000 were the late Hon. Juan P. Osuna and the Hon. Cecelia M. Expenoza who was exiled along with me and others during the “Ashcroft Purge” of 2003.)
So, we’re dealing with a basically conservative, government-oriented judiciary of “non-boat rockers” who mostly achieved and retained their present judicial positions by “knowing and doing what the boss wanted” and making sure that any “deviations” were within limits that would be tolerated.
Yes, it’s OK to grant some asylum cases, particularly from Africa or the Middle East, over DHS objections; but “watch out” if you start granting lots of asylum to folks from the Northern Triangle or Mexico for whom the big “NOT WELCOME SIGN” has been hung out by the last three Administrations, or if you accept any new “particular social groups” which Administrations tend to view with fearful eyes as potentially “opening the floodgates” of protection to those who sorely need and can easily access it (in other words, to those whom the Geneva Refugee Convention actually was intended to protect.)
So, this isn’t a judiciary that normally would be expected to “buck the system.” Indeed, although the world has probably never been worse for refugees since World War II, the Immigration Courts seem to have inexplicably but dutifully reduced asylum grants since the clearly xenophobic, anti-refugee, and anti-asylum Trump Administration assumed office and Gonzo began delivering his anti-asylum, anti-lawyer, anti-immigrant rants.
Therefore, the threat to the limited judicial independence that U.S. Immigration Judges possess under the regulations (which haven’t prevented occasional “reassignments” for ideological or political reasons in the past) has to be presumed both real and immediate to prompt this group to take the risky action of publicly seeking protection. After all, Gonzo could potentially “retaliate” by further limiting the judges’ authority, further jacking up the already astronomically high stress levels under which the judges operate, or “reassigning” “unreliable” judges to more mundane or unattractive positions within the DOJ (sometimes known as “hallwalker” positions).
It’s definitely a further sign of an unhealthy judicial system on the verge of collapse. Before that happens, and 650,000+ additional cases spew forth into other parts of our justice system, it would be wise of Congress to make at least some immediate reforms to preserve independence and due process within the U.S. immigration Courts.
I also agree with Jason that attorneys and respondents are not the major problem driving uncontrolled backlogs in the U.S. immigration Courts. No, it’s all about “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) generated by EOIR itself at the behest of its political handlers at the DOJ.
But, I don’t agree with Jason’s statement that EOIR has merely “misdiagnosed” the problem. No, EOIR and DOJ know exactly what the problem is, because they created it (egged on, no doubt by DHS and sometimes the White House).
Gonzo and EOIR are intentionally misrepresenting and misusing datato hide the truth about how screwed up the system has become because of the DOJ’s toxic combination of administrative incompetence with improper political and enforcement motives. In other words, DOJ is attempting to cover up its own “fraud, waste, and abuse” of public funds.
Even worse, and more reprehensible, Gonzo is attempting disingenuously to shift the blame to respondents and their overworked attorneys who are more often than not the actual victims of the scam being pulled off by the DOJ as part of the Trump Administration’s xenophobic, White Nationalist campaign to reduce the precious rights of asylum seekers and others. We can’t let him get away with it!
“IN OCTOBER, the government tried and failed to keep an undocumented teenager in federal custody from ending an unwanted pregnancy. Yet officials appear to have learned little from 17-year-old Jane Doe’s victory in court over the government’s effort to keep her from the abortion clinic. Again, it has fought tooth and nail — and failed — to prevent two more pregnant teenagers from getting the medical care they desired.
Since his appointment by President Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), antiabortion activist E. Scott Lloyd has barred federally funded shelters for undocumented minors from “supporting” access to abortion without his approval. Mr. Lloyd has reached out personally to convince some teenagers against ending their pregnancies. Others, like Ms. Doe, are forced to attend “life-affirming options counseling.”
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of two more undocumented teenagers whom ORR blocked from obtaining abortions. Like Ms. Doe, both are pregnant and crossed into the United States without their parents.
Both will now be allowed to get their abortions. A federal district judge allowed one teenager to travel to a clinic as of Monday. And the Justice Department dropped its appeal of the other teenager’s case after discovering that she was 19 years old, not 17 — meaning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not ORR, should take custody of her as an adult. ICE has now released her. But even if it hadn’t, ICE allows undocumented women in its care to obtain abortions as a matter of policy.
