Domestic Violence – Page 9 – immigrationcourtside.com

BENEATH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S LIES: LET’S SEE WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING IN EL SALVADOR: “We don’t hear that what’s happening at the border is a symptom of the real crisis in El Salvador and other countries in the Northern Triangle of Central America.”

Meghan E. Lopez
Head of Mission
International Rescue Committee
El Salvador

Yesterday my colleague Frank Mc Manus updated you on the escalating crisis in Yemen. Today, I wanted to share what’s happening in El Salvador — and why your help is needed now.

The threat to women and girls is real. It is frightening. And it must not go unnoticed any longer.

Our teams at the IRC supports women and girls around the world, including in El Salvador. Donate now to help us provide women and girls and entire families in need with lifesaving support.

In the States, we often don’t hear much about El Salvador aside from it being the country of origin for many asylum seekers at the border. We don’t hear that what’s happening at the border is a symptom of the real crisis in El Salvador and other countries in the Northern Triangle of Central America.

El Salvador is one of the world’s most violent and deadly places, similar to those of active war zones. The high level of violence is largely due to organized crime and rampant gang activity — and it’s what drives people to flee for their lives. Here are some startling facts:

In 2018, one woman was murdered every 20 hours.

There were more than 9.2 homicides per day.

Approximately 10 people each day disappear.

My teams on the ground are seeing that it’s teenage girls who are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence from state, civilian and criminal entities. They are also being forced into becoming “gang girlfriends,” which is essentially sex slavery so they can protect their families.

We are helping women and girls and their families in El Salvador in many ways. We run an online platform called CuentaNos.org which has become a lifeline. It provides information for people during moments of crisis or while on the move in El Salvador, and soon in Honduras and Guatemala as well. We provide emergency cash assistance to help people find shelter and safety when they most need it and a crisis referral service to help people connect directly with the support they need, all the while working to improve those services that our partners provide.

The IRC provides support in many places facing emergencies around the world. You can help women and girls in the places where we work, including in El Salvador, by making a lifesaving gift today.

Thank you so much for giving your attention to this often forgotten crisis.

My very best,

Meghan Lopez
Head of Mission
IRC El Salvador

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

So why are we not only returning vulnerable women, children, and families to El Salvador, but, outrageously, also trying to send asylum applicants from other countries there, even though the Administration knows full well:

It isn’t “safe,” by any definition;
It’s a hellhole where gangs, narcos, and corrupt government officials aligned with them are in control of much of the country;
It doesn’t even have a functioning asylum system; and
It can’t protect and support its own population, let alone tens of thousands of refugees from other countries that the U.S. intends to “outsource” there.

These outrageous shams are some of the “proud legacy” that folks like “Big Mac With Lies” leave behind. And the new DHS honchos, Wolf and “Cooch Cooch,” have promised to be even more cruel, racist, and scofflaw.

Remember the truth and the facts the next time you hear a dishonest Trump official falsely claim that the only reason folks are fleeing for their lives is to take advantage of “loopholes” in US. law.

PWS

11-13-19

HOW TRUMP, COMPLICIT COURTS, FECKLESS CONGRESS, AND DHS ARE KILLING MORE CHILDREN AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER WHILE HELPING HUMAN SMUGGLERS STRIKE IT RICH – “Malicious Incompetence” Fueled By Judicial Dereliction Of Duty & Congressional Malpractice Is A Boon to The Bad Guys! – “Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-19/a-smuggler-describes-how-children-die-and-he-gets-rich-on-border

Nacha Cattan reports for Bloomberg News:

Children Die at Record Speed on U.S. Border While Coyotes Get Rich

Deaths of women and children trying to cross into U.S. set record in first nine months of the year, UN research project finds

By

Nacha Cattan

October 19, 2019, 8:00 AM EDT

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Share

Tweet

Post

Email

Roberto the coyote can see a stretch of border fence from his ranch in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, about a mile south of El Paso. Smuggling drugs and people to “el otro lado,” the other side, has been his life’s work.

There’s always a way, he says, no matter how hard U.S. President Donald Trump tries to stop the flow. But this year’s crackdown has made it a tougher proposition. A deadlier one, too—especially for women and children, who are increasingly dying in the attempt.

Not much surprises Roberto, who asks not to be identified by his surname because he engages in illegal activity. Sitting on a creaky metal chair, shaded by quince trees and speaking above the din from a gaggle of fighting roosters, the 65-year-old grabs a twig and scratches lines in the sand to show how he stays a step ahead of U.S. and Mexican security forces.

Here’s a gap in the fence that migrants can dash through—onto land owned by American ranchers in his pay. There’s a spot U.S. patrols often pass, so he’s hiring more people to keep watch and cover any footprints with leaf-blowers.

Coyote Roberto, on Aug. 28.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Roberto says he was taken aback in July this year, when he was approached for the first time by parents with young children. For coyotes, as the people-smugglers are known in Mexico, that wasn’t the typical customer profile. Roberto asked around among his peers. “They were also receiving a lot of families,” he says. “Many, many families are crossing over.”

That helps explain one of the grimmer statistics to emerge from all the turmoil on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Even more than usual, the 2,000-mile frontier has turned into a kind of tectonic fault line this year. Poverty and violence—and the pull of the world’s richest economy—are driving people north. At the border, they’re met by a new regime of tightened security and laws, imposed by Trump in tandem with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO.

Some give up and go home; some wait and hope—and some try evermore dangerous ways to get through.

Nineteen children died during attempted crossings in the first nine months of 2019, by drowning, dehydration or illness, according to the UN’s “Missing Migrants” research project. That’s up from four reported through September 2018 and by far the most since the project began gathering data in 2014, when two died that entire year. Women are dying in greater numbers, too—44 in the year through September, versus 14 last year.

A 9 month-old baby sleeps inside El Buen Pastor migrant shelter, on Aug. 29. The baby had been in and out of hospitals due to respiratory illnesses during his shelter stay.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Many of those families are fleeing crime epidemics in Central America, as well as economic shocks. Prices of coffee—a key export—in the region plunged this year to the lowest in more than a decade, crushing farmers.

Making matters worse, climate change will produce more frequent crop failures for those growers that will, in turn, drive more migration, said Eleanor Paynter, a fellow at Ohio State University. “Asylum law does not currently recognize climate refugees,” she said, “but in the coming years we will see more and more.”

The demand side is equally fluid. When the Great Recession hit in 2007, a slumping U.S. economy led to a sharp drop in arrivals from Mexico and Central America. Today, the reverse is true: Record-low unemployment in the U.S. is attracting huge numbers from Central America.

Recession Factor

The U.S. economy’s slump a decade ago coincided with a sharp drop in migrant arrivals from Central America

Source: Estimates by Stephanie Leutert, director of Mexico Security Institute at University of Texas, based on model created for Lawfare blog

But none of those factors fully explains why so many families are now willing to take such great risks. To understand that, it’s necessary to go back to the birth of the “Remain in Mexico” policy in January, when new U.S. rules made it much harder to seek asylum on arrival—and its escalation in June, when Trump threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican goods, and AMLO agreed to deploy 26,000 National Guard troops to the border.

The crackdown was aimed at Central Americans—mostly from such poor, violent countries as El Salvador and Honduras—who’d been entering the U.S. through Mexico in growing numbers. Many would cross the border, turn themselves in and apply for asylum, then wait in the U.S. for a court hearing. That route was especially favored by migrants with young children, who were likely to be released from detention faster.

