“Crimes Against Humanity” – Page 31

🏴‍☠️☠️NO, IT’S NOT “JUST ENFORCING THE LAW” AS ALBENCE & THE DHS FALSELY CLAIM — THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S INTENTIONALLY CRUEL, STUPID, WASTEFUL, IMMORAL, & ENTIRELY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE DEPORTATION POLICIES ARE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — We All Are Demeaned & Reduced As Human Beings By Allowing Trump’s DHS & His DOJ to Get Away With This!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/22/the-true-costs-of-deportation

Julia Preston reports for The Marshall Project:

The True Costs of Deportation
When immigrant parents of American children are expelled, the lives of their loved ones can fall apart. Here are the stories of three families who faced financial ruin, mental health crises—and even death.
By JULIA PRESTON

Before her husband was deported, Seleste Hernandez was paying taxes and credit card bills. She was earning her way and liking it.
But after her husband, Pedro, was forced to return to Mexico, her family lost his income from a job at a commercial greenhouse. Seleste had to quit her nursing aide position, staying home to care for her severely disabled son. Now she is trapped, grieving for a faraway spouse and relying on public assistance just to scrape by.
She went, in her eyes, from paying taxes to depending on taxpayers. “I’m back to feeling worthless,” she says.
This story was published in partnership with The Guardian.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of American families are coping with anguish compounded by steep financial decline after a spouse’s or parent’s deportation, a more enduring form of family separation than President Trump’s policy that took children from parents at the border.
Trump has broadened the targets of deportation to include many immigrants with no serious criminal records. While the benefits to communities from these removals are unclear, the costs—to devastated American families and to the public purse—are coming into focus. The hardships for the families have only deepened with the economic strains of the coronavirus.
A new Marshall Project analysis with the Center for Migration Studies found that just under 6.1 million American citizen children live in households with at least one undocumented family member vulnerable to deportation—and household incomes drop by nearly half after deportation.
About 331,900 American children have a parent who has legal protection under DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that shields immigrants who came here as children. After the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Trump’s cancellation of the DACA program was unlawful, those families still have protection from deportation. But the court’s decision allows the president to try to cancel the program again. The debate cast light on the larger population of 10.7 million undocumented immigrants who have made lives in the country, raising pressure on Congress to open a path to permanent legal status for all of them.
We examined the impact of the wrenching losses after deportation and the potential costs to American taxpayers of expelling immigrants who are parents or spouses of citizens.
After an immigrant breadwinner is gone, many families that once were self-sufficient must rely on social welfare programs to survive. With the trauma of a banished parent, some children fail in schools or require expensive medical and mental health care. As family savings are depleted, American children struggle financially to stay in school or attend college.
Three families in northeastern Ohio, a region where Trump’s deportations have taken a heavy toll, show the high price of these expulsions.

. . . .

****************
Read the rest of Julia’s article at the link.

This isn’t the first time in American history that invidious racially-motivated enforcement of bad laws has been used to dehumanize or abuse “the other” while hiding behind transparently fake law enforcement pretexts. Poll taxes anyone?

A straightforward reading of our Constitution says that removing parents of U.S. citizens and breadwinners of American families without compelling reasons for doing so (lacking in these cases) is unreasonable and therefore a violation of Due Process. It’s time to stop doing the immoral and unconstitutional! And it’s past time to insure that public officials like Albence who promote and defend these assaults on humanity are removed from power.

The current institutions of Government have initiated, carried out, or failed to stop these illegal actions. Disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, considering that the nation, by minority vote, enabled a scofflaw White Nationalist regime in 2016.

But, voters still have the political power to oust the abusers of humanity and purveyors of racially-motivated lies and false narratives, and to insist on long-overdue changes to the system to make due process (reasonability), fundamental fairness, and equality under the law a reality for the first time in U.S. history, rather than continuing to be the Constitution’s intentionally unfulfilled promises.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-24-20

CHANNELING JOHN LENNON? – Conservative Judiciary Revolts! – Hand-Selected Over Two-Decades By America’s Chief Prosecutors to Quash Dissent & Promote Compliance With DOJ’s Politicized “Priorities,” Immigration Judges Chafe Under Interference, Humiliation, Lack of Concern for Health & Safety by Their Political Boss “Billy the Bigot” Barr!

REVOLUTION

By The Beatles

[Intro]
Aah!

[Verse 1]
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out

[Chorus]
Don’t you know it’s gonna be
Alright
Alright
Alright

[Verse 2]
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re all doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is, brother, you have to wait

[Chorus]
Don’t you know it’s gonna be
Alright
Alright
Alright

[Instrumental Break]

[Verse 3]
You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow

[Chorus]
Don’t you know it’s gonna be
Alright
Alright
Alright

[Outro]
Alright, alright
Alright, alright
Alright, alright
Alright, alright!

Music and lyrics from Genius.com:

https://genius.com/

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

https://prospect.org/justice/revolt-of-the-immigration-judges/

From American Prospect:

The Revolt of the Judges

The Trump administration has ordered immigration court judges to reject more applicants and speed up trials—and it wants to bust the judges’ union.

BY STEPHEN FRANKLIN

JUNE 23, 2020

First you see scenes from classic movies of wizened judges, brave lawyers, and contemplative juries, but then the video lays out its grim theme: This is not what happens in America’s immigration courts.

These courts are subject to political influences, a narrator explains. They are driven by political messages, and bound by rules based on the “whims” of whoever is in power in Washington, D.C., she says. They don’t provide the blind justice that Americans expect. What they provide is assembly-line justice.

Who is making these claims? A hard-line political or fringe legal group? Hardly. The video is from the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), the union that represents the nation’s 460-plus immigration judges—reasonably well-paid lawyers, many of whom come from government and law enforcement backgrounds.

Nor is the video the first such salvo from the judges’ group, which has lobbied Congress and spoken out frequently about what’s gone exceptionally wrong with the immigration courts under the Trump administration. Such criticisms, the judges say, are the reason that the government sought last August to decertify their union, the only such effort taken by the Trump administration against a federal workers’ labor organization.

“They are trying to silence the judges by silencing their union,” says Paul Shearon, head of the 90,000-member Professional and Technical Engineers union, to which the NAIJ has been affiliated for the past 30 years. He worries that busting a federal union may be the “next step” in the Trump administration’s actions meant to weaken all federal unions.

Shearon is confident, however, that the union will win its fight against decertification when the local level of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) issues its ruling. He is “not so optimistic,” though, that it will prevail at the higher level of the FLRA, where two of three boardmembers are Trump appointees and “clearly political players.” Though the government has sought to speed up a ruling, the judges do not know when a decision is likely—but they expect one before the November election.

The judges’ complaints are many.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article and view the video “The Immigration Courts: Nothing Like You Have Imagined.”

Should be required viewing for every Justice, Federal Judge, U.S. Legislator, and law student.

You don’t need a law degree to know that something purporting to be a “court” where a notoriously corrupt and dishonest political prosecutor is directing “his judges” to deny asylum and speed up the assembly line is unconstitutional under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Yet, every day, life-tenured Court of Appeals Judges rubber stamp the results, often effectively death sentences, of this Star Chamber without questioning the obvious defects. Why?

America’s need for judicial reform and establishing scholarship, courage, integrity, fairness, commitment to due process and human rights, practical problem solving, and humanity as the hallmarks of judicial service runs much deeper than the Immigration “Courts.” If we want to achieve “equal justice for all” as required by our Constitution, but not being uniformly delivered by our judiciary, we need better judges at all levels of our Federal Judiciary.

That starts with throwing out Trump and the GOP Senate that has stuffed our Article III Judiciary with unqualified right-wing ideologues, intentionally tone-deaf to the legal and human rights of refugees, immigrants, people of color, women, the poor, working people, and a host of others whose humanity they decline to recognize. But, that is by no means the end of the changes necessary!

Due Process Forever. Complicit Courts, Never!

PWS

06-24-20

THE GIBSON REPORT — 06-22-20 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group – WORLD REFUGEE DAY WAS JUNE 20 – AMERICA’S TRUMP REGIME CELEBRATED BY ADVANCING A DISINGENUOUS RACIST ATTACK ON WORK AUTHORIZATION FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS – Just A Few Days After 8 Justices of Supremes Claimed Cluelessness About Trump’s Racist Immigration Agenda! (See, Item #2 Under “Top News”)

COVID-19
Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify the latest policies on the relevant government websites and with colleagues on listservs as best you can.

New
• Opening dates for some non-detained courts: The Honolulu Immigration Court resumed hearings in non-detained cases on Monday, June 15, 2020. The Boston, Buffalo, Dallas, Hartford, Las Vegas, Memphis, and New Orleans Immigration Courts will resume hearings in non-detained cases on Monday, June 29, 2020. Hearings in non-detained cases at all other immigration courts are postponed through, and including, Thursday, July 2, 2020. All immigration courts will be closed Friday, July 3, 2020, in observance of Independence Day. The Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Saipan, and San Diego Immigration Courts will resume hearings in non-detained cases on Monday, July 6, 2020.
• USCIS Reopening
o Newark Asylum Office Remains Closed due to unresolved facility issues unrelated to COVID-19
o New York City and Brooklyn field offices are listed as closed to public, emergency services only

Closures
• EOIR Operational Status & Standing Orders
• EOIR Case Status
• EOIR Updates via Twitter
• ICE Updates (Including ERO and Detention)
• USCIS Updates
• Consular Updates
• NY Courts Updates

Guidance:
• IJ Email Filings
• BIA Email Filings
• EOIR Standing Orders
• EOIR Electronic Signature Guidance
• EOIR Update Regarding EOIR Practices Related to the COVID-19 Outbreak
• USCIS’s Signature Policy Update
• USCIS Announces Flexibility for Requests for Evidence, Notices of Intent to Deny

TOP NEWS

Trump suggests another attempt at rolling back DACA
Roll Call: The president in a series of tweets said the administration “will be submitting enhanced papers shortly in order to properly fulfil the Supreme Court’s ruling & request of yesterday.” See also DACA ‘unlawful’ despite Supreme Court ruling, acting Homeland Security chief says.