The collapse of the court case demonstrates just how absurd ORR’s policy really is. The government acknowledges that the Constitution grants these teenagers the right to an abortion. Yet when a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old have the same right under Roe v. Wade, how can the government justify summarily blocking one from obtaining an abortion but not the other? The rest of the government’s case was equally flimsy. ORR argues that it has no obligation to “facilitate” the procedure — though in each case so far, the logistics and costs have been privately arranged, leaving ORR with the responsibility of simply getting out of the way.
ORR also made the case that the teenagers could simply leave the country or depart federal custody for a government-approved sponsor. But the fact that a person could cross back across the border doesn’t strip her of constitutional rights while in the United States. And each week it takes to find a suitable sponsor makes abortion more difficult and dangerous to obtain.
It’s welcome news that the government is no longer abusing its power over these two vulnerable teenagers. Yet even as the ACLU mounts a broader legal challenge to ORR’s behavior, it’s likely that ORR will continue to trap other undocumented teenagers in the same situation. Mr. Lloyd should abandon this cruel policy.”
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We also learned elsewhere this week that Trump considered withdrawing his nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supremes because Gorsuch had the audacity to stand up for his judicial colleagues in the face of outrageous attacks on their professionalism and integrity by Trump.
In other words, Gorsuch threatened to take his oath to uphold the Constitution seriously, rather than putting loyalty to Trump first in the manner of Vice Sycophant Mike Pence and many others in the GOP. (Witness the disgusting display of fawning and “public a— kissing/licking” of Trump by the GOP “establishment” like Ryan and McConnell after they pulled off the biggest heist of public funds for private enrichment in American history,)
Trump has exactly the same expectation of “judges as robed stooges for the executive” as do strongmen and Third World Dictator/Presidents for Life. Think Vladimir Putin, President Xi, President Duterte, or President Sisi want an independent judiciary looking over their shoulders? Neither does Trump! And these guys, not leaders of democracies, are the leaders that Trump admires and wants to emulate.
Scott Lloyd has decided not to follow the Constitution. In a normal Constitutional Government, the DOJ would decline to defend Mr. Lloyd in court, thus forcing him to comply.
But, fellow scofflaw Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions not only has defended Lloyd’s unconstitutional actions but made frivolous arguments in support of Lloyd. He’s even taken his frivolous positions all the way to the Supremes and outrageously made a further frivolous request for sanctions on the ACLU lawyers defending the Constitution!
Ironically, the only time when Sessions, Lloyd, and other GOP restrictionists have any concern for Hispanic children is when they are unborn. Once they are born, Gonzo, Homan, and the restrictionists are eager to abuse Hispanic kids by deporting their parents or siblings, breaking up families, terrorizing their communities, depriving them of support, health care, and education, and generally making their lives as miserable as possible.
Indeed, the Trump/Sessions White Nationalist “strategy” seems to be that if you mistreat US citizen kids of color badly enough, they eventually will leave and never return to exercise their rights. But, I actually think that most will remember what Trump/Sessions & the GOP White Nationalists are doing to them now. Once they become voting age, they can help insure that America is never again subjected to the travesty and preventable horror of the likes of Trump, Sessions, and other White Nationalists holding public office and attempting to force their vile, minority views on immigrants down the unwilling throats of the majority of us.
If private lawyers conducted themselves with such obvious contempt for the Constitution and Courts, they would be facing contempt of court charges, loss of law license (in Gonzo’s case), and possible imprisonment. But, Lloyd and Gonzo are actually flaunting their lawless behaviorand the unwillingness of a Court supposedly “bought and paid for” by the GOP to restrain an out of control GOP Administration.
Until the Supremes get serious about holding Constitutional scofflaws and bullies like Lloyd and Gonzo accountable, finding them in contempt, and throwing them in jail if they continue to abuse the Constitution and the time of the US Courts, the Administration’s all-out assault on the true “rule of law” will continue unabated!
The Trump Administration (certainly not undocumented migrants) is the single greatest threat to the continued existence of American democracy and American greatness. Will we wake up as a nation before it’s too late?
AP: The White House is embarking on a major campaign to turn public opinion against the nation’s largely family-based immigration system ahead of an all-out push next year to move toward a more merit-based structure.