Under the new policy, they were sent back to Mexico by the tens of thousands and required to wait in dangerous border towns for a court date. They might wait in shelters for months for their number to be called, with only 10 or 20 families being interviewed each day. Word was getting back that applications weren’t being approved, anyway.

A white cross marks the death of a person near the border between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

That pushed thousands of families into making a tough decision. Juan Fierro, who runs the El Buen Pastor shelter for migrants in Ciudad Juarez, reckons that about 10% of the Central Americans who’ve stayed with him ended up going back home. In Tijuana, a border town hundreds of miles west, Jose Maria Garcia Lara—who also runs a shelter—says some 30% of families instead headed for the mountains outside the city on their way to the U.S. “They’re trying to cross,” he says, “in order to disappear.”

The family that approached Roberto in Ciudad Juarez wanted to take a less physically dangerous route: across the bridge into El Paso.

Roberto has infrastructure in place for both options. He says his people can run a pole across the Rio Grande when the river’s too high, and they have cameras on the bridge to spot when a guard’s back is turned. He has a sliding price scale, charging $7,500 for children and an extra $1,000 for Central Americans—fresh proof of studies that have shown smugglers’ prices rise with tighter border controls. “They pay a bundle to get their kids across,” he says. “Why don’t they just open a small grocery with that money?”

Typically, migrants don’t come from the very poorest communities in their home countries, where people struggle to cover such coyote costs, or from the middle class. Rather, they represent a range from $5,000 to $10,000 per capita in 2009 dollars, according to Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington. This happens to be the level that the economies of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have reached.

A mother and her 5-month-old baby has lived in a migrant shelter since July, waiting for their November court date, on Aug. 29.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez

For the family going across the bridge into El Paso, Roberto wanted to send the parents and children separately, to attract less attention. Ideally, the kids would be asleep, making the guards less likely to stop the car and ask questions. But that raised another problem. He resolved it by arranging for a woman on his team to visit the family and spend three days playing with the children. That way, they’d be used to her and wouldn’t cry out if they woke up while she was taking them across.

Roberto says the family made it safely into the U.S. with their false IDs, a claim that couldn’t be confirmed. He earned about $35,000 from the family, and soon after had another three children with their parents seek passage. “They want to cross, no matter what,” he says. “I don’t know where the idea comes from that you can stop this.”

But people are being stopped and turned back, and the number of migrants caught crossing the U.S. border has plunged from its peak in May. That has allowed Trump to portray the new policy as a success. (Mexican officials tend to agree, though the Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Yet it’s not that simple. Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, said the flow northward initially surged because Trump threatened to close the border, setting off a wave of migrant caravans and smuggling activity. Arrests rose 90% through September from a year earlier, but they’re now at the same levels they were before the surge.

Enrique Garcia was one of those arrested. A 36-year-old from Suchitepequez in Guatemala, he was struggling to feed his three children on the $150 a month he earned as a janitor. So he pawned a $17,000 plot of land to a coyote in exchange for passage to the U.S. for him and his son.

They slipped into Mexico in August on a boarded-up cattle truck, with eight other adults and children, and drove the length of the country, to Juarez. The coyotes dropped them by car at the nearby crossing point called Palomas, where they literally ran for it.

After 45 minutes in the summer heat, Garcia was getting worried about his son, who was falling behind and calling out for water. But they made it past the Mexican National Guard and gave themselves up to a U.S. border patrol, pleading to be allowed to stay. Instead, they were sent back to Mexico and given a January court date.

Children play outside a migrant shelter while a women hand washes clothing in a sink.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Garcia, who recounted the story from a bunk bed in a Juarez shelter, said he was devastated. He couldn’t figure out what to do for five months in Mexico, with no prospect of work. His coyotes had managed to reestablish contact with the group, and most of them—with children in tow—had decided to try again. This time, they wouldn’t be relying on the asylum process. They’d try to make it past the border patrols and vanish into the U.S.

But Garcia decided he’d already put his son’s life at risk once, and wouldn’t do it again. He scrounged $250 to take the boy home to Guatemala. Then, he said, he’d head back up to the border alone. He wouldn’t need to pay the coyotes again. They’d given him a special offer when he signed away his land rights—two crossing attempts for the price of one.

Researchers say there’s a more effective deterrent to such schemes: opening more lawful channels. Clemens, at the Center for Global Development, noted that illegal immigration from Mexico dropped in recent years after U.S. authorities increased the supply of H-2 visas for temporary work, almost all of them going to Mexicans—a trend that’s continued under Trump.

The current debate in Washington assumes that “hardcore enforcement and security assistance in Central America will be enough, without any kind of expansion of lawful channels,” Clemens said. “That flies in the face of the lessons of history.”

The Legal Route

Illegal crossings by Mexicans have plunged. They’re now much more likely to enter the U.S. with temporary H-2 work visas

Source: Calculations by Cato Institute’s David Bier based on DHS, State Dept data

A hard-security-only approach deters some migrants, while channeling others into riskier routes where they’re more likely to die. That’s what happened after Europe’s crackdown on migration from across the Mediterranean, according to Paynter at Ohio State, who’s studied data from the UN’s “Missing Migrants” project. In 2019, “even though the total number of attempted crossings is lower, the rate of death is three times what it was,” she said.

A child plays outside a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juarez.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

As for Roberto, he expresses sadness at the children who’ve died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. He claims he would’ve tried to help them, even if they couldn’t pay.

Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it.

“I’m hearing Trump wants to throw crocodiles in the river,” he says. “Guess what will happen? We’ll eat them.” And then: “Their skin is expensive. We’ll start a whole new business. It’ll bring in money, because we’ll make boots, belts and wallets. We’ll look real handsome.”

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

The “Trump Immigration Kakistocracy” is as evil and immoral as it is stupid and incompetent.

But, that shouldn’t lessen the responsibility of complicit Article III Appellate Judges (including the Supremes) and a sleazy and immoral GOP Senate who are failing to stand up for our Constitution, the rule of law, and human rights. They should not be allowed to escape accountability for their gross derelictions of duty which are killing kids with regularity and unconscionably abusing vulnerable asylum seekers on a daily basis.

America can’t afford to be governed by idiots abetted by the spineless. Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight to save our country, our Constitution, and humanity from evil, incompetence, and disgusting complicity.

PWS

10-31-19

FRESH CLAIMS OF CHILD ABUSE BY DHS IN YOUR “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – Ever Wonder Why YOUR Tax Dollars Are Being Used To Fund What Medical Professionals Say Is An Inherently Abusive & Potentially Permanently Damaging “Kiddie Gulag?” – And, In Cases Like This, The Alleged Abuse Is Actually Individualized & Beyond the “Regular Damage” Intentionally Inflicted By The Trump DHS, Abetted By Complicit Courts!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/25/texas-immigration-detention-guard-assault-child-claims?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

A private prison guard physically assaulted a five-year-old boy at an immigration detention center in Texas, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border

Read more

Advocates for the boy and his mother expect the family to be deported on Friday and asked the US government to halt the deportation to investigate the alleged assault. The advocates also said the family, who are anonymous for safety reasons, face imminent harm or death in their home country of Honduras.

The alleged assault occurred in late September, when the boy was playing with a guard employed by the private prison company CoreCivic who had played with the boy before.

The five-year-old tried to give the guard a high-five, but accidentally hit him instead, angering the guard, according to a complaint seen by the Guardian. The guard then allegedly grabbed the boy’s wrist “very hard” and would not let go.

