DEPORTATION OUTRAGE: JUDGE SULLIVAN THREATENS ADMINISTRATION’S ARROGANT WHITE NATIONALIST SCOFFLAWS WITH CONTEMPT: “In the event that the government does not “fully comply” with Sullivan’s order to return Carmen and her daughter from El Salvador, the judge said, Sessions, Nielsen, Cissna and McHenry must appear in court to “SHOW CAUSE why they should not be held in CONTEMPT OF COURT.””

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/09/637269721/judge-orders-return-of-deported-asylum-seekers

Judge Orders Return Of Deported Asylum-Seekers

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, pictured in 2008, has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting immigrants under new rules that largely bar asylum in domestic and gang violence cases.

Charles Dharapak/AP

Updated at 9:40 p.m. ET

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen in contempt of court if they fail to return to the U.S. a mother and daughter seeking asylum. The immigrants were deported ahead of a scheduled hearing with the court on Thursday.

A transcript of Thursday’s hearing shows U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan angry after being told the asylum-seekers had been deported and were on a plane out of the U.S. even while a government attorney was telling him they wouldn’t be deported before midnight.

“This is pretty outrageous,” Sullivan said, “Somebody in pursuit of justice in a United States court is just — is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

In addition to ordering the government to get the mother and daughter back, Sullivan blocked the Trump administration from deporting eight other immigrants — currently held in detention — who are part of the same lawsuit against the government for allegedly wrongfully rejecting their claims for asylum.

The order issued Thursday stated that the defendants, including Sessions, Nielsen, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Director Lee Francis Cissna and Executive Office of Immigration Review Director James McHenry, “shall return ‘Carmen’ and her daughter to the United States FORTHWITH.”

Carmen is a pseudonym to protect the woman’s identity.

Court documents chronicle a sequence of events that appear to have outraged Sullivan and initiated the unusual order to return the pair to the U.S.

The judge had scheduled Thursday’s emergency hearing on the motion to block the deportation after learning of their imminent removal on Aug. 9. The government agreed that Carmen and her daughter “would not be removed prior to that time.”

But despite the government’s guarantee, Sullivan learned from the American Civil Liberties Union in open court that the two had been removed from the Dilley South Texas Family Residential Center. It wasn’t until after the hearing that the government confirmed in an email that the two plaintiffs “were, in fact, on an airplane while the Court was hearing arguments” on their case.

As a result, the order states, “The Court informed government counsel that it would neither tolerate nor excuse any delay with compliance with this Order.”

The lawsuit — involving a group of asylum-seekers still in custody and others already deported — was filed Tuesday by the ACLU and Center for Gender & Refugee Studies.

It argues the administration is wrongly rejecting asylum claimsbased on domestic abuse and gang violence. The ACLU is asking the court to invalidate a decision by Sessions that says most victims of domestic abuse and gang violence cannot qualify for asylum.

“In its rush to deport as many immigrants as possible, the Trump administration is putting these women and children in grave danger of being raped, beaten, or killed,” Jennifer Chang Newell, managing attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

“We are thrilled the stay of removal was issued but sickened that the government deported two of our clients — a mom and her little girl — in the early morning hours. We will not rest until our clients are returned to safety.”

The Trump administration’s position is that many asylum-seekers are gaming the system by exaggerating their fear of returning home.

In the event that the government does not “fully comply” with Sullivan’s order to return Carmen and her daughter from El Salvador, the judge said, Sessions, Nielsen, Cissna and McHenry must appear in court to “SHOW CAUSE why they should not be held in CONTEMPT OF COURT.”

Sullivan directed the administration to give him a status update by Friday afternoon.

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Adjoining cells? “The ICEBOX?” These are the scofflaws and abusers who often are heard disingenuously pontificating about “The Rule of Law.”

Remember folks, you read it first here at “Courtside!” I’ve been saying for a long time now that it’s time for a real Federal Judge to stand up to the disingenuous, disrespectful, and illegal actions of Sessions and his contemptuous bunch of scofflaws. Finally, Judge Sullivan is answering the bell that’s been ringing since the day Sessions was confirmed and began his reprehensible program of racism, intolerance, lies, distortions, illegality, child abuse, and dismantling the U.S. justice system in plain sight.

It’s a start in holding him accountable!

PWS

08-09-18

 

 

 

 

 

 

JAIL FOR SCOFFLAW SESSIONS? — U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE EMMET G. SULLIVAN HAS HAD ENOUGH OF AG’S LAWLESS BEHAVIOR – THREATENS CONTEMPT OVER ILLEGAL DEPORTATION!— “This is pretty outrageous,” said U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/judge-halts-mother-daughter-deportation-threatens-to-hold-sessions-in-contempt/2018/08/09/a23a0580-9bd6-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html?utm_term=.61aa9f3c7462

Arelis R. Hernandez reports for the Washington Post:

A federal judge in Washington halted a deportation in progress Thursday and threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration tried to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway.

“This is pretty outrageous,” U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

“I’m not happy about this at all,” the judge continued. “This is not acceptable.”

The woman, known in court papers as Carmen, is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union. It challenges a recent policy change by the Department of Justice that aims to expedite the removal of asylum seekers who fail to prove their cases and excludes domestic and gang violence as justifications for granting asylum in the United States.

Attorneys for the civil rights organization and the Department of Justice had agreed to delay removal proceedings for Carmen and her child until 11:59 p.m. Thursday so they could argue the matter in court.