EADs: Through operation of this Notice, your existing EAD issued under the TPS designation of Honduras with an expiration date of January 5, 2018, is automatically extended for 180 days, through July 4, 2018. You do not need to apply for a new EAD in order to benefit from this 180-day automatic extension. However, if you want to obtain a new EAD with an expiration date of July 5, 2018 on its face, you must file an Application for Employment Authorization (Form I-765) and pay the Form I-765 fee in addition to filing your re-registration application (Form I-821).
LLB: As library organizations discuss ways library professionals can advocate for intellectual freedom, democracy, and equality, we should begin by grappling with how to react when our major database providers engage in massive surveillance projects with the government.
NPR: Immigrants detained at four large centers used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are subject to inhumane treatment, given insufficient hygiene supplies and medical care, and provided potentially unsafe food, according to a federal report.
ImmProf: Since President Trump took office, immigration arrests are up 42 percent. ICE estimates, nationwide, they make 400 arrests a day. ICE has arrested 37,000 undocumented immigrants without criminal records. That’s a 145 percent increase over fiscal year 2016.
AIC: Advocates filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on behalf of numerous families – most, if not all, who fled to the United States seeking humanitarian relief – who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
DHS Overestimates Visa Overstays for 2016; Overstay Population Growth Near Zero During the Year
CMS: This paper compares US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates for visa overstays in fiscal year 2016 with estimates from the Center for Migration Studies (CMS).
PIX: Efrain Vargas told clients in Hempstead he would obtain immigration and residency papers for them, but never delivered on his promises, officials said. He was arrested and arraigned Wednesday for allegedly scamming immigrants.
OCC-NYC Filing Window Hours on 12/20 and 12/22
OCC: Please be advised that our reception area and filing window at 26 Federal Plaza and 201 Varick Street will be closed from 12:00-1:30pm on Wednesday, December 20th. Please be further advised that our reception area and filing window will close at 3pm on Friday, December 22nd.
ACTIONS
#GiveMateoBack: Amnesty International USA is also working to hold ICE accountable for family separation. You can find steps for a social media/letter writing campaign here.
RESOURCES
USCIS Provides Training Material on the International Religious Freedom Act and Religious Persecution
USCIS Provides Training Material on TRIG
Manhattan DA – Supp Bs – raej@dany.nyc.gov: December 2017 will be my last month at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. If you have pending supplement B certification request that has yet to be submitted to my office, please email the requests to me by Friday, December 22nd. We will make every effort to review each certification request and provide a response before the New Year. After December 22nd, please send all U-visa supplement B requests to Mayerling Rivera atRIVERAM@dany.nyc.gov. As with all past requests, please be sure to provide a waiver signed by your client (include your client’s date of birth and any aliases)… The body of the email should include the case indictment or docket number, name of the defendant, and/ or the case arrest number. Please keep in mind that we cannot locate cases in our system records using an NYPD complaint number.
I’m a huge “Elizabeth Gibson Fan.” I’ve known Beth since she was a star student at Georgetown Law (one of the “Best Ever” of my “Refugee Law & Policy” — “RLP” — students), a terrific Legal Intern at the Arlington Immigration Court, and a spectacular Judicial Lw Clerk/Attorney Advisor at the New York Immigration Court before she was selected for the Immigrant Justice Corps (“IJC”) assigned to the New York Legal Assistance Group (“NYLAG”).
For those who don’t know, only the “best and brightest” with an overriding concern for social justice get into the IJC. Beth would excel at ANY legal job in America — “Nonprofit, “Big Law,” judging, teaching, writing, reporting, managing.
I’m inspired that with all these avenues open to her, Beth has chosen to use her “complete package” of talents to make the justice system work for the most vulnerable among us — those who have legal rights that are largely the same as all of us, but who are “bullied” and “intentionally mistreated” by our legal system (and our current Administration, in particular) in an attempt to prevent them from using and realizing those rights.
In addition to being a weekly contributor to immigrationcourtside.com, Beth has acted as a “clearinghouse” for the vast amount of information and assistance available to the legal community involved in defending the rights of migrants. She has patiently taken many referrals of reporters and lawyers. She also has found time to write articles of her own, in addition to, of course, her main mission of helping her clients.
Beth, thanks for all you do for our country, our world, the cause of justice, and making “Due Process” under our Constitution a reality (at least for some) rather than an “empty promise!” You are truly what serving in the “New Due Process Army” is all about and why, in the end, the forces of darkness threatening our country and democracy will not prevail!