“The boy’s mother told the guard to let go and tried to pull her son’s hand away, but the guard kept holding on,” according to the complaint. “He finally released the boy and threatened to punish him if he hit him again.”

The complaint said the boy’s hand was swollen and bruised and he was treated with pain medication and ice at the South Texas family residential center in Dilley, in a remote part of the state about 100 miles from the US-Mexico border.

The Dilley detention center has been controversial since it opened in 2014. Dilley can hold 2,400 people, the most of any family detention center in the country, and in March 2019 held at least 15 babies under one year old.

“Since the assault, the boy is afraid of male officials at the jail, goes to the bathroom in his pants, bites his nails until they bleed, and does not want to play, sleep, eat, or bathe,” the complaint said.

The Guardian contacted US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the homeland security agency which oversees immigration detention, and CoreCivic for comment, but they had not provided a response at the time of publication.

Katy Murdza, advocacy manager for the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which sends volunteers into the Dilley detention center to help families, met with the mother on Wednesday.

Murdza said the mother is fearful of her imminent deportation and is upset about what happened to her son because she had little power to protect him.

“She was unable to prevent someone from hurting her child and while she has tried to report it, she hasn’t received any information on what the results are, so she still does not have control of whether the detention center let that staff member back in,” Murdza said.

“When people are detained and it’s hidden from the public, these sorts of things happen and there are probably many other cases that we have never learned about that could be similar to this,” Murdza added.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in March 2017 that no migrant child in the custody of their parent should ever be detained because the conditions could harm or retraumatize them.

The US government can release asylum-seeking families in the US while they wait for their cases to be heard in court, but Donald Trump’s administration favors expanding detention and has tried to extend how long children can be held in detention centers.

Katie Shepherd, national advocacy counsel with the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, filed the complaint on Thursday with the DHS watchdog, the office of the inspector general, and with its office for civil rights and civil liberties.

“The government has a long history demonstrating it’s not capable of holding people in their custody responsibly and certainly not children who require special protections and safeguards,” Shepherd said. “They require a different environment, not one where guards are going to be physically abusing them.”

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

Ever wonder how things might be different if Article III Judges’ children and grandchildren were being treated this way?

Please think about situations like this the next time you hear sleazy folks like Kelly, Nielsen, or “Big Mac With Lies,”and other former “Trump toadies” tout their “high-level executive experience” and how “proud” they were of their law enforcement initiatives at DHS and other parts of the Trump kakistocracy! What’s the relationship between abusing children and real law enforcement or protecting our national security? None!

Outrageously, these former Trump human rights abusers not only have escaped legal and moral accountability for their knowing and intentional human rights abuses, but they have the audacity to publicly attempt to “leverage” their experience as abusers into “big bucks gigs” in the private sector. How disgusting can it get.

Here’s Professor (and ImmigrationProf Blog guru) Bill O. Hing’s “spot on” description of the “despicable John Kelly:”

Despicable John Kelly – Profits from Detention of Children

By Immigration Prof

Share

I was recently reminded of how John Kelly, former DHS Secretary and former White House Chief of Staff, is now on the board of Caliburn International: the conglomerate that runs detention facilities for migrant children. He is despicable. This was reported in May:

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly can now count on a second line of income.

In addition to his attempt at scoring paid speaking gigs, Kelly has now joined the board of Caliburn International, the company has confirmed to CBS News. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates four massive for-profit shelters that have government contracts to house unaccompanied migrant children.

Kelly’s new job first became apparent when protesters gathered outside Comprehensive Health Services’ Homestead, Florida facility last month — it’s the biggest unaccompanied migrant child detention center in the country. They, along with a local TV station, spotted Kelly enter the facility, and CBS News later confirmed his affiliation. Read more..

When Kelly was DHS secretary, he began the implementation of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda in the early stages of the administration. Julianne Hing reported on Kelly’s record at DHS on the eve of becoming chief of staff for Trump.

Read here…

bh

October 20, 2019

Apparently, Kelly’s USG pension as a retired 4-star General wasn’t enough to support him in the style to which he aspired (perhaps after rubbing shoulders with the Trump family and its circle of grifters). So, he found it necessary to supplement his income off the misery of families and children in the “New American Gulag” he helped establish.

I had accurately predicted that Kelly wouldn’t leave his “service” to Trump with his reputation intact. Nobody does, except those with no reputation to start with.

Trump runs a kakistocracy. The private sector should treat the steady stream of spineless senior officials fleeing the Trump Circus accordingly.

Or compare the “achievements” of horrible frauds like these guys, who abused their time in the service of Trump by betraying our country’s most fundamental values, with that of a real American hero like the late Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who was eulogized today. As President Obama said, “he was ‘honorable’ long before he was elected!”

PWS

10-25-19

U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGE LEE O’CONNOR EXPOSES MASSIVE DHS ILLEGALITY & FRAUD IN IMPLEMENTATION OF SO-CALLED MIGRANT PROTECTION PROTOCOLS (“LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO”) – “Indeed, the vast majority of respondents subjected to the MPP program involve cases where DHS has compelled -without authorization of law – aliens who were present within the United States and were not arriving aliens to return to Mexico to await their removal proceeding. It appears that over 90 percent of the MPP cases involve aliens were not properly subject to INA § 235(b)(2)(C). The court finds that termination is the appropriate action.”

Here’s Judge O’Connor’s decision, dated 09-17-19:

9-17-19 IJ termination MPP

Here’s key language from Judge O’Connor’s decision:

Respondents appeared for a hearing on September 9, 2019, with counsel and were granted a continuance for attorney preparation. The court reset the case to September 17, 2019. Respondents moved to terminate removal proceedings on the ground that they are not arriving aliens and were therefore not properly subjected to the MPP program. The court concludes thatDHS has not proven its fundamental allegation that respondents are arriving aliens and that DHS has not acted properly in subjecting aliens who were apprehended within the United States to the MPP program. Indeed, the vast majority of respondents subjected to the MPP program involve cases where DHS has compelled -without authorization of law – aliens who were present within the United States and were not arriving aliens to return to Mexico to await their removal proceeding. It appears that over 90 percent of the MPP cases involve aliens were not properly subject to INA § 235(b)(2)(C). The court finds that termination is the appropriate action.

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

So this is the “legacy” of “Powerful Woman” Kirstjen Nielsen and her successor “Big Mac With Lies:” Massive violations of legal and human rights of asylum seekers!

And, don’t forget the complicit Article III Judges of the 9^th Circuit in Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan whose mindless “green-lighting” of this abusive and clearly illegal program is responsible for daily mockeries of the very U.S. laws they were sworn to uphold as well as continuing human misery.

It also shows:

The great potential of an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court to stop DHS abuses in their tracks, at an early point in time (this would also save time and public money now being squandered on various illegal, ill-advised, and always inhumane “enforcement schemes and gimmicks”);
The potential of an independent Immigration Court with a true merit selection system for judges;
The value of effective representation of asylum seekers (which is either impeded or actively blocked by DHS and EOIR these days);
The corruption of leadership at DHS and DOJ and the lawyers representing them in court in defending the indefensible;
The dangers of abuses in a system run by a prejudiced Executive with no meaningful oversight and outside the public eye;
That while some Article III Judges have gone “belly up” in the face of massive illegality and abuses of our system, others like Judge O’Connor, even without the benefit of life tenure, have courageously continued to stand tall for Due Process and the legal rights of migrants to fair treatment under the law.