The Trump Administration Will Soon Deny Work Permits For Asylum-Seekers Who Enter The US Without Authorization
BuzzFeed: The policy, which was first reported by BuzzFeed News in August, will make asylum-seekers who do not cross into the country at a port of entry ineligible for a work permit in most cases. It will also delay the time it takes for those who apply for asylum — either while already in the US or after crossing the border and referred to immigration court — to become qualified to get a work permit, from 150 days to 365 days. Asylum-seekers who do not file for protections within one year of arriving in the US will also be denied a permit.

Businesses Brace for Possible Limits on Foreign Worker Visas
NYT: Citing the economic slump, the president could act this week to limit H-1B, L-1 and other visas as well as a program allowing foreign students to work in the United States after they graduate. See also Chasing Down the Rumors: Possible Extension and Expansion of Presidential Proclamation Suspending Entry of Certain Immigrants into the United States (Updated 6/19/20).

Representation at Bond Hearings Rising but Outcomes Have Not Improved
TRAC: Despite the rising rate of representation, bond grant rates have not improved. During FY 2015 and FY 2016, immigration judges granted bond at 56 percent of these hearings. This fell to 50 percent during FY 2018. Since FY 2018 grant rates have fallen to 48 percent where they have remained for the last three years.

Immigration attorneys face courtroom challenges amid pandemic
Roll Call: Even when courts remain open, to limit personal contact, most procedures are being conducted by video or phone, lending themselves to technical problems that have made it difficult, if not nearly impossible, for lawyers to effectively consult with clients.

Under Threat & Left Out: NYC’s Immigrants And The Coronavirus Crisis
CUF: Immigrant New Yorkers are enduring unprecedented economic pain from the pandemic—and yet they have been almost completely shut out of government programs created for those in need, CUF research and interviews with two dozen nonprofit leaders reveals.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Supreme Court Upholds DACA, Says DHS’s Decision to Rescind Was Arbitrary and Capricious
On June 18, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that DHS’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, also known as DACA, was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. (DHS v. Regents of the University of California) AILA Doc. No. 20061801

CA2 Remands CAT Claim of Petitioner Who Fled El Salvador After Threats from MS-13 Gang
The court held that the IJ erred as a matter of law in penalizing the petitioner for her prompt flight from El Salvador after members of the MS-13 gang threatened her, and thus remanded her Convention Against Torture (CAT) claim to the BIA. (Martinez De Artiga v. Barr, 6/10/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061702

Naturalization Applicants File Lawsuit Seeking to Compel USCIS to Conduct Immediate Administrative Naturalizations
The plaintiffs, who have been unable to complete the naturalization process due to the COVID-19 pandemic, filed a class action lawsuit seeking to compel USCIS to conduct immediate administrative naturalizations pursuant to INA §337(c). (Campbell Davis, et al. v. USCIS, et al., 6/10/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061602

BIA Issues Decision on K-1 Visas and INA §204(c)(2)
The BIA ruled that an individual who has conspired to enter into marriage for the purpose of evading immigration laws by seeking to secure a K-1 fiancé(e) nonimmigrant visa is subject to the bar under INA §204(c)(2). Matter of R.I. Ortega, 28 I&N Dec. 9 (BIA 2020) AILA Doc. No. 20061909

BIA Reverses Finding That Misdemeanor Conviction Was a Particularly Serious Crime
Unpublished BIA decision reverses finding that conviction for third degree assault under N.Y.P.L. 120.00(01) was a particularly serious crime because offense was a misdemeanor unaccompanied by any unusual circumstances. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of G-G-G-, 2/27/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061608

BIA Upholds Termination of Proceedings Based on Regulatory Violation
Unpublished BIA decision upholds termination of proceedings based on DHS’s violation of 8 C.F.R. 287.3(d), which requires ICE to decide within 48 hours of arrest whether to grant bond and issue an NTA. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Pablo-Nicolas, 2/25/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061607

BIA Holds Florida Aggravated Battery Does Not Require Use of Force
Unpublished BIA decision holds that aggravated battery under Fla. Stat. 784.045(b) does not require the use of force because it encompasses simple battery against a pregnant victim. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Campbell, 2/19/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061606

CA1 Finds Salvadoran Petitioner Was Denied Her Statutory Right to Counsel
The court concluded that the IJ had denied the Salvadoran petitioner her statutory right to be represented by the counsel of her choice, and found that the assistance of a lawyer likely would have affected the outcome of her removal proceedings. (Hernandez Lara v. Barr, 6/15/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061905

CA4 Reverses District Court with Instructions to Dismiss Plaintiffs’ Complaints in Travel Ban Case
In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Hawaii, the court reversed the district court’s order of May 2, 2019, denying the government’s motion to dismiss, and remanded with instructions to dismiss the plaintiffs’ complaints with prejudice. (IRAP v. Trump, 6/8/20) AILA Doc. No. 17031332

CA5 Upholds BIA’s Denial of Asylum to Petitioner from Trinidad and Tobago Who Alleged Membership in Three PSGs
The court held that petitioner had failed to demonstrate a legal or constitutional error in BIA’s denial of his application for asylum based on membership in three alleged particular social groups (PSGs), including children unable to leave a family relationship. (Alexis v. Barr, 6/8/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061704

CA6 Upholds Denial of Asylum to Salvadoran Who Was Found to Be a UAC at Time of Entry
The court held that the IJ had properly exercised jurisdiction over the case of the petitioner, who had entered the United States when he was 18 years old and had been found by an immigration official to be an unaccompanied child (UAC) at the time of his entry. (Garcia v. Barr, 6/8/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061811

CA9 Holds Petitioner’s Conviction for Being Under the Influence of Amphetamines in California Rendered Him Removable
The court held that a conviction for being under the influence of a controlled substance in violation of California Health and Safety Code §11550(a) is divisible with respect to controlled substance and thus the modified categorical approach applied and was satisfied. (Tejeda v. Barr, 6/8/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061913

CA9 Rejects Petitioner’s Equal Protection Challenge to Former Derivative-Citizenship Statute
The court dismissed the petition for review, rejecting the petitioner’s argument that the second clause of INA §321(a)(3) discriminates by gender and legitimacy and thus violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. (Roy v. Barr, 6/4/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061912

CA11 Upholds Denial of Motion to Remand Based on Ineffective Assistance Where Petitioner Did Not Substantially Comply with Lozada
The court held that petitioner had failed to meet the three Lozada requirements for presenting an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, finding that his attorney lacked actual notice of allegations that his assistance had been ineffective. (Point Du Jour v. Att’y Gen., 6/4/20) AILA Doc. No. 20061914

AILA and Partners Send Letter to EOIR on Premature Decision to Resume the Non-Detained Docket
AILA, the Council, CLINIC, HRF, NIJC, and NIPNLG sent a letter to EOIR recommending that the overwhelming majority of non-detained hearings be postponed for the duration of the national public health emergency. Additional recommendations include a moratorium on the issuance of in absentia orders. AILA Doc. No. 20061500

DHS Extends Flexibility in Requirements Related to Form I-9 Compliance
DHS announced that it has extended the flexibilities in rules related to Form I-9 compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic by an additional 30 days. The accommodations, which now expire on July 19, 2020, include discretion to defer physical presence requirements and extension for NOIs served in 3/20. AILA Doc. No. 20032033

DHS Acting Secretary Announces Extension of Border Restrictions
DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf announced that DHS will continue to limit non-essential travel at U.S. land ports of entry with Canada and Mexico due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that DHS’s Canadian and Mexican counterparts agree with the need for this extension. AILA Doc. No. 20042031

DHS Announces Imposition of Visa Sanctions on Burundi
DHS announced that it has imposed visa sanctions on Burundi “due to lack of cooperation in accepting its citizens and nationals ordered removed” from the U.S. As of 6/12/20, the Bujumbura U.S. embassy has discontinued issuance of all NIVs, with exceptions, for Burundian citizens and nationals. AILA Doc. No. 20061903

RESOURCES

• Post-Supreme Court Decision DACA Guidance
• ILRC: Understanding the 2020 Supreme Court Decision on DACA
• ILRC: All Those Rules About Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude (June 2020)
• Practice Alert: Impact of the Supreme Court Decision Blocking DACA Rescission
• Practice Alert: Submitting Initial Evidence and Documentation with Form I-485
• Practice Alert: COVID-19 and the Public Charge Rule
• Practice Alert: Presidential Proclamations Suspending Entry Due to 2019 Novel Coronavirus
• Think Immigration: Fight Back Against Chevron Deference in Asylum and Withholding Cases
• DHS Releases Fact Sheet on Measures on the Border to Limit the Further Spread of Coronavirus
• Bite-Sized Ethics: Dual Representation and Secrets Between Clients
• OIG: CBP Struggled to Provide Adequate Detention Conditions During 2019 Migrant Surge
• COVID-19 IN ICE CUSTODY Biweekly Analysis & Update
• Practice Advisory: Criminal Consequences Updates from the BIA and the Ninth Circuit