Maria’s always “on top” of the almost daily examples of cruel, intentionally inhumane, unconstitutional, wasteful “Gonzo” Enforcement by the Trump regime. Here is some of what she reports on the deadly conditions in “NAG:”
“The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security has criticized several immigration detention facilities for having spoiled and moldy food and inadequate medical care, and for inappropriate treatment of detainees, such as locking down a detainee for sharing coffee and interfering with Muslims’ prayer times.
Acting Inspector General John V. Kelly, who took over Dec. 1, said the watchdog agency identified problems at four detention centers during recent, unannounced visits to five facilities. The Dec. 11 report , released Thursday, said the flaws “undermine the protection of detainees’ rights, their humane treatment, and the provision of a safe and healthy environment.”
“Staff did not always treat detainees respectfully and professionally, and some facilities may have misused segregation,” the report found, adding that observers found “potentially unsafe and unhealthy detention conditions.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails tens of thousands of immigrants for civil immigration violations, holding them until they are deported or released in the United States. The jails are not supposed to be punitive, according to the report.
ICE concurred with the inspector general’s findings and said it is taking action to fix the problems, some of which have already been addressed.
“Based on multi-layered, rigorous inspections and oversight programs, ICE is confident in conditions and high standards of care at its detention facilities,” the agency said in a statement. “To ensure the safety and well-being of those in our custody, we work regularly with contracted consultants and a variety of external stakeholders to review and improve detention conditions at ICE facilities.”
The Office of Inspector General said it launched the surprise inspections after receiving complaints from immigrant advocacy groups and on its hotline about treatment of detainees. The inspectors also interviewed staff members and detainees and examined records.
Advocates for immigrants said the report reaffirmed their long-standing calls for the detention facilities to be closed. Advocates have complained about reports of physical and sexual assaults, deaths in detention and other concerns for years under past presidents — and say their worries are increasing under President Trump.
Trump has pledged to dramatically increase deportations and is seeking congressional approval for more than 51,000 detention beds this fiscal year, up from about 30,000 under President Barack Obama.
Trump’s pick for the permanent director of ICE, Thomas D. Homan, previously ran the ICE detention system.
“The realities documented by the OIG inspectors, and many more, are endemic to the entire detention system,” Mary Small, policy director at Detention Watch Network, a nonprofit group that monitors immigration detention, said in a statement. “ICE has proven time and time again to be incapable of meeting basic standards for humane treatment.”
In a statement, Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director of Project South, in Atlanta, cited the death in May of Jean Jimenez-Joseph. The 27-year-old Panamanian national was held in solitary confinement for 19 days at the Stewart Detention Center in rural Georgia, according to Project South.
Shahshahani said his death “should have served as a final wake-up call and resulted in the immediate closure of the facility.”
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The Administration tries to hide, obscure, cover up, and bureaucratize what’s happening in the NAG. But, thanks to courageous reporters like Maria, the truth isn’t going to be suppressed. Read the rest of Maria’s report at the link.
Is this YOUR America? Is this the America you want YOUR children and grandchildren to read about and inherit?
Gee whiz, what were my parents and grandparents doing while neo-Nazis were invading the government and recreating the “Fourth Reich?”
And, when are the Article III Courts going to get some backbone to go with their lifetime sinicure and stand up for the Constitution and human decency before it’s too late? When good people stand by and do nothing, tyrants like Trump, Sessions, Homan, Bannon, and their corrupt supporters will have their way!
Tell your legislators:
NO to Tom Homan as ICE Director;
NO to funding for the NAG;
NO to funding DOJ’s corrupt defense of the NAG and Gonzo Immigration Enforcement;
NO to additional unneeded DHS Enforcement agents;
YES to legislative and criminal investigations of the unconstitutional activities of Gonzo, Nielsen, Homan, and their cronies and the human rights abuses they are knowingly creating by misusing the immigration laws;
YES to “Dreamer Relief” with “no strings attached;”
YES to immigration reform that legalizes law-abiding residents already here and provides additional legal visas for the future to end the “false criminalization” of needed workers and refugees!
Stand up for America as a Nation of Immigrants — Stand up for human decency — Stand against Trump, Nielsen, Sessions, Homan, Bannon, Miller and the other neo-Nazis promoting the NAG!