The current immigration system and those administering it in an unlawful and unconstitutional manner is a national disgrace! Something to remember when Kelly, Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies,” and other senior officials of DHS and DOJ try to “reinvent” themselves in the private sector and disguise or disavow their truly disgusting record of subservience to Trump and the massive human rights violations for which they are morally responsible.

Due Process Forever; “Malicious Incompetence” Never!

PWS

10-25-19

“BIG MAC” SAYS EL SALVADOR IS A “SAFE” COUNTRY – HE LIES! — Mounting “Disappearances” & Government Acquiescence Show Why “Big Mac,” Pompeo, Pence, Trump & Other Corrupt Architects Of Unlawful Policies Designed To Kill Asylum Seekers (For “Deterrence”) Should Be Charged With “Crimes Against Humanity!” – “The legacy of fear in El Salvador is profound. Three decades after the war, there are people who are only now revealing the disappearance of a relative in that conflict. Back then the scourge was death squads. Now it’s gangs and rogue police.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/disappeared-in-el-salvador-amid-a-cold-war-nightmares-return-a-tale-of-one-body-and-three-grieving-families/2019/10/19/d806d19a-e09d-11e9-be7f-4cc85017c36f_story.html

Anna-Catherine Brigida
Freelance Reporter

Mary Beth Sheridan and

report for the WashPost:

By

Mary Beth Sheridan and

Anna-Catherine Brigida

Oct. 19, 2019 at 2:58 p.m. EDT

LAS ANIMAS, El Salvador — For Daisy Flores, Day 135 began like so many others. She soaked corn in a bucket on the dirt floor for tortillas. She washed the kids’ clothes in a blue plastic bin. And she thought, again, about that afternoon in May when her 18-year-old son Edwin rode off on his brother’s motorcycle.He still hasn’t come home.

Twenty miles away, in a working-class neighborhood in San Salvador, Karen was plodding through Day 297. She coped by writing notes to her absent husband and taping them to the bedroom wall.

“I send you a little kiss,” she’d scrawled to the man who had disappeared last year while delivering electricity bills. And: “I can’t take it anymore.”

Not far from her, a third family endured another Monday without their loved one. The middle-aged man had gone missing on his way home from his plumbing job. Was it already Day 192? They’d searched everywhere. Nothing.

AD

Three decades after a brutal civil war characterized by never-explained, never-resolved disappearances, Salvadorans are again vanishing.

The phenomenon is resurrecting one of the most chilling elements of Cold War Latin America. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of people disappeared as right-wing governments — many supported by the United States — fought to extinguish leftist insurgencies.

These days, countries such as Mexico, Brazil and El Salvador are battered by criminal wars. The governments aren’t fighting Marxist guerrillas, but gangs and drug cartels instead.

In Mexico, more than 3,000 clandestine gravesites have been unearthed as families search for the 40,000 missing. In El Salvador, few of the burial sites have been found.

Which is why, when the government discovered one outside the capital last month, TV reporters rushed to the scene — and dozens of families began to wonder if their mystery would finally end.

AD

“I know he’s here,” said the mother of a 14-year-old.

“I am always hoping,” Karen said.

“They haven’t told me anything,” Flores said.

But for one family, things were about to change.

Mexican government says more than 3,000 hidden graves found in the search for the disappeared

A soldier guards a farm in El Limon, where investigators found a clandestine grave with human remains. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

Disappearances bring back a Cold War nightmare

No one knows exactly how many people in El Salvador have gone missing. National police say at least 2,457 people were reported disappeared in 2018, the most in a dozen years. The attorney general’s office puts the figure at 3,437 — more than the total of homicides. Both numbers are widely seen as undercounts.

For Flores, her son’s disappearance was a new version of an old nightmare. Her two uncles were among the at least 8,000 people who vanished during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.

That was another era — of death squads, the Reagan Doctrine against communism, guerrillas wielding red banners and AK-47s. El Salvador today is a democracy, with free elections and onetime Marxists in congress.

AD

So why are disappearances back?

One reason is they make it easier for killers to avoid investigation. That goes both for gang members killing their rivals and for cops secretly executing suspects.

“If there is no body, there’s no evidence,” said Marvin Reyes, who spent 20 years in the national police.

But the disappearances also reflect a political strategy. That became evident when El Salvador’s top two gangs reached a government-backed truce in 2012. The homicide rate — among the highest in the hemisphere — plunged. But disappearances rose.

“If violence needed to be carried out [by gangs], it needed to be invisible, to avoid attention from state authorities,” said Angélica Durán Martínez, who studies Latin American violence at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Analysts suspect the gangs and the government hide corpses to keep the homicide rate down.

AD

It’s so dangerous to police MS-13 in El Salvador that officers are fleeing the country

Karen looks through the window of her bedroom. Her husband went missing in San Salvador last November. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

Trump administration reaches deal to send asylum seekers to El Salvador in an effort to deter migrants from entering the United States

For victims’ families, the uncertainty is cruel: There’s no resolution, no body to bury, no hope of closure. “We have so much stress,” said Karen, a 39-year-old mother of three.

She and her kids try to keep their minds on work and school, but their bodies betray them: Karen’s insomnia, her son’s overeating, her daughter’s wildly oscillating periods.

She believes her husband was abducted because he refused to hide a gang’s weapons in the family’s home. She is so frightened of retaliation that she spoke on the condition that her last name not be used.

Daisy Flores, 47, also suspects her son was hauled away by gang members.

Edwin was perhaps the most affectionate of her seven kids. The kind of boy who would sneak up behind her at the stove and grab her in a bear hug. Who wasn’t embarrassed to accompany his mama to the market.

AD

She doesn’t think he was a gang member. But: “I can’t tell you what kind of friends he had.” Everyone knew that MS-13 dominated their hamlet, a woodsy patch of small, concrete homes surrounded by fields where campesinos grew corn and raised cows and chickens. Nearby villages were ruled by the rival gang Barrio 18 .

Edwin’s absence is a constant torment. One of his brothers was so terrified that he considered migrating to the United States, like tens of thousands of Salvadorans in recent years.

Whenever Daisy thought of her missing son, she’d lose her appetite.

“I can’t live like this, learning nothing,” she said.

But in recent months, there was a new reason for hope.

Nayib Bukele, the charismatic young mayor of San Salvador, was elected president in February on promises of change.

“They say the president, now, he’s helping people,” Daisy said. “And that if you go to the attorney general, he’s helping to find the disappeared.”

A crusading attorney general promises answers

El Salvador Attorney General Raúl Melara and investigators arrive at the clandestine gravesite, under heavy guard, in Barrio 18 territory. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

U.S. officials said aid to El Salvador helped slow migration. Now Trump is canceling it.

Attorney General Raúl Melara hopped out of an SUV and strode toward the yellow police tape.

“Is it up here?” he asked.

At 47, Melara was part of El Salvador’s tiny business elite, with a doctorate in law and years of leading the National Association of Private Enterprise. He had swept-back dark hair and wire-framed glasses and favored starched white shirts. But on this afternoon, he had donned jeans, a gray polo shirt and a windbreaker to visit the village outside San Salvador known as El Limon — notorious territory of Barrio 18.

Melara scrambled up a nearly vertical dirt path alongside a dying cornfield, trampling vines and brushing through shoulder-high grass. A quarter-mile up lay a clearing, with mounds of freshly dug dirt and a body.