EVENTS

Note: Check with organizers regarding cancellations/changes
• 6/22/20 The Supreme Court Ruling on DACA: What the Decision Means and What’s Next
• 6/24/20 I-730 Petition Training
• 6/24/20 Thought Getting an EAD Was Straightforward? Think Again!
• 6/26/20 Our Asylum System at Grave Risk: What You Can Do
• 6/29/20 Climate Change and Migration: Converging issues, diverging funding
• 7/7/20 Winning Withholding of Removal and Convention Against Torture Cases
• 7/15/20 Understanding Motions to Reopen Based on Changed Country Conditions
• 7/16/20-7/30/20 Webinar Series: Navigating Refugee and Asylee Issues in Turbulent Times
• 7/20/20 2020 AILA Virtual Annual Conference on Immigration Law
• 7/22/20 Tax Issues in Immigration Cases
• 7/23/20 Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2020
• 7/30/20 How to File a Successful Travel Ban Waiver
• 8/5/20 Unraveling Aggravated Felonies and Crimes Involving Moral Turpitude
• 8/18/20 Strategies for I-601 Waivers in Adjustment of Status Cases
• 8/26/20 Immigration Legal Services in Rural America
• 8/27/20 Crafting a Winning Particular Social Group for an Asylum Case
• 9/14/20 Working with Domestic Violence Immigrant Survivors: The Intersection of Basic Family Law, Immigration, Benefits, and Housing Issues in California 2020
• 9/22/20 Defenses to Denaturalization
• 9/23/20-10/7/20 3-Part Webinar Series: Integrating Technology to Improve Your Immigration Legal Services
• 10/1/20 Representing Children in Immigration Matters 2020: Effective Advocacy and Best Practices

ImmProf

Monday, June 22, 2020
• Immigration Article of the Day: Banished and Overcriminalized: Critical Race Perspectives of Illegal Entry and Drug Courier Prosecutions by Walter Goncalves
Sunday, June 21, 2020
• Will President Trump Make the Supreme Court’s DACA Decision a 2020 Presidential Campaign Issue?
• Immigration Article of the Day: Discriminatory Cooperative Federalism by Ava Ayers
Saturday, June 20, 2020
• “DREAMers” versus the Labels Used in Government Documents and Judicial Opinions in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California by Professor Maritza Reyes
• The Equal Protection Claim in the DACA Cases
• World Refugee Day – June 20, 2020
Friday, June 19, 2020
• DACA Victory at Supreme Court Is Precarious at Best
• Immigration Article of the Day: Injustice and the Disappearance of Discretionary Detention Under Trump by Robert Koulish
• DACA, College and University Students, and the Future of U.S. Immigration Law
• Guest Post: Minyao Wang, The Supreme Court Decides DACA Rescission Case on Administrative Law Grounds, Avoids Deciding Lawfulness of DACA
Thursday, June 18, 2020
• Responses to Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California
• Breaking News: DACA Lives Another Day: Supreme Court Vacates Rescission of DACA
• Some more good news: DACA recipients and noncitizens win two lawsuits that provide financial assistance
• Proposed rule bars colleges from granting covid-relief funds to DACA recipients [Updated 6/17/20]
• Immigration Article of the Day: Law Enforcement in the American Security State by Wadie Said
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
• From the Bookshelves:Mary Jordan, The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump
• Immigration Article of the Day: Making Litigating Citizenship More Fair
• UVA to Enroll Students Regardless of Immigration Status
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
• From The Bookshelves: Dominicana by Angie Cruz
• Immigration and Economic Recovery Symposium
Monday, June 15, 2020
• White House attributing covid-19 increase to travel from Mexico
• Lessons learned in the journey from Prop. 187 to DACA to the Supreme Court
• Supreme Court Denies Cert in United States v. California, State Sanctuary Law Case
• Supreme Court Grants Review in Immigration Detention Case
• DACA Decision Today?
• “Trump is quietly gutting the asylum system amid the pandemic President Trump’s election-year push to foreground immigration is officially in full swing.”

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

Just so we understand the work authorization fraud perpetrated by Trump, currently individuals who seek asylum at ports of entry are “rocketed” to the exceptionally dangerous countries of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (none of which have a fair or functional asylum system) without any hearing, meaningful inquiry, or a chance to apply for asylum in the U.S. So, no work authorization for them.

Those who recognize the futility of trying to use our now-fraudulent legal system to seek protection might therefore cross the border and turn themselves in to DHS or, if they get to the interior, turn themselves in to USCIS to apply for asylum. They also will be denied work authorization under the latest Trump scheme.

So you, or some Federal Judge actually interested in upholding the law, might ask: “Who gets employment authorization under Trump’s shell game?” The answer: “Pretty much nobody.”

So, you might then ask, isn’t this government fraud, or at least grotesque dishonesty? Of course, but but “it’s only refugees not real humans.” For the most part, courts have allowed Trump, Miller, and company to run roughshod over the legal rights and humanity of migrants, with particular emphasis on looking the other way while refugees, women, and children are abused. So, it’s OK. Until Trump strips you of your humanity without recourse.

As if to punctuate the Constitutional malpractice and moral vapidity of everyone on the Supremes save Justice Sonia Sotomayor, on Saturday Trump headed off to Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of one of the worst White-led race massacres in U.S. history, one day after the Juneteenth Celebration of African American liberation in America. Given the timing and the mood in the nation, it appeared to be a rather thinly disguised attempt by Trump to provoke some type of racial confrontation that he thought would benefit him politically.

Failing that, and faced with a smaller-than-expected audience of cultists, Trump turned the evening into a celebration of lies, hate, insults, and racism – denying the reality and justice of the cause of equal justice under law, using an offensive racist slur against Asians, and “joking” about 120,000 dead Americans and his totally incompetent response to COVID-19, to name just a few of his very public and intentional transgressions against our nation and human decency.

America can’t go any further with Trump and the GOP in charge and promoting an agenda of racism, hate, division, and inequality. But, it’s also worth asking how far we can get with eight Justices who are willfully blind to Trump’s obvious racism, his and his lawyers’ lack of honesty and ethics, and the toxic agenda of prolonging and deepening institutional racism in America that he and his supporters so ardently back and, to be frank, only exists because the Supremes and other government institutions have assisted it for more than a century.

Over more than two centuries, America has failed over and over again to deal honestly, ethically, courageously, and realistically with racism. At some point, the failures will become fatal for our republic. A house divided against itself and with rot in its structural integrity cannot stand for much longer.

Those in charge might claim cluelessness; but you should have your eyes open to the pernicious effects of malicious incompetence and systemic racism.

Some day, the full ugly truth of the Trump regime, its unbridled racism, its total dishonesty, its selfishness, its cowardice, its “crimes against humanity,” and our disgraceful national complicity will come out. It always does. Then, those in charge who were derelict their duties and looked the other way in the face of tyranny and needless human suffering will claim “just doing my job” or “how could I have known?” Don’t let them and/or their apologists get away with the “Nuremberg Defense!” We know; they know! It’s time to end the willful blindness and deal with the truth!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Institutions, Never!

PWS

06-22-20

SPECTACLE @ JUSTICE: POPE BILLY CONVENES ☠️“CADAVER SYNOD”☠️— Looks to “Exhume” Decade-Old “Dead” Case for Punishment in EOIR Star Chamber!

Cadaver Trial — Jean-Paul Laurens
Pope Formosus & Stephen VI
1870

Pope Formosus died on April 4, 896. But, if he thought his worldly sins had passed on with him, he had not counted on the tenacity of his successor Pope Stephen VI. In 897, “PS-6” had his predecessor’s body dug up and the corpse brought before the Papal Court to answer charges of perjury, violating canon law, and illegally serving as a bishop.

The corpse was dressed and propped up on a throne. Apparently recognizing Formosus’s financial distress and limited mental capacity, PS-6 appointed a church deacon to be the dead Pope’s “mouthpiece.” There are no records, however, of the deacon’s actually consulting with his “client” on a defense strategy. PS-6 vigorously prosecuted the case.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the corpse was found guilty after trial. Formosus was stripped of his vestments, had three fingers cut off his right hand, and was unceremoniously thrown into the Tiber River weighted down with the 9th Century equivalent of “concrete overshoes.”

In a rather ironic twist of fate, the corpse eventually resurfaced and washed ashore. Finally finding the love and devotion that had eluded him in life, as a washed up corpse, Formosus started to perform miracles and became an object of veneration by the people. They turned on PS-6, who was eventually imprisoned and strangled. Perhaps the moral here is “don’t mess with the dead.”

Now, the direct successor to PS-6, Pope Billy the Bigot Barr, has reached back into the reign of King George II of Bush to exhume the corpus of A-M-R-C-, finally laid to rest in the Year of Our Lord 2006, the sixth year of the reign of Bush II. He intends to seek “justice” before the Star Chamber of the EOIR, his private judge, jury, and executioner.

But, watch out Billy, as PS-6 found, even beating up on dead corpses and other vulnerables can be dangerous! Cowardly arrogance and gross abuses of justice, divine or human, can come back to bite even the high and mighty.