But lead ACLU attorney Jennifer Chang Newell, who was participating in the court hearing via phone from her office in California, received an email during the hearing that said the mother and daughter were being deported.


Activists rally against the Trump administration’s immigration policies outside the New York City offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in July. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

During a brief recess, she told her colleagues the pair had been taken from a family detention center in Dilley, Tex., and were headed to the airport in San Antonio for an 8:15 a.m. flight.

After granting the ACLU’s request to delay deportations for Carmen and the other plaintiffs until the lawsuit is decided, Sullivan ordered the government to “turn the plane around.”

Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni said he had not been told the deportation was happening that morning, and could not confirm the whereabouts of Carmen and her daughter.

The ACLU said later that government attorneys confirmed to them after the hearing that the pair was on a flight en route to El Salvador. The Justice Department said they would be flown back to Texas and returned to the detention center after landing, the ACLU said.

Calls and emails to the Justice Department’s communications office were not immediately returned Thursday afternoon.

“Obviously my heart sank when I found out,” Chang Newell said. “The whole point of this was to get a ruling from the court before they could be placed in danger.”

To qualify for asylum, migrants must show that they have a fear of persecution in their native country based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a “particular social group,” a category that in the past has included victims of domestic violence and other abuse.

Carmen fled El Salvador with her daughter in June, according to court records, fearing they would be killed by gang members who had demanded she pay them monthly or suffer consequences. Several coworkers at the factory where Carmen worked had been murdered,and her husband is also abusive, the records state.

Under the fast-track removal system, created in 1996, asylum seekers are interviewed by to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of returning home. Those who pass get a full hearing in immigration court.

In June, Sessions vacated a 2016 Board of Immigration Appeals court case that granted asylum to an abused woman from El Salvador. As part of that decision, Sessions said gang and domestic violence in most cases would no longer be grounds for receiving asylum.

“The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes — such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim,” Sessions wrote at the time.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed on behalf of 12 migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — three of them children — all of whom failed their initial “credible fear” interviews.

Two of the children and their mothers were deported before the suit was filed. None of the adults had been separated from their children as part of President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy.

The lawsuit says Sessions’s ruling, and updated guidelines for asylum officers that the Department of Homeland Security issued a month later, subject migrants in expedited removal proceedings to an “unlawful screening standard” that deprives them of their rights under federal law.

Asylum seekers previously had to show that the government in their native country was “unable or unwilling” to protect them. But now they have to show that the government “condones” the violence or “is completely helpless” to protect them, the lawsuit says.

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Here’s Tal Kopan’s  report for CNN:

Judge blocks administration from deporting asylum seekers while fighting for right to stay in US

By Tal Kopan, CNN

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from deporting immigrants while they’re fighting for their right to stay in the US — reportedly excoriating the administration and threatening to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt.

DC District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Thursday agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union that the immigrants they are representing in a federal lawsuit should not be deported while their cases are pending.

During court, Sullivan was incensed at the report that one of the plaintiffs was in the process of being deported, according to The Washington Post. He threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt if his order wasn’t followed, the report added.

“This is pretty outrageous,” Sullivan said, according to the Post. “That someone seeking justice in US court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/09/politics/judge-halts-deportations-sessions/index.html

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Is a real judge finally going to hold America’s most notorious child abuser and scofflaw accountable? Is a strategy of sending DOJ lawyers into Article III Federal Courts to lie, misrepresent, obfuscate, and present largely frivolous legal positions finally going to backfire? Too early to tell, but this is a hopeful sign.

My recollection is that Judge Sullivan has always had a well-deserved reputation as a no-nonsense judge who demands the same professional performance from Government litigators as he does from the private bar. By contrast, I have previously pointed out how under Sessions DOJ lawyers too often conduct themselves in a flip and contemptuous manner that would have landed private lawyers in hot water. Things like falsely claiming that “there was no policy of family separation” when it was precisely what Sessions had created, as a deterrent, through his outlandish “zero tolerance” policy, and actually publicly bragged about.

That is, when Sessions wasn’t busy misrepresenting statistics, misapplying Biblical quotes, telling demonstrable lies (“asylum fraud is a major cause of eleven million undocumented individuals” — what a whopper!), and dehumanizing vulnerable asylum seekers and their families who are merely trying to get a fair chance to plead for their lives under US and international law. Or perhaps trying to promote a ludicrous fictional connection between Dreamer relief and genuine national security.

Hopefully, Judge Sullivan will continue to be outraged when he gets into the merits of the case and finds out just how Sessions has intentionally misconstrued asylum law, manipulated an agency that he de facto runs, and used CINO (“Courts In Name Only”) to deny Due Process, intentionally inflict misery, and impose potential death sentences on fine people, vulnerable human beings, many of whom deserve protection, not rejection, and all of whom deserve to be treated with respect and given a full chance to present their claims. I believe that the ACLU will be able to show Judge Sullivan how Sessions has arrogantly abused his authority and corrupted both the USDOJ and our entire justice system to advance his White Nationalist agenda.

The Government obviously knew that this mother and daughter were plaintiffs in this case. Their presence during litigation presented no threat whatsoever to the United States. The Government’s disingenuous, unnecessary, and contemptuous actions show exactly what kind of racial animus and disdain for human life and for the American justice system are behind Sessions’s actions. Let’s hope, for sake of our country and the innocent people he is harming, that Judge Sullivan finally holds “Scofflaw Sessions” accountable!

PWS

08-08-18