It had been a man in jeans and work boots.

More bodies would probably be dug up in the coming weeks, Melara told journalists. The new government, he said, was committed to finding the disappeared and punishing the culprits.

AD

“This is a phenomenon that, in past years, was hidden. They didn’t want it to be visible,” he told the TV cameras. “But we’re all seeing it.”

In just a few months, Melara had made some aggressive moves. He’d formed a team of prosecutors to focus on the disappeared. He’d promoted tougher penalties for those involved in the crime. He was working with the police to produce more accurate numbers.

Reform and revival: Gang members find Christianity in El Salvador prisons

Some were skeptical. It wasn’t until 2017 — a quarter-century after the civil war’s end — that the government finally created a commission to search for the disappeared from that conflict. And locating the more recent victims could be politically unpalatable in a country obsessed with the murder rate.

“Finding and identifying these bodies will inevitably imply a rise in the homicide index,” said Celia Medrano of the human-rights group Cristosal .

AD

Arnau Baulenas, legal coordinator of the Human Rights Institute at the José Simeón Cañas University of Central America, said Melara’s initiatives were positive but insufficient.

“The attorney general has a very small team,” he noted. There are so few forensic criminologists that one of them — Israel Ticas — has become a celebrity for helping mothers find the remains of their children.

Melara knows he lacks money, equipment and expertise. It sometimes seems the only thing that’s not in short supply is fear.

“In Mexico, the families of the victims are visible,” he told The Washington Post. “They’ve generated social pressure.”

El Salvador is different. Indeed, at El Limon, as the investigators shoveled dirt, a mother in blue flip-flops approached. Her son vanished a year ago, at age 14.

“I’m going to find him,” she said, weeping, in a TV interview. “Even if he’s not alive, and it’s just to bury him.”

But she begged the cameraman not to identify her. He filmed her feet.

There was no sign of her son. On Day 2 of the dig, though, investigators discovered a tantalizing clue near the body.

It was a wallet. Inside was an ID card.

During Pompeo’s visit, El Salvador’s new president says migrant problem ‘starts with us’

The site where investigators found the remains of a man. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)This pick belongs to Israel Ticas, El Salvador’s most prominent forensic criminologist. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)As does this shovel. Ticas uses both implements to dig up clandestine graves. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

A discovery brings new hope, and fear

The call came that day. It had been six months since the middle-aged plumbing worker vanished. Now his family was being summoned to the Justice Ministry.

Maybe, at last, they’d have an answer. But they couldn’t even grieve in peace. They begged reporters not to release his identity.

“We don’t want to make a lot of noise,” said one of the man’s relatives. “The neighborhood is really dangerous.”

Another relative was more blunt: “Saying the wrong thing could get you killed.”

The legacy of fear in El Salvador is profound. Three decades after the war, there are people who are only now revealing the disappearance of a relative in that conflict. Back then the scourge was death squads. Now it’s gangs and rogue police.

“There’s silence — exactly like during the armed conflict,” said Eduardo García, who heads Pro-Búsqueda, a group searching for war victims.

Ten days after the discovery at El Limon, investigators still were trying to match the corpse with the DNA submitted by the plumbing worker’s relatives.

The families waited.

For Karen, the news had generated a brief flicker of possibility. Then authorities told her the corpse wasn’t her husband. “I am not going to stop calling the attorney general’s office,” she said. Maybe they’d discover some sign of him, somewhere.

Daisy hasn’t given up, either. In her son’s bedroom, she unlatched a suitcase stuffed with neatly folded shirts and slacks.

“Here are his clothes,” she said. “I’m keeping them here so they don’t get all dusty.”

She has vivid dreams of her son. In one, he was trapped in a room. “I couldn’t get him out,” she said. One day she heard her 3-year-old grandson shouting outside the house. “Edwin is coming,” he yelled, pointing at the dirt path. No one was there.

By Day 145, Daisy was thinking of paying another visit to the attorney general’s office.

“God willing, they’ll have some news soon.”

Daisy Flores touches a favorite shirt of her son, Edwin, at her home. (Fred Ramos/FTWP)

Fred Ramos in San Salvador and Gabriela Martínez in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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

Through their lies about conditions in the Northern Triangle and extralegal programs directed against legitimate asylum seekers, folks like “Big Mac with Lies,” “Cooch Cooch,” Pompeo, Miller, and Trump are literally “getting away with murder.” Why?

It’s critically important not to let guys like “Big Mac” attempt to “rehabilitate” their images in the private sector by touting their “management experience” and claiming the “Nazi defense” of “just carrying out my duties” or the totally disingenuous “just carrying out the law.” No other Administration, GOP or Democrat, has even hinted that the dangerous and corrupt countries of the Northern Triangle without functioning asylum systems would be considered “Safe Third Countries” or that our overseas refugee program would essentially be ended at the time of the world’s greatest need (even as we are complicit in genocide and creating more refugees in Syria).

In this respect, it is heartening to see the “pushback” against the disingenuous attempt of former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to “repackage” herself as a “leading female executive.” No, she was a Trump sycophant and a major human rights violator who is lucky not to be in jail. And, the same goes for many of the other current and former “Senior Executives” at DHS.

PWS

10-20-19

“BIG MAC’S” LEGACY IS A PREVIEW OF “COOCH COOCH’S” PLANS FOR FURTHER “WEAPONIZING” DHS AGAINST HUMANITY — Child Abuse, Illegal Actions, Contempt For Court Decrees Likely To Ramp Up Under Spectacularly Unqualified White Nationalist “Statue Of Liberty Denier!”

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2019-10-14/cbp-holds-migrants-longer-than-it-is-supposed-to-lawyer-claims?utm_source=SDUT+Essential+California&utm_campaign=516be9d215-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_15_12_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1cebf1c149-516be9d215-84889485

Gustavo Solis reports for the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Customs and Border Protection may be violating the law by holding asylum-seeking children longer than the agency is allowed to, according to lawyers who represent migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

By GUSTAVO SOLIS

OCT. 14, 2019

6:29 PM

Lawyers are accusing Customs and Border Protection in San Diego of breaking their own policies and potentially the law by holding migrant children in custody longer than the agency is allowed to.

Under the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal government generally cannot detain migrant children and their parents together for more than brief periods. The agreement states CBP should not hold children for more than 72 hours and Immigration and Customs Enforcement should not detain them for more than 20 days.

However, asylum-seeking children are routinely held for more than 72 hours in San Diego, according to Erika Pinheiro, a staff attorney with the nonprofit Al Otro Lado.

“We are seeing cases of prolonged detention every day,” she said. “There is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes they are released the same day, sometimes it’s a week later. We’ve had cases of people in CBP custody for three weeks.”

Many of the people being held in CBP custody are part of the Remain in Mexico program, which forced asylum seekers to live in Mexico while waiting for their cases to be decided in immigration courts.

The latest example involves a 9-year-old asylum seeker and her mother who have been in CBP custody since Oct. 4, as first reported by KPBS.

The mother and family were released from CBP custody Monday afternoon, Pinheiro said.

That case is particularly disturbing because both the child and mother are reportedly sick — suffering from stomach pain and diarrhea — which could be a separate violation of the Flores Settlement Agreement, the lawyer added.

Apart from limiting the amount of time children can be in federal custody, the Flores Settlement Agreement also establishes basic standards of care that include access to medical care.