The potential for post-mortem perjury prosecutions should be of grave concern to Trump, Billy, Gonzo, “Big Mac” With Lies, Nielsen, Kelly, and a host of other Trump officials. The possibility of post-mortem disbarment for outgoing Trump Solicitor General Noel Francisco and his band of truth and decency challenged DOJ lawyers should also haunt their futures, along with the ghosts of the broken bodies, cries of abused children, and souls of those only “crime” was to seek justice in America that they have unjustly maligned, prosecuted, and persecuted in the name of Trump’s White Nationalism.

Meanwhile, the Jesters of the Papal Court 🤡🤹‍♂️, also known as Article III Judges, continue to watch the spectacle of American justice dying before their eyes while they daily fail to take the strong, courageous, action to end Billy’s Star Chambers!

An outstanding lecture on “The Cadaver Trial” (and other Great Trials of World History) by Professor Douglas O. Linder of the U. Of Missouri-KC School Law is available on The Great Courses. You can watch the trailer and sign up for a free trial subscription (if not already a member) here. https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/the-great-trials-of-world-history-and-the-lessons-they-teach-us “The Cadaver Trial” is among the three Medieval Trails covered in “Lecture #3” and inspired this piece.

The latest on the Strange Saga of A-M-R-C- and the adventures of Pope Billy the Bigot can be found at LexisNexis Immigration Community courtesy of Papal Historian Dan Kowalski. https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/eoir-posts-case-underlying-matter-of-a-m-r-c-

PWS

06-21-20

VOX IMMIGRATION REPORTER NICOLE NAREA CONTINUES TO WIN PRAISE FOR HER ANALYSIS — ImmigrationProf Blog Highlights Nicole’s “Trenchant Criticism” of Regime’s Outrageous Proposal to Repeal Asylum Protections by Regulation!

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/06/trump-is-quietly-gutting-the-asylum-system-amid-the-pandemic-president-trumps-election-year-push-to-.html

Dean Kevin Johnson writes on ImmigrationProf Blog:

Nicole Narea on Vox has a trenchant criticism of the asylum rules proposed by the Trump administration last week. Here is the the criticism in a nutshell:

“The Trump administration has proposed a regulation that would deliver its biggest blow to the US asylum system yet, vastly expanding immigration officials’ authority to turn away migrants. If enacted, it would all but close America’s doors to asylum seekers — a signature policy for a president desperately trying to rally his base in an election year.

The regulation, which was announced Wednesday, would allow immigration officials to discard asylum seekers’ applications as “frivolous” without so much as a hearing, and make it impossible for victims of gang-related and gender-based violence to obtain protection in the US. It would also refuse asylum to anyone coming from a country other than Canada or Mexico, or who does not arrive on a direct flight to the US, as well as anyone who has failed to pay taxes, among other provisions.

President Donald Trump has been working to dismantle the asylum system for years, but this latest regulation is part of an election-year push to curtail immigration. In recent months and under the pretext of responding to the coronavirus pandemic, his administration has closed the US-Mexico border, begun rapidly returning asylum seekers arriving on the southern border to Mexico, and issued a temporary ban on the issuance of new green cards — policies that are now being challenged in court.”

The 30 day public comment period starts on June 15.

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

Nicole cuts through the BS and exposes 160+ pages of the regime’s legal gobbledygook, evil intent, and White Nationalist racism for exactly what it is. No surprise for those of us who have been avid readers of Nicole’s outstanding reporting, first at Law360 and now at Vox News.

Keep on the story, Nicole! Don’t let the White Nationalist kakistocracy continue to hide their vile and unconstitutional program directed against asylum seekers of color behind a barrage of opaque legalese!

Following the Supreme’s lifeline to Dreamers, some commentators are heralding the triumph of the “rule of law” over Trump. That’s total wishful thinking. It’s great that the Court got a couple of cases right this week. Lives saved are lives saved. That’s actually what they are supposed to do all the time.

Meanwhile, the existence of Remain in Mexico, misuse of COVID-19 to return asylum seekers to potential death, baby jails, kids in cages, family separation, the New American Gulag, Star Chambers in the DOJ that call themselves “courts,” and the elimination of the legal immigration system without legislation show just how ineffectual the Article III Courts have been overall in enforcing due process, equal justice, and human rights in the face of Executive tyranny and grotesque misfeasance.

The folks who launched these fantastically illegal and disingenuous proposals to eliminate asylum, harm, and kill vulnerable individuals deserving protection largely based on White Nationalist racial animus obviously have deep disrespect not only for the rule of law but for humanity as a whole. That they they can get away with it and continue to openly promote their false and illegal agenda shows how little the Article III Courts actually have done to stem the unconstitutional tide of irrational, race-based actions by a thoroughly corrupt Administration over the past three years.

Ask folks rotting in Mexico, orbited to torture without hearings, separated from their family members, suffering in squalor and disease in the Gulag for no crime, or watching their chance to immigrate legally go down the drain how that “rule of law” is working out for them. Until the Article III Courts as an institution confront the real problems here: Trump’s dishonesty, White Nationalism, xenophobia, and institutional racism, all of which violate the Constitution, the “rule of law” will only be a reality for some. America deserves better from our Article III judges. I can only hope that some day we will get it.

PWS

06-19-20

AMY HOWE @ SCOTUSBLOG — Supremes Take Up 4th Cir. Case Granting Bond Hearings in “Withholding Only” Cases –Albence v. Guzman Chavez

AMY WRITES IN SCOTUSBLOG:

And in Albence v. Guzman Chavez, the justices will decide which provision of immigration law – 8 U.S.C. § 1231 or 8 U.S.C. § 1226 – applies to the detention of a noncitizen who is seeking withholding of removal after a prior removal order has been reinstated. As John Elwood explained last week, the issue is arcane but the distinction between the two provisions matters, because under Section 1226 noncitizens generally have the right to a bond hearing, while the government argues that they do not have that right under Section 1231.

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

This was another of Solicitor General Francisco’s petitions, after the DHS and DOJ quite deservedly lost on the bond issue in the Fourth Circuit.

While presented as an issue of statutory interpretation, the DOJ/DHS restrictive bond procedures are riddled with 5th Amendment unconstitutionality, including denial of opportunity to seek a bond before an fair and impartial decision-maker, putting the burden of proof on the prisoner, and failing to consider ability to pay, to name a few.

These abuses came to light recently in a comprehensive ruling invalidating unconstitutional bond practices in the Baltimore Immigration Court, Miranda v. Barr, U.S.D.C. D. MD., U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake, 05-29-20.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/05/30/due-process-victory-us-district-judge-requires-baltimore-immigration-court-to-comply-with-due-process-in-bond-hearings-round-table-warrior-judge-denise-noonan-slavin-provides-key-evidence/

It’s not a difficult constitutional issue. It would take a Court that saw immigrants as fellow human beings and were willing to apply its own due process precedents about six sentences to unanimously throw DOJ and DHS out on their tails for such unconstitutional behavior, statute or no.

But, this version of the Supremes is all over the place on immigration. While immigrants have scored a few well-deserved victories, mostly on issues involving misinterpretation of statutes by the immigration bureaucracy, the Supremes have “tanked” on the larger issues involving constitutional and human rights.

They actually have furthered and in some cases bought into the false narratives and dehumanization of migrants, particularly asylum seekers, by Trump & co. That’s why folks who probably should be granted asylum or long since admitted as refugees were the government required to follow the law and the Court’s 1987 ruling in INS v. Cardoza Fonseca are instead illegally condemned to rot in Mexico, suffer in refugee camps, arbitrarily and capriciously returned to danger zones to face torture and possible death, separated from their families, or put in cages and “iceboxes.”

Depending on how you characterize it, the Supremes’ majority have been part of judicially-enabled child abuse or “Dred Scottification” of immigrants. Either way, it’s legally wrong and morally indefensible. Equal justice and social justice for all in America will continue to be both elusive and divisive until we get a majority of Supreme Court Justices who believe in it, put it first, and require it even in the face of a recalcitrant Executive whose political agenda is built on the exact opposite.

I’m certainly not the first or last critic of the “Supreme failure” of our highest judges to show the necessary legal and moral leadership at this key point in our history. Professor Steven I. Vladeck from U. of Texas Law essentially says the same thing in a more circumspect manner in an op-ed today’s NY Times. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/05/30/due-process-victory-us-district-judge-requires-baltimore-immigration-court-to-comply-with-due-process-in-bond-hearings-round-table-warrior-judge-denise-noonan-slavin-provides-key-evidence/

I find no reason for circumspection about the failure of privileged judges at the top of our legal system who are unwilling to treat vulnerable individuals as human beings and to give them the legal and constitutional protections to which they are entitled. Enabling the cruel, illegal, and racially-driven Trump immigration agenda is disgraceful conduct that deserves to be called out. Three-plus years into a regime dedicated to running roughshod over our Constitution and eradicating human rights we “are where we are” to a large extent because those empowered and entrusted to prevent such abuses have failed — miserably!

And, with an emboldened scofflaw Administration promoting an unconscionable and illegal trashing of the little still left of our imperfect, yet previously functional and occasionally aspirational, asylum system by Executive fiat, the worst is yet to come if we don’t get better performance from the Supremes! We have a “Frankenstein proposal” out now because we have a Supremes’ majority who think “Frankenstein is OK” as long as the monster only devours migrants and their families (folks apparently below their “humanity index”). Wait till it turns on them and their families!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

06-17-20

SUZANNE MONYK @ LAW360: Experts Say New Asylum Rule Unconstitutional Because It Guts Due Process🏴‍☠️, Effectively Repeals Asylum Statute, Will Result in Near 100% Denial Rate — While Denials & Illegal “Deportations to Death☠️” Will Soar, Asylum Seekers Not Likely to be Deterred From Coming, Meaning That Court Backlogs & Avoidable Litigation Will Continue to Mushroom!