A CBP spokesman declined to answer specific questions about the 9-year-old’s case or more general questions about Pinheiro’s claims that the agency is violating the law.

The spokesman said that the agency treats those in its custody with, “dignity and respect,” while striving to, “process individuals as expeditiously as possible,” and noted that, “most individuals are in our facilities for 72 hours or less.”

President Trump has called the Flores Settlement Agreement a “loophole,” that allows immigrants to be released from immigration detention centers. In August, the Trump administration unveiled proposed regulations that would replace Flores.

Specifically, the new policies would abolish ICE’s 20-day limit on detaining families and establish new minimum standards of care for people held in detention centers.

According to CBP’s own policies, “detainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP facility and every effort must be made to hold detainees for the least amount of time required for their processing, transfer, release, or repatriation as appropriate and as operationally feasible.”

Immigration attorney Rose Thompson has seen multiple asylum seekers spend more than 72 hours in CBP custody, including a case of a mother and her adult daughter spending 12 days in CBP custody.

Another asylum seeker said the conditions inside CBP custody were so poor that she asked to be sent back to Mexico, Thompson said.

“It’s horrible,” she said. “It’s not an area that’s intended to detain people for longer than 48 or 72 hours because it’s not comfortable. I don’t know even if there are beds.”

An August 2019 report of conditions inside federal custody noted that the average length of detention for asylum seekers here in San Diego was 3.4 days and more than eight percent of migrants surveyed in the report were held in custody for five days or more.

That report, published by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center, noted that more than 10 percent of asylum seekers in custody reported experiencing medical issues in detention.

The Flores Settlement Agreement also requires the federal government to provide basic care for children in custody. It stipulates that minors most be treated with, “dignity, respect, and special concern for their particular vulnerability.”

Similarly, CBP guidelines regarding medical treatment state that officers are required to report illnesses to a supervisor and document them in an electronic system of record while also seeking or providing medical care in a timely manner.

However, Pinheiro claims that CBP is also violating this aspect of both the Flores Agreement and the agency’s internal policies.

She points to the mother and daughter released from detention on Monday as just the latest example of migrants not receiving adequate care while in custody.

“I have never had a client say they saw a doctor while in CBP custody,” she said.

Conditions of migrants in CBP custody made headlines in June, when a group of lawyers in Texas asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order and a contempt order calling for CBP to “immediately start processing children for release to parents or relatives,” and provide children with, “basic necessities including adequate food, clean water, medical care, and access to sleep.”

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

There is a fairly simple solution for the problem of a Government that disobeys the law. Federal Judges should start throwing “Cooch Cooch,” his subordinates, Barr, and the DOJ lawyers advancing untrue and unethical arguments in support of their “clients’” indefensible positions in jail for contempt of court. In the case of lawyers, like “Cooch Cooch,” Barr, and his subordinates they should also be referred to their respective state bars for disbarment proceedings.

Until these thugs are held accountable, the child abuse and other human rights outrages will continue.

PWS

10-15-19

HUMANITY REVILED: THE HUMAN COSTS OF TRUMP’S INTENTIONALLY CRUEL & INHUMAN POLICIES CARRIED OUT BY DHS – Mica Rosenberg @ Reuters & Friends With Three Timely Reports!

I wanted to share our latest exclusive reporting that found some 16,000 children, nearly 500 of them infants under 1 year old, have been sent back to Mexico under the “Migrant Protection Protocols” to wait out their U.S. court hearings in often precarious living conditions. The government would not share a demographic breakdown of who was being sent back under the program so we sought the answers ourselves:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-babies-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-migrant-policy-sends-thousands-of-babies-and-toddlers-back-to-mexico-idUSKBN1WQ1H1

Separately, we just completed a multimedia project that took months of work and lots of cross-border collaboration to follow the diverging fates of several migrants who travelled with the caravans last year:

https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-IMMIGRATION-PROFILE/0100B2FK1NP/index.html

I am also following the developments in the U.S. refugee resettlement program:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-refugees/all-i-can-do-is-pray-a-family-in-limbo-as-us-slows-refugee-admissions-idUSKBN1WI0XV

Please read and share and stay in touch with more story ideas!

All the best,

Mica

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.com

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

Thanks Mica & team for the great in-depth reporting highlighting the human costs of the Trump Administration’s scofflaw policies.

It’s also what “Big Mac With Lies” actually stood for and went along with during his tenure at DHS. Things to remember when, somewhere down the line, Big Mac inevitably tries to “reinvent himself” as “the voice of reason” or an “internal resistor” to Trump’s grotesque anti-human rights campaign and his “political weaponization” of DHS.

DHS actually has a duty to insure that refugee laws are fairly and generously applied, as intended, to protect those fleeing persecution and torture. Not only did Big Mac fail to carry out that responsibility, but he actively undermined, mocked, and further endangered those needing protection under our laws. And, it was all part of a blatantly racist, White Nationalist, restrictionist Trump agenda that Big Mac fully understood and willfully advanced. He presided over a highly corrupt, unprofessional, politicized, weaponization of DHS. By this time, the damage appears to be irreparable.

PWS

10-13-19

“BIG MAC WITH LIES” OUT AT DHS — Implementing White Nationalist Agenda & Parroting Anti-Immigrant False Narratives Failed To Win Him Favor With Trump, Miller, & Other Neo-Nazi Extremists Running Administration’s All-Out Attack On Due Process & Human Rights!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

immigrationcourtside.com

Oct. 11, 2019. Acting Homeland Secretary Kevin McAleenan’s resignation was announced by Trump this evening. It contained the minimal “faint praise” for his efforts and the standard disingenuous bureaucratic BS about wanting to spend more time with the family and pursuing interests in the private sector. At least Big Mac has a family left, unlike those asylum seekers who died seeking legal protection, illegally separated children, abused asylum applicants living on streets in Mexico, and mindlessly deported long-time residents who suffered under his corrupt, yet inept, leadership at DHS.

Some news reports claim it was Big Mac’s decision. But, that seems unlikely, since he never was on the “Trump/Miller A Team.” It’s more likely that Big Mac actually was forced out by the White Nationalist Cabal lead by neo-Nazi Miller.

While cruel, corrupt, and complicit, Big Mac didn’t appear sufficiently ideologically committed to Miller’s racist restrictionist hate agenda. He certainly willingly abused human rights, but he didn’t do it with the obscene glee and delight in unnecessary human suffering consistently exhibited by Trump, Miller, and “Cooch Cooch.”

The DHS Secretary position has been a parade of horrors for the American Constitution, the Rule of Law, human rights, and human decency. McAleenan, like his predecessors General John Kelly and Kristjen Nielsen, came to the job with an undeserved reputation for professionalism and bipartisanship. In practice, he followed in the footsteps of his predecessors by performing like a typical political hack and Trump sycophant.

Illegal child separations, deaths in substandard detention conditions, misappropriation of funding for the Wall, totally absurd and dishonest “Safe Third Country” agreements with some of the most dangerous and “asylum free” countries in the world, abuse of legal asylum seekers under the “Let ‘em Die In Mexico” program, disrespect for and hindrance of attorney representation, bogus claims about failures to appear, expansion of the “New American Gulag,” illegal regulations aimed at indefinite detention of families and children, trashing the U.S. Refugee Program, illegal attempts to impose discriminatory “public change” requirements, illegal use of unreliable information to apprehend individuals, false imprisonment of U.S. citizens, mindless deportation of long-term residents who were actually benefitting America, tremendous backlogs of applications for legal stratus, overloading the Immigration Courts with improvidently commenced cases, schemes to discourage legal immigrants, insults to Federal Judges, lack of candor in dealing with Congress, and disrespect for Congressional Representatives are just some of the abominations that took place on Big Mac’s watch.

Indeed, in the past month lower Federal Courts have slammed as illegal at least five of the racist gimmicks that Big Mac and the DHS have tried to foist on the migrant community at the urging of Miller, “Cooch Cooch,” and the other White Nationalists. Some of Big Mac’s most egregious actions came in connection with the “in your face” regulations that DHS & DOJ presented to Judge Dolly Gee in the Flores litigation. Those regulations proposed unlimited abuses to be inflicted on detained children in unregulated facilities during indefinite detention, which was just the opposite of what Judge Gee had ordered. The DOJ’s unethical arguments in support of Big Mac’s indefensible position left Judge Gee incredulous.

Undoubtedly, he will be replaced by someone with a more overt ideology of racism and hate. Neo-Nazis like Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli, now illegally serving as head of USCIS, or some of the DHS underlings who have been competing for Miller’s attention with public statements of cruelty, anti-immigrant sentiment, and disrespect for the law are strong possibilities. Trump has a penchant for finding and selecting the worst that humanity has to offer to serve him.

Indeed, it’s quite likely that Trump’s next choice will be so spectacularly unqualified and unpalatable, even to some in the GOP (see, “Cooch Cooch”), that “Moscow Mitch” might balk at pushing the nomination through. But, since Trump prefers to flaunt the Constitution and to operate with “acting toadies” anyway, that probably won’t make any difference.

The Trump Administration is a kakistocracy. So, expect the worst, but be prepared for something far more grotesque and absurd. In the meantime, Big Mac should be remembered for the laws he broke, his attacks on human rights and human decency, his intellectual dishonesty, his immorality, his cowardice in the face of tyranny, the cruel and unnecessary pain he inflicted on legal asylum seekers invoking our laws, and the many lives that he needlessly ruined in service to the worst and most unqualified President in U.S. history.

PWS

10-11-19

EVEN AS “BIG MAC WITH LIES” SPEAKS @ GEORGETOWN LAW, SAN DIEGO RALLY EXPOSES WHAT HE REALLY STANDS FOR – Human Rights Abuses Targeting Women, Children, & Other Vulnerable Individuals Who Dare To Assert Their Human Rights Against A White Nationalist, Scofflaw Administration Seeking To Overturn American Democracy!

David Garrick
City Hall Reporter
San Diego Union-Tribune

David Garrick reports in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/san-diego/story/2019-10-06/san-ysidro-rally-focuses-on-treatment-of-immigrant-women-girls-at-border?utm_source=SDUT+Essential+California&utm_campaign=f19a0dcb9b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_10_07_01_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1cebf1c149-f19a0dcb9b-84889485

San Ysidro rally focuses on treatment of immigrant women, girls at border

Critics say detention centers deny proper health care, feminine hygiene products

Activists from across the county held a rally Sunday in San Ysidro to highlight the inhumane treatment of immigrant women and girls held at detention centers across the nation’s southern border.

Waving signs saying “stop racism now” and “respect women of color,” the activists chanted “classrooms not cages” and “when immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do — stand up and fight back.”

Gathered on a baseball field near the international border and the Otay Mesa Detention Center, the roughly 60 activists listened to a series of speakers describe reports of poor treatment that women and girls are receiving in detention centers.

“The punishing conditions imposed by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE and Customs and Border Protection on immigrants at the southern border continue to threaten the lives of tens of thousands of vulnerable persons,” said Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization for Women, which organized the rally.

Van Pelt said there are an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 immigrants in detention centers along the border and that many are experiencing intolerable conditions.

Women and girls, she said, have experienced sexual assaults, harassment and limited access to feminine hygiene products. In addition, she said they are often not provided interpreters, reproductive health care or mental health care.

Van Pelt drew angry shouts of support from the crowd when she described women and girls being forced to continue wearing soiled undergarments because they aren’t provided proper hygiene products.

Government officials have acknowledged overcrowding and other problems at the detention centers.

President Donald Trump has said conditions are better than they were under the Obama administration. But many reports from immigrant and human rights groups dispute that.

Dolores Huerta, an 89-year-old icon in the feminist and labor movement, was the featured speaker at the rally.

Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, led the crowd in a chant of “Who’s got the power, we’ve got the power — feminist power.”

She also said it’s crucial for activists and others concerned about racism and poor treatment of immigrants to become as politically active as possible.

“There is only one way to change the situation,” she said. “We’ve got to get active out there in these next elections. We are the only ones who can make it happen — we can’t rely on anyone else.”

Among those at the rally were two first-year students at Cal State San Marcos.

“We want people to know that everyone deserves rights, not just one specific group,” said Vanessa Span, a Latina who grew up in Redding.

Kimi Herrera, also Latina, said our country was founded on immigration so it’s important to continue to respect the process.

“Coming from a background of immigrants, I think this is something really important to bring attention to,” said Herrera, who grew up in Glendora.

The rally took place at the Cesar Chavez Recreation Center in San Ysidro.

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

The true “national emergency” at our Southern Border is the Trump Administration’s attack, led by “Big Mac With Lies,” on our legal asylum system, Due Process, and human dignity. Nowhere is that more evident than within the deadly “New American Gulag” administered by Big Mac for Trump & Stephen Miller. How many more innocent women and girls will be abused by Trump & “Big Mac With Lies” before they are rightfully removed from office?

PWS

10-07-19

BIG DAY FOR NDPA: “Trip Wins” In USDC On Friday Over Trump Administration’s Unlawful Immigration Programs Shows Both The Promise & The Problems Of Relying On Federal Courts To Stand Up To Trump’s Abuses — Supremes & Courts Of Appeals Haven’t Consistently Defended Constitution & Rule Of Law Against Trump’s Illegal Actions!

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=ee3650e6-aa94-4a5e-a8b5-174d0f25f52d&v=sdk

Brittany Mejia and Joel Rubin report for the LA Times:

Trump dealt 3 legal defeats on immigration

White House assails ‘misguided’ court rulings it says hinder law enforcement.

By Brittny Mejia and Joel Rubin

In a third defeat in less than a day for the Trump administration, a federal judge blocked it from vastly extending the authority of immigration officers to deport people without first allowing them to appear before judges.

The decision late Friday came before the policy, which was announced in July, was even enforced. The move would have applied to anyone in the country less than two years.

The decision came just after a federal judge barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement from relying solely on flawed databases to target people for being in the country illegally.

Early Friday, the administration suffered what would be its first defeat on the immigrant front in less than 24 hours when a federal judge blocked its plan to dismantle protections for immigrant youths and indefinitely hold families with children in detention.

Those protections are granted under the so-called Flores agreement, which was the result of a landmark class-action court settlement in 1997 that said the government must generally release children as quickly as possible and cannot detain them longer than 20 days, whether they have traveled to the U.S. alone or with family members.

In a statement Saturday, the White House responded angrily to the decision to halt its plans for expedited removal of immigrants.

“Once again, a single district judge has suspended application of federal law nationwide — removing whole classes of illegal aliens from legal accountability,” the statement read in part. “For two and a half years, the Trump administration has been trying to restore enforcement of the immigration laws passed by Congress. And for two and a half years, misguided lower court decisions have been preventing those laws from ever being enforced — at immense cost to the whole country.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which had sought the injunction, granted just before midnight, celebrated the result.