Suzanne Monyak
Senior Reporter, Immigration
Law360

https://www.law360.com/articles/1282494/planned-asylum-overhaul-threatens-migrants-due-process

Analysis

Planned Asylum Overhaul Threatens Migrants’ Due Process

By Suzanne Monyak | June 12, 2020, 9:34 PM EDT

The Trump administration’s proposed overhaul of the U.S. asylum process, calling for more power for immigration judges and asylum officers, could hinder migrants’ access to counsel in an already fast-tracked immigration system.

The proposal, posted in a 161-page rule Wednesday night, aims to speed up procedures and raise the standards for migrants seeking protection in the U.S. at every step, while minimizing the amount of time a migrant has to consult with an attorney before facing key decisions in their case.

“It certainly sets a tone by the government that fairness, just basic day-in-court due process, is no longer valued,” said Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, director for the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Penn State Law, University Park, Pennsylvania.

The proposed rule, which will publish in the Federal Register on Monday, suggests a slew of changes to the U.S. asylum system that immigrant advocates say would constitute the most sweeping changes to the system yet and cut off access for the majority of applicants.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell University Law School, said that it was as if administration officials took every precedential immigration appellate decision, executive order and policy that narrowed asylum eligibility under this administration and “wrapped them all in one huge Frankenstein rule that would effectively gut our asylum system.”

Among a litany of changes, the rule, if finalized, would revise the standards to qualify for asylum and other fear-based relief, including by narrowing what types of social groups individuals can claim membership in, as well as the very definitions of “persecution” and “torture.”

In doing so, the proposal effectively bars all forms of gender-based claims, for example, as well as claims from individuals fleeing domestic violence.

These tighter definitions and higher standards would make it difficult even for asylum-seekers who are represented to win their cases, attorneys said.

“I worry about how a rule like this can cause a chilling effect on private law firms, or even BigLaw, from even engaging with this work on a pro bono level because it’s just so challenging and this rule only puts up those barriers even more,” said Wadhia.

But for migrants without lawyers, the barrier to entry is particularly profound. For instance, the rule permits immigration judges to pretermit asylum applications, or deny an application that the judge determines doesn’t pass muster before the migrant can ever appear before the court.

This could pose real challenges for migrants who may not be familiar with U.S. asylum law or even fluent in English, but who are not guaranteed attorneys in immigration court.

“If you’re unrepresented, give me a break,” said Lenni B. Benson, a professor at New York Law School who founded the Safe Passage Project. “I don’t think my law students understand ‘nexus’ even if they’ve studied it,” she added, referring to the requirement that an individual’s persecution have a “nexus” to, or be motivated by, their participation in a certain social group.

Dree Collopy of Benach Collopy LLP, who chairs the American Immigration Lawyers Association‘s asylum committee, told Law360 that she thought the pretermission authority was the most striking attack on due process in the proposal, noting that some immigration judges have asylum denial rates of 90% or higher.

“Giving all judges the authority to end an asylum application with no hearing at all is pretty jaw-dropping,” she said. “Those 90%-denial-rate judges are doing that with the respondent in front of them who’s already testifying about the persecution they’ve suffered or their fear.”

The proposal also allows asylum officers, who are employed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and are not required to have earned law degrees, to deem affirmative asylum applications frivolous, and to do so based on a broader definition of “frivolous.”

Currently, applicants must knowingly fabricate evidence in an asylum application for it be deemed frivolous. But the proposal would lower that standard, while expanding the definition of “frivolous” to include applications based on foreclosed law or that are considered to lack legal merit.

The penalty for a frivolous application is steep. If an immigration judge agrees that the application is frivolous under the expanded term, the applicant would be ineligible for all forms of immigration benefits in the U.S. for making a weak asylum claim, Collopy said.

“And under the new regulation, everything is a weak application,” she added.

Benson also said that allowing asylum officers to deny applications conflicts with a mandate that those asylum screenings not be adversarial.

When consulting for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, Benson had once supported giving asylum officers more authority to grant asylum requests on the spot when migrants present with strong cases from the get-go. But with this proposal, DHS “took that idea,” but then went “the negative way,” she said.

. . . .

“I can’t even think of a single client I have right now that could get around this,” Collopy said.

“It’s a fairly well-crafted rule,” said Yale-Loehr. “They clearly have been working on this for months.”

But it may not be strong enough to ultimately survive a court challenge, he said.

The proposal was met with an onslaught of opposition from immigrant advocates and lawmakers, drawing sharp rebukes from Amnesty International, the American Immigration Council and AILA, as well as from House Democrats.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who leads the committee’s immigration panel, slammed the proposal in a Thursday statement as an attempt “to rewrite our immigration laws in direct contravention of duly enacted statutes and clear congressional intent.”

If the rule is finalized — the timing is tight during an election year — attorneys said it would likely face a constitutional challenge alleging that it doesn’t square with the due process clause by infringing on an individual’s right to access the U.S. asylum system.

And while the administration will consider public feedback before the policy takes effect, attorneys said it could still be vulnerable to a court challenge claiming it violates administrative law.

Benson said the proposed rule fails to explain why its interpretation of federal immigration law should trump federal court precedent.

“They can’t just do it, as much as they might like to, with the wave of a magic wand called notice-and-comment rulemaking,” she said.

Yale-Loehr predicted a court challenge to the policy, if finalized, could go the way of DHS’ public charge rule, which was struck down by multiple lower courts, and recently by a federal court of appeals, but was allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to take effect while lawsuits continued.

If the policy is in place for any amount of time, it will likely lead to migrants with strong claims for protection being turned away, attorneys said. But Yale-Loehr didn’t believe it would lead to fewer asylum claims.

“If you’re fleeing persecution, you’re not stopping to read a 160-page rule,” he said. “You’re fleeing for your life, and no rule is going to change that fact.”

–Editing by Kelly Duncan.

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

Read Suzanne’s full analysis at the above link.

Although nominally designed to address the current Immigration Court backlog by encouraging or even mandating summary denial without due process of nearly 100% of asylum claims, as observed in the article, the exact opposite is likely to happen with respect to backlog reduction.

As Professor Steve Yale-Loehr points out, finalization of these regulations would undoubtedly provoke a flood of new litigation. True, the Supreme Court to date has failed to take seriously their precedents requiring due process for asylum seekers and other migrants. But, enough lower Federal Courts have been willing to initially step up to the plate that reversals and remands for fair hearings before Immigration Judges will occur on a regular basis in a number of jurisdictions.

This will require time-consuming “redos from scratch” before Immigration Judges that will take precedence on already backlogged dockets. It will also lead to a patchwork system of asylum rules pending the Supreme Court deciding what’s legally snd constitutionally required.

While based on the Court Majority’s lack of concern for due process, statutory integrity, and fundamental fairness for asylum seekers, particularly those of color, shown by the last few major tests of Trump Administration “constitutional statutory, and equal justice eradication” by Executive Order and regulation, one can never be certain what the future will hold.

With four Justices who have fairly consistently voted to uphold or act least not interfere with asylum seekers’ challenges to illegal policies and regulations, a slight change in either the composition of the Court or the philosophy of the majority Justices could produce different results.

As the link between systemic lack of equal justice under the Constitution for African Americans and the attacks on justice for asylum seekers, immigrants, and other people of color becomes clearer, some of the Justices who have enabled the Administration’s xenophobic anti-immigrant, anti-asylum programs might want to rethink their positions. That’s particularly true in light of the lack of a sound factual basis for such programs.

As good advocates continue to document the deadly results and inhumanity, as well as the administrative failures, of the Trump-Miller White nationalist program, even those justices who have to date been blind to what they were enabling might have to take notice and reflect further on both the legal moral obligations we owe to our fellow human beings.

In perhaps the most famous Supreme Court asylum opinion, INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 436-37 (1987), Justice Stevens said:

If one thing is clear from the legislative history of the new definition of “refugee,” and indeed the entire 1980 Act, it is that one of Congress’ primary purposes was to bring United States refugee law into conformance with the 1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, 19 U.S.T. 6223, T.I.A.S. No. 6577, to which the United. States acceded in 1968.

These proposed regulations are the exact opposite: without legislation, essentially repealing the Refugee Act of 1980 and ending U.S. compliance with the international refugee and asylum protection instruments to which we are party. Frankly, today’s Court majority appears, without any reasonable explanation, to have drifted away from Cardoza’s humanity and generous flexibility in favor of endorsing and enabling various immigration restrictionist schemes intended to weaponize asylum laws and processes against asylum seekers. But, are they really going to allow the Administration to overrule (and essentially mock) Cardoza by regulation? Perhaps, but such fecklessness will have much larger consequences for the Court and our nation.

Are baby jails, kids in cages, rape, beating, torture, child abuse, clearly rigged biased adjudications, predetermined results, death sentences without due process, bodies floating in the Rio Grande, and in some cases assisting femicide, ethnic cleansing, and religious and political repression really the legacy that the majority of today’s Justices wish to leave behind? Is that how they want to be remembered by future generations?

Scholars and well-respected legal advocates like Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, Professor Lenni Benson, and Dree Collopy have great expertise in immigration and asylum laws and an interest in reducing backlogs and creating functional Immigration Courts consistent with due process and Constitutional rights. Like Professor Benson, they have contributed practical ideas for increasing due process while reducing court backlogs. Instead of turning their good ideas, like “fast track grants and more qualified representation of asylum seekers, on their heads, why not enlist their help in fixing the current broken system?

We need a government that will engage in dialogue with experts to solve problems rather than unilaterally promoting more illegal, unwise, and inhumane attacks on, and gimmicks to avoid, the legal, due process, and human rights of asylum seekers.

As Professor Yale-Loehr presciently says at the end of Suzanne’s article:

“If you’re fleeing persecution, you’re not stopping to read a 160-page rule,” he said. “You’re fleeing for your life, and no rule is going to change that fact.”

Isn’t it time for our Supreme Court Justices, legislators, and policy makers to to recognize the truth of that statement and require our asylum system and our Immigration Courts to operate in the real world of refugees?

Due Process Forever! Complicity Never!

PWS

06-16-20

👍🏼GOOD NEWS: FINALLY, SUPREMES DEAL DOUBLE DEFEAT TO TRUMP REGIME BIGOTS — High Court Thwarts Latest Attacks on America’s Latino, LGBTQ Communities!

SESSIONS’S SCOFFLAW ANTI-SANCTUARY CAMPAIGN ENDS IGNOMINIOUSLY WITH WELL-DESERVED BEATDOWN BY COURTS

David G. Savage reports for the LA Times:

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-15/supreme-court-rejects-trumps-challenge-to-california-sanctuary-law

In major victory for California, Supreme Court rejects Trump’s challenge to state sanctuary law

The U.S. Supreme Court’s action is a major victory for California in its long-running battle with President Trump. (Associated Press)

By DAVID G. SAVAGESTAFF WRITER

JUNE 15, 20206:42 AM UPDATED8:03 AM

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the Trump administration’s challenge to a California “sanctuary” law, leaving intact rules that prohibit law enforcement officials from aiding federal agents in taking custody of immigrants as they are released from jail.

Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. voted to hear the administration’s appeal.

The court’s action is a major victory for California in its long-running battle with President Trump.

At issue was a clash between federal power and states’ rights.

. . . .

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

Ryan Grenoble
National Reporter
HuffPost

SESSIONS-HATCHED ATTACK ON CIVIL RIGHTS & HUMANITY OF AMERICA’S LGBTQ COMMUNITY GOES DOWN IN FLAMES

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/scotus-lgbtq-transgender-decision_n_5ebefe48c5b6299362046713

Ryan Grenoble reports for HuffPost:

The Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ employees from being discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The court on Monday issued opinions on two major decisions with far-reaching implications for the civil rights of transgender and LGBTQ individuals.

It was a 6-3 ruling, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch joining the four liberal justices in the majority.

Writing for the majority, Gorsuch argued that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is fundamentally no different than discrimination based on sex.

“An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions,” Gorsuch wrote. “That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”

“We agree that homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex,” he added later. “But, as we’ve seen, discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex; the first cannot happen without the second.”

The rulings rest on a pair of arguments the court heard in October in which justices considered whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law that prohibits workplace discrimination, applies to LGBTQ and transgender workers.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of both articles at their respective links. So, at least for a day, justice rules in America, despite the efforts of the Trump regime kakistocracy to promote bigotry and intolerance.

In simple terms, this regime and its corrupt officials have consistently promoted acts of invidious discrimination, bias, and hate toward various American communities. It’s hardly any wonder that our nation is dealing with the traumatic effects of such government malfeasance on so many fronts. When you put a kakistocracy in charge, malicious incompetence, abuses, and unrest are naturally going to follow.

It’s beyond disgusting that homophobic, anti-Latino bigots like Trump, Sessions, Whitaker, Barr, Miller, and Francisco have wasted the public’s money, what little credibility to DOJ had left, and the Federal Courts’ time launching baseless legal attacks intended to spread the hate and dehumanization directed against some of America’s must vulnerable communities. Actually, these are communities that the Department of Justice should be working to protect, not persecute. But, don’t expect much real improvement until this scofflaw regime is removed from power.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

06-15-20

IMAGINE: How Would YOU Like To Be Judged in America’s Star Chambers?

IMAGINE: How Would YOU Like To Be Judged in America’s Star Chambers?

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Special to Courtside

June 14, 2020

Imagine yourself in a foreign land. You don’t speak the language, and you don’t know the rules. You’re arrested for a minor crime. You think you have a plausible defense. But, it could result in capital punishment. You are detained in squalid conditions. You’re hauled before a court. The bond is ludicrously high, set by the prosecutor and judge under rules they make up as they go along. You don’t have a lawyer because you can’t afford one. The “judge” is appointed by the chief prosecutor. The judge herself is a former prosecutor. The prosecutor makes the rules.

If you win, the prosecutor can appeal to a body stacked in his or her favor. If you lose, you can appeal to a tribunal hand-selected by the chief prosecutor because of their harshness and votes to convict more than 90% of the time. If, against those odds, you still win acquittal, the chief prosecutor can take over the case, rewrite the rules, and change the verdict to guilty. In the meantime, you’ll remain imprisoned in the “Gulag.”

Doesn’t sound like much fun does it? Am I describing something out of a third-world dictatorship or a Kafka novel? Absolutely not! This system operates right here in our United States of America, right now.

It’s chewing up and spitting out the lives of men, women, and even children who are supposed to receive due process and fundamental fairness and instead get the exact opposite. It’s enabled by Supreme Court Justices, Federal Judges, legislators, and public officials who won’t stand up for the legal and Constitutional rights of migrants and asylum seekers in the face of grotesque Executive abuses.

It’s called the U.S. Immigration Court. It exists in a “Constitution & humanity-free zone.” It’s run by Chief Prosecutor Billy Barr and his subordinates at the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”). It’s not really a “court” at all, by any rational definition.

No, it’s a national disgrace and an intentional perversion of the constitutional right to due process, fundamental fairness, and human dignity. It’s also an unmitigated management disaster where DOJ-promoted “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) has built an astounding 1.4 million case backlog with cases stretching out beyond the next Administration, even after doubling the number of “judges.” More judges means more backlog in this wacko system.

In the words of my friend and fellow panelist, Ira Kurzban, “this is not normal.” Yet complicit public officials, legislators, and life-tenured Federal Judges continue to “normalize” “America’s Star Chambers” and their biased, race-driven nativist attack on our Constitution and our humanity!

It needs to change. But, all three branches of our government currently lack the courage, leadership, and integrity to make “equal justice under law” a reality rather than just a slogan.

The three things I would do right up front are:

First, remove the Immigration Courts from the DOJ and create an independent, Article I U.S. Immigration Court as recommended by ABA President Judy Perry Martinez, the FBA, the NAIJ, AILA and almost all other true experts in the field.

Second, return the Immigration Courts to their previous noble mission of “through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” End the disgraceful, unlawful, unconstitutional use of the Immigration Courts as a tool of DHS Enforcement, a deterrent, and a weaponized enforcer of a nativist, anti-human-rights agenda.

Third, replace the current highly-biased, one-sided judicial hiring system with a merit-based hiring process that properly weighs and credits demonstrated fairness, scholarship in immigration and human rights, experience representing asylum seekers and other migrants, and involves meaningful public input in judicial selections. Since 2000, the current skewed system has favored prosecutors and other “government insiders” by a ratio of more than 9-1, and has totally excluded private sector candidates from appellate judgeships at the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”).

Our Constitution requires “equal justice for all.” To achieve it, we need public officials, legislators, Supreme Court Justices, and other Federal Judges who actually believe in it. That means real change in all three branches of our failing (and worse) Federal Government. Due Process Forever; Corrupt Officials, Feckless Legislators, and Complicit Courts, Never!

This is derived from my virtual panel presentation before the ABA Section on International Law on June 8, 2020.

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮TWO NEW ITEMS FROM IMMIGRATIONPROF BLOG SHOW A MALICIOUSLY INCOMPETENT AND CORRUPT TRUMP REGIME IMMIGRATION BUREAUCRACY THAT BELIEVES AND FUNCTIONS LIKE IT IS ABOVE THE LAW, ACCOUNTABILITY, & HUMAN MORALITY!

TWO NEW ITEMS FROM IMMIGRATIONPROF BLOG SHOW A MALICIOUSLY INCOMPETENT AND CORRUPT TRUMP REGIME IMMIGRATION BUREAUCRACY THAT BELIEVES AND FUNCTIONS LIKE IT IS ABOVE THE LAW, ACCOUNTABILITY, & HUMAN MORALITY!

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2020/06/gao-says-customs-and-border-protection-spent-migrant-medical-funds-on-dirt-bikes.html

Friday, June 12, 2020

GAO Says Customs and Border Protection Spent Migrant Medical Funds on Dirt Bikes

By Immigration Prof

McCord Pagan for Law360 reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) violated the law by taking funds designated by Congress for consumables and medical care for migrants and instead used some of the money for its canine program, dirt bikes and upgrades to its computer system, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

While CBP spent some of the designated funds on baby products, food, defibrillators, and masks, CBP violated the law by spending certain funds meant for such migrant care on canines, boats, dirt bikes, ATVs, a vaccine program for its employees, and upgrades to its computer network, sewer system, as well as janitorial services, according to the GAO report.

The 2019 law providing supplemental funds to CBP to help address a surge of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border designated about $112 million to CBP for “consumables and medical care.”