“The court rejected the Trump administration’s illegal attempt to remove hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. without any legal recourse,” said ACLU attorney Anand Balakrishnan, who argued the case. “This ruling recognizes the irreparable harm of this policy.”

In the first setback Friday for the Trump administration, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said new rules it planned to impose violated the terms of the Flores settlement. Gee issued a strongly worded order shortly after, slamming the changes as “Kafkaesque” and protecting the original conditions of the agreement.

Gee wrote that the administration cannot ignore the terms of the settlement — which, she pointed out, is a final, binding judgment that was never appealed — just because leaders don’t “agree with its approach as a matter of policy.”

Barring a change in the law through congressional action, she said, “defendants cannot simply impose their will by promulgating regulations that abrogate the consent decree’s most basic tenets. That violates the rule of law. And that this court cannot permit.”

The new regulations would have eliminated minors’ entitlement to bond hearings and the requirement that facilities holding children be licensed by states.

They also would have removed legally binding language, changing the word “shall” to “may” throughout many of the core passages describing how the government would treat immigrant children.

The government is expected to appeal.

In the second decision Friday, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. issued a permanent injunction barring ICE from relying solely on databases when issuing so-called detainers, which are requests made to police agencies to keep people who have been arrested in custody for up to two days beyond the time they would otherwise be held.

ICE is also blocked from issuing detainers to state and local law enforcement in states where there isn’t an explicit statute authorizing civil immigration arrests on detainers, according to the judge’s decision.

The decision affects any detainers issued by an ICE officer in the federal court system’s Central District of California.

That designation is significant because the Pacific Enforcement Response Center, a facility in Orange County, is an ICE hub from which agents send out detainer requests to authorities in 43 states, Guam and Washington, D.C. It is covered by the Central District.

“ICE is currently reviewing the ruling and considering our legal options,” Richard Rocha, an agency spokesman, said in a statement.

“Cooperation between ICE and local law enforcement agencies is critical to prevent criminal aliens from being released into our communities after being arrested for a crime.”

Tens of thousands of the requests are made each year to allow ICE agents additional time to take people suspected of being in the country illegally into federal custody for possible deportation. Approximately 70% of the arrests ICE makes happen after the agency is notified about someone being released from local jails or state prisons.

In fiscal year 2019, ICE has lodged more than 160,000 detainers with local law enforcement agencies, according to the agency.

Although police in California do not honor these ICE requests because of earlier court rulings that found them unconstitutional, agencies in other parts of the country continue to enforce them.

The civil case, which has wound its way through years of delays and legal wrangling, has broad implications for President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration as the ACLU and other groups sought to upend how immigration officers target people for being in the country illegally.

“I think the decision is a tremendous blow to ICE’s Secure Communities deportation program and to Trump’s effort to use police throughout the country to further his deportation programs,” said Jessica Bansal, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California.

The class-action lawsuit, which represents broad categories of people who have been or will be subjected to detainers, alleged the databases that agents consult are so badly flawed by incomplete and inaccurate information that ICE officers should not be allowed to rely on them as the sole basis for keeping someone in custody.

The judge agreed with that assessment, finding that the databases often contained “incomplete data, significant errors, or were not designed to provide information that would be used to determine a person’s removability.”

These errors, according to the decision, have led to arrests of U.S. citizens and lawfully present noncitizens. From May 2015 to February 2016, of the 12,797 detainers issued in that time frame, 771 were lifted, according to ICE data. Of those 771, 42 were lifted because the person was a U.S. citizen.

The detainer process begins when police arrest and fingerprint a person. The prints are sent electronically to the FBI and checked against the prints of millions of immigrants in Homeland Security databases. If there is a match — such as someone who applied for a visa or was apprehended by Border Patrol — it triggers a review process, which often culminates with an agent at the center deciding whether to issue a detainer.

Last year, the Pacific Enforcement Response Center issued 45,253 detainers and alerted agents at field offices to more than 28,000 additional people released from law enforcement custody before ICE could detain them.

Trump has singled out police in California and elsewhere for their refusal to honor detainers, using them to highlight what he says are problems with the country’s stance on immigration enforcement and the need to take a more hard-line approach.

In the years since the lawsuit was filed, ICE has amended its policies, saying the changes made the process for issuing detainers more rigorous.

Times staff writers Andrea Castillo and Molly O’Toole and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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

These are important decisions by the Federal District Courts upholding the Constitution and the rule of law. Whether the higher Federal Courts will do their duty by “Just Saying No” to Trump’s abuses or go “belly up” as they did in Barr v. East Side Sanctuary Covenant and Innovation Law Lab v.McAleenan remains to be seen.

Go New Due Process Army! Beat back the Trump Administration’s extralegal attacks on migrants and the rule of law.

PWS

09-29-19

PREDICTABLY, US DISTRICT JUDGE DOLLY GEE REJECTS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S BAD FAITH REGULATORY PROPOSAL TO TERMINATE FLORES AND ENABLE CHILD ABUSE BY THE GOVERNMENT – But, Will Feckless Supremes Once Again Short-Circuit The System & “Greenlight” Illegal & Immoral Actions Invidiously Directed At Asylum Seekers?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/federal-judge-blocks-trump-administration-from-detaining-migrant-children-for-indefinite-periods/2019/09/27/49a39790-e15f-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html

Maria Sacchetti reports for WashPost:

A federal judge in Los Angeles has blocked the Trump administration from activating new regulations that would have dramatically expanded its ability to detain migrant children with their parents for indefinite periods of time, dealing a blow to the president’s efforts to tamp down unauthorized border crossings.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee issued the permanent injunction Friday, hours after hearing arguments from the Justice Department and advocates for immigrants in a long-running federal case in the Central District of California.

Lawyers for the Justice Department had urged Gee to allow the Trump administration to withdraw from the Flores Settlement Agreement, a 1997 federal consent decree that sets basic standards for detaining migrant children. The decree led to a 20-day limit for holding children in detention facilities that have not been licensed by the states for the purpose of caring for minors.

[Trump administration moves to terminate court agreement, hold migrant children and parents longer]

President Trump has called Flores a “loophole” that has enabled hundreds of thousands of families, many from impoverished Central American countries, to cross the southern boundary and claim asylum. Those migrants generally are quickly released into the United States because of the 20-day limit on detaining children.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services issued new rules in August that sought to terminate the settlement and lift the 20-day limit by allowing the federal government to license such facilities.

In the ruling Friday, Gee wrote that the regulations “fail to implement and are inconsistent with the relevant and substantive terms of the Flores Settlement Agreement,” and therefore cannot take effect, noting that the agreement is a binding contract that was never appealed.

“Defendants cannot simply ignore the dictates of the consent decree merely because they no longer agree with its approach as a matter of policy,” she wrote. “Defendants cannot simply impose their will by promulgating regulations that abrogate the consent decree’s most basic tenets.”

The Justice Department is widely expected to appeal the decision, but a spokesman for the department did not signal the administration’s next steps Friday.

“The Department of Justice is disappointed that the court is continuing to impose the outdated Flores Agreement even after the government has done exactly what the Agreement required: issue a comprehensive rule that will protect vulnerable children, maintain family unity, and ensure due process for those awaiting adjudication of their immigration claims,” a spokesman said. “The Trump Administration will continue to work to restore integrity to our immigration system and ensure the proper functioning of the duly enacted