“We conclude that CBP violated the purpose statute when it obligated amounts expressly appropriated for consumables and medical care and establishing and operating migrant care and processing facilities for other purposes,” according to the GAO opinion. The Congressional watchdog is conducting an audit of CBP and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on the care of the adults and children in its custody, it said.

In response to GAO’s findings, a CBP spokesperson sent Law360 a statement calling the violations “technical in nature” and said it will take prompt remedial action.

Nick Miroff for the Washington Post also reports on the story.

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

Thursday, June 11, 2020

District Court Halts ICE Enforcement Operations at New York Courthouses

By Immigration Prof

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff

For several years, the Chief Justice of California has sought to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) away from the California courts. Last year, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked ICE courthouse arrests there.

CNN reports the latest skirmish between the state courts and federal immigration enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued an order yesterday blocking ICE from making arrests in New York courts, finding that the practice is illegal. The introductory paragraph of his ruling reads as follows:

“Recent events confirm the need for freely and fully functioning state courts, not least in the State of New York. But it is one thing for the state courts to try to deal with the impediments brought on by a pandemic, and quite another for them to have to grapple with disruptions and intimidations artificially imposed by an agency of the federal government in violation of long-standing privileges and fundamental principles of federalism and of separation of powers.”

State and local officials argue that when ICE officers apprehends immigrants at courthouses — where they are making appearances as defendants, witnesses or victims — it endangers public safety by making it harder to prosecute crimes.

ICE has defended the arrests, saying apprehending people in controlled settings is safer than arresting them on the streets.

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

Baby jails, stealing from kids, interfering with the administration of justice. Just another day in the Disunited Kakistocracy of Trump.

These situations result in part from a feckless Congress led by Mitch and a failed Supremes led by Roberts who won’t stand up for our Constitutional rights and restrain an obviously corrupt and lawless Executive with a racist agenda.

It’s no surprise that much of Trump’s wrongdoing is exposed by the Government’s own ”watchdogs.” Unlike GAO, which works for Congress, those in the Executive Branch often are then unethically fired by Trump as Congress and the Supremes fail to stand up for honesty in Government. Worse yet, they fail to protect public employees who courageously expose corruption.

And, the high ranking legislators and judges who have watched and enabled Trump’s scurrilous attacks on our Constitution and human values ultimately bear much of the responsibility! As my friend Ira Kurzban would say, “this is not normal.” “Normalizing” and “enabling” illegal, unethical, and racist-driven behavior is obscene. If “watchdogs” and U.S. District Court Judges can speak out against lawless actions and corruption, how is it that Mitch, Roberts, and the rest of the GOP have “swallowed the whistle?”

PWS

06-12-20

EX-US JUDGE UNLOADS TRUTH IN USDC FILING ABOUT BILLY BARR’S ATTEMPT TO SUBVERT JUSTICE BY UNDOING FLYNN PROSECUTION: Corrupt, Dishonest, Unethical, Unprofessional – DOJ’s Request to Dismiss Flynn Prosecution is “Preposterous” – Our Police Departments Aren’t The Only Part of Our Foundering, Rudderless, & Disturbingly Ineffective, Racially & Morally “Tone-Deaf” Justice System That Needs Substantial & Meaningful Reform!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/preposterous-court-appointed-lawyer-michael-flynn-case-slams-doj-attempt-n1229336

Pete Williams reports for NBC News:

WASHINGTON — The retired judge appointed to act as a friend of the court in the Michael Flynn case strongly urged the court Wednesday not to let the Justice Department abandon the prosecution.

In a scorching 83-page submission, John Gleeson said the government’s move to drop the case was “riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact,” which were contradicted by the positions it has taken in other false statement cases and by its own previous court filings about Flynn’s conduct as well as his decisions to plead guilty twice.

“Even recognizing that the Government is entitled to deference in assessing the strength of its case, these claims are not credible,” the retired judge wrote. “Indeed, they are preposterous. For starters — and most unusually — they are directly and decisively disproven by the Government’s own briefs filed just months ago in this very proceeding.”

Gleeson said judges must ordinarily defer to the wishes of the Justice Department about whether to pursue a prosecution, but not when the motives of the government are suspect. In Flynn’s case, the government’s move to dismiss the case “is based solely on the fact that Flynn is an ally of President Trump.”

Federal District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan of Washington appointed Gleeson to submit arguments about why the government should not be allowed to drop the case, so that Sullivan could consider both sides.

The appointment came after the Justice Department last month asked the judge to dismiss the case, having determined that even if Flynn lied to FBI agents in early 2017 about his phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., his lies were not “material” to any investigation and did not, therefore, violate the false statement law at the heart of his case.

Flynn told the FBI that he did talk to Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Trump transition but denied that they talked about Russia’s response to the latest Obama sanctions or about a forthcoming UN vote. He later admitted that both those statements were untrue.

Those statements, Gleeson said, were clearly important to the FBI’s investigation into potential connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

“It is hard to conceive of a more material false statement than this one,” Gleeson said.

Gleeson said without any firm legal basis for wanting to drop the case, the only other reason must be Flynn’s relationship with Trump. Wednesday’s brief noted that the president tweeted or re-tweeted about Flynn at least 100 times since March 2017.

Clearly the president is personally invested in ensuring that Flynn’s prosecution ends, Gleeson said, adding, “Everything about this irregular.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Pete’s article at the link.

Add this to the absolute legal, ethical, constitutional, and management disaster going in in the U.S. Immigration Courts under Barr’s “maliciously incompetent” management, and the case for removing him from office is overwhelming. Won’t happen. But, it should!

Actually, filing a “preposterous motion” backed by clearly untrue assertions is a clear violation of an attorney’s role as an “officer of the court” owing “candor to the tribunal.” If Barr were a private practitioner, it would likely earn him a referral to his state bar authorities for possible discipline or license revocation.

But, in Federal Courts these days the “undue deference” and unfairly favorable treatment of DOJ attorneys continues. It has actually been institutionalized, and even unjustly rewarded, by the Supremes. Talk about encouraging worst practices and highlighting “negative role models!”

The whole ethical debacle of the Trump Administration DOJ and the overall feckless performance of our Federal Courts, particularly the Supremes and certain Circuit Courts of Appeals, at halting clear Executive abuses and requiring honesty and professionalism (including rejecting racist or religiously bigoted agendas) from the Federal Government before tribunals cries out for a serious re-examination of: 1) who should be sitting on the Federal Bench; 2) what ethical standards they should be held to; and 3) the undue favoritism and leniency traditionally shown by Federal Courts to Government lawyers engaging in misrepresentations, sloppy work, promoting pretexts for overtly racist agendas, and constantly using dilatory litigation tactics intended to punish individual litigants for asserting their legal rights.

The last three years have shown that better Federal Judges and much more courageous, effective judicial leadership committed to guaranteeing due process and fairness for all is absolutely necessary for our nation to achieve “equal justice under law.” The current sorry state of the Article III Judiciary shows that police departments are not the only part of our broken justice system that needs reform and some “different faces” to achieve equal justice under law. As a nation, we can’t achieve social and racial justice with the gang that promoted, enabled, and in some cases even encouraged injustice in charge. And, that goes for all three failed branches of our Federal Government.

George Floyd’s death should never have happened; nor should families be separated, kids put in cages, legal asylum applicants told to rot in Mexico, and Billy Barr be allowed to operate unconstitutional “Star Chambers” masquerading as “courts” (when they are nothing of the sort). The problems in our justice system go much deeper than the Minneapolis Police Department!

Yes, they can be solved! But, not without some new faces, new approaches, and some progressive thinking and input from all of society, particularly our younger generations! You have to believe in equal justice to achieve equal justice! We can’t get there with the current gang of “non-believers” in charge and promoting their failed, and all too often overtly or covertly racially biased, agendas.

Due Process Forever!

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

06-11-20

🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️AS U.S. JUSTICE SYSTEM FAILS, BARR & DHS GO FOR “ADMINISTRATIVE REPEAL” OF DUE PROCESS & REFUGEE ACT IN 156-PAGE SCREED OVERFLOWING WITH B.S. & FALSE CLAIMS! — A White Nationalist “Manifesto of Lies & Misrepresentations” Masquerading As “Proposed Regulations”

Bigoted Bully Billy Barr Brutalizes Justice as Federal Courts Fail

Here they are:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-12575.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

When the rule of law disappears, courts fail, and institutions disintegrate, bad things happen.

This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!

PWS

06-10-20

MILLER, OTHER TRUMP WHITE NATIONALISTS SEEK TO FURTHER DISHONESTLY EXPLOIT THE PANDEMIC TO ENACT NATIVIST IMMIGRATION PROGRAM W/O CONGRESS – Counting On Supremes & Feckless Federal Courts To Go “Belly Up” On Regime’s Racist, Xenophobic Agenda!

https://apple.news/A4blmWGWoQ1GmZyfSpSkpUw

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

White House prepares new immigration limits, using coronavirus as cover

7:40 PM EDT June 9, 2020 Washington

The Trump administration is preparing to roll outanother set of restrictions on legal immigration, citing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, even as it argues for the reopening of the US economy, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.

Despite a push from President Donald Trump to move past the pandemic, the administration is continuing to usher forward immigration measures, citing the outbreak and its toll on the economy.

One of the key figures behind the push to limit immigration is Stephen Miller, Trump’s lead immigration adviser and the architect of the President’s hardline immigration agenda. In April, Trump signed an executive order barring some immigration to the US after teasing an outright ban on immigration to the country. Trump argued that the order was needed to protect American jobs.

Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, the administration has pressed forward with a series of immigration measures that, prior to coronavirus, had struggled to break through. Among those changes is the closure of the southern border to migrants, including those seeking asylum, unless certain conditions are met.

After the President’s April proclamation, Miller cast the move as a first step toward reducing the flow of immigrants coming into the United States. That proclamation set up deadlines for review, one of which is approaching this weekend, and left the possibility open for its extension or modification.

The economic argument is expected to be raised again in an anticipated expansion or new immigration executive order. While Trump has touted recent job numbers,unemployment numbers remain high — though businesses have said in a series of letters to the President that continued immigration is important for economic recovery.

Interest groups, businesses and experts are fighting any new restrictions, saying that visas allowing immigrants to temporarily work in the US are critical to the economy.

“Why would he want to cut off critical workforce that will help the economy recover?” said Greg Chen, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“It’s not a rational or reasonable approach to the stated goals of what they’re trying to achieve, which only points to the underlying purpose of effectuating the President’s campaign goals of cutting off immigration,” Chen added.

Trump pledged the previous order would “ensure that unemployed Americans of all backgrounds will be first in line for jobs as our economy reopens.”

The White House did not immediately comment for this story.

CNN previously reported that Trump’s political advisers view the immigration steps as motivating for his base supporters at a moment when the President’s key election message — a strong economy — is badly weakened by the pandemic.

Legal immigration, which has already taken a hit during the outbreak, is again in focus in deliberations about an anticipated immigration executive order.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Priscilla’s article at the link.

Emboldened by the lack of judicial pushback and absence of legal and moral leadership from the Supremes on racial injustice, the regime is planning an all-out assault on non-white immigration with coronavirus as a cover. Blacks and Latinos have already been disproportionately affected by the Cornoavirus, which has been of little concern to Trump except as it relates to his reelection schemes. Now, sensing lack of support for racial justice from a Federal Judiciary already stacked with far rightists raced by Mitch through the Senate, Trump, Miller, Barr, Wolf, and their cronies see a chance to further their dehumanization and “Dred Scottification” of the other.

Sure, it’s despicable! But, when those whose responsibility it is to promote racial justice and resist Executive abuses go AWOL, that’s what tyrants do! Even incompetent tyrants can sense institutional weaknesses and lack of moral leadership in others.

PWS

06-10-20

ACLU SUES TO STOP REGIME’S BOGUS USE OF COVID-19 AS PRETEXT FOR ELIMINATING ASYLUM PROTECTIONS – Suit Tests Federal Courts’ Willingness To Stand Up to White Nationalist Regime’s Institutionalized Racism That Continually Invokes Pandemic As Transparently False Justification For Abrogation of Constitutional & Statutory Rights Disproportionately Affecting Those With Brown Skins!

Michelle Hackman reports for the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration, which has used the coronavirus health emergency to expel migrants at the border without allowing them to apply for asylum, faces its first court challenge over the practice in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 16-year-old boy.

Since President Trump declared a public-health emergency in March, immigration agents have turned back nearly all migrants, including children, at the border without providing a chance to file asylum claims. The government invoked a 1944 public-health law allowing it to expel any noncitizen who poses a threat of spreading disease during an emergency. It extended that provision indefinitely in May.

The new process overrides immigration laws that allow any foreigner on American soil with a credible fear of persecution to apply for asylum, and laws prohibiting migrant children from being deported.

The lawsuit was filed in the district court in Washington by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a 16-year-old boy from Honduras, known only by his initials J.B.B.C. He crossed the border in early June to join his father, who is living in the U.S. and awaiting his own immigration case to be heard, after fleeing what the suit described as “severe persecution” in his home country.

Under the typical process, border agents would have turned over the child to the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs a network of migrant shelters for children across the country and seeks to find them suitable guardians. Instead, border agents detained the boy in El Paso, Texas, and plan to deport him imminently, in accordance with the public-health emergency process.

Late Tuesday evening, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan granted J.B.B.C. a temporary restraining order, ordering the government not to deport him through at least Wednesday at midnight.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit’s supporters acknowledge that the suit is a gamble. If a federal judge rules that immigration laws can be bypassed during an emergency—a novel application of the public-health law—the government would gain broad new authority. But not suing, they say, could allow deportations without due process to continue.

“If the courts don’t step in, the Trump administration will continue to indefinitely strip refugees of the right to seek asylum,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Michelle’s article at the link.

The name of the use is J.B.B.C. v. Wolf.

So far, in showing no genuine concern for human rights, the rule of law, or overt racism in major non-legislative eradications of asylum, refugee, and immigration protections by a scofflaw Administration, which has made only cosmetic efforts to disguise its racist immigration agenda, a Supremes’ majority has sent a strong chilling signal to lower Federal Judges willing to stand up for racial justice, equal justice before the law, and Executive accountability. Will the Trump regime continue to literally “get away with attempted (or actual) murder” of children and other asylum applicants? How far does the Supremes’ majority’s resolve not to give Black and Brown lives and rights their deserved legal protections, and to fold in the face of Trump’s racist bullying, extend?

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

This November, vote like your life depends ons it! Because it does!

PWS

06-10-20

BIGOTED BULLY BILLY BARR BRUTALLY BATTERS U.S. JUSTICE SYSYEM: B/T/W He Also Runs America’s Most Screwed Up, & Most Clearly Unconstitutional “Court” System Right Under The Noses of Feckless Article III Judges! — It’s Not “Justice” — Just The Open Fraud That Passes For Justice When Democratic Institutions & Moral Leadership Fails — Barr’s DOJ is a “Thugocracy,” Says Post’s Dana Milbank!

Dana Milbank
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/09/so-this-is-why-bill-barr-is-such-bully/

Milbank writes in WashPost:

Police in Buffalo shove a 75-year-old man to the ground and blood pours from his ear. Police in Brooklyn knock down a young woman and call her a “bitch” because she asked why she had to leave the street. Federal authorities in Washington fire tear gas at peaceful demonstrators, then lie about it.

Get the feeling law enforcement in this country is being run by a middle-school bully?

If so, you are not wrong.

Childhood bullies have a predisposition to become adult bullies, research shows, and, sure enough, it seems Attorney General William Barr was a teenage bully more than 50 years ago.

Back in 1991, during Barr’s confirmation to be George H.W. Bush’s attorney general, lawyer Jimmy Lohman, who overlapped with Barr at New York’s Horace Mann School and later Columbia University, wrote a piece for the little-known Florida Flambeau newspaper about Barr being “my very own high-school tormentor” — a “classic bully” and “power abuser” in the 1960s who “put the crunch on me every chance [he] got.”

Nobody noticed the Flambeau piece at the time, but Lohman posted it on Facebook when President Trump nominated Barr in 2018, and it took on “a life of its own,” Lohman told me Tuesday from Austin, where Post researcher Alice Crites tracked him down. The article resurfaces in social media each time Barr does something unconscionable — which is often.

The 1991 description of 1963 Barr’s harassment sounds eerily like the 2020 Barr. He “lived to make me miserable,” with a “vicious fixation on my little Jewish ‘commie’ ass,” Lohman alleged, because he wore peace and racial-equality pins. He said the four Barr brothers picketed the school’s “Junior Carnival” because proceeds went to the NAACP, and he alleged that Billy Barr, the “most fanatic rightist” of the four, later “teamed with the New York City riot police to attack anti-war protesters and ‘long hairs.’ ”

The 1991 article says Barr, a “sadistic kid,” has “come a long way from terrorizing seventh graders just because they wore racial equality buttons.” The Justice Department didn’t respond to my request for comment.

Lohman’s account is consistent with Marie Brenner’s reporting for Vanity Fair: “A few who knew the Barr boys came to call them ‘the bully Barrs’; the siblings, these former classmates claimed, could be intimidating.” A petition from Horace Mann alumni asks the school to “rethink” an award for Barr, who “violated our school’s Core Values of Mutual Respect and Mature Behavior.”

Historian Paul Cronin, in Politico this week, says Barr was part of the “Majority Coalition” at Columbia that fought antiwar demonstrators. Barr had told the New York Times Magazine he was part of a “fistfight” in which “over a dozen people went to the hospital.” Cronin noted: “There appears to be no record of any trip to the hospital.”

Now Barr exaggerates violence on a grand scale. After he directed the forceful eviction of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square, he claimed to Fox News on Monday that the image of peaceful demonstrators was “miscreated” to ignore “all the violence that was happening preceding that.” He alleged that there were two “bottles thrown at me” when he surveyed the scene; footage showed him at a safe distance. He charged that previously “things were so bad that the Secret Service recommended that the president go down to the bunker”; Trump claimed it was merely a bunker “inspection.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Dana’s article at the link.

Sadistic kid grows up to be racist bully, becomes Attorney General, institutes thugocracy, perverts justice, enabled by courts who look the other way. Wow! What a “great American success story.”

What’s the purpose of an independent life-tenured judiciary that lacks the courage, integrity, and commitment to our Constitution to hold Barr accountable for his attacks on truth, the rule of law, and human decency?

The road from Buffalo, Minneapolis, and Lafayette Park leads directly to the Supremes’ failure of legal and moral leadership. “Equal justice for all” will never become a reality until we get a Supremes’ majority that actually believes in it and has the guts to make it happen! When judges will neither admit nor engage the problem, they are the problem!

Better judges for a better, fairer, more equal America!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-10-20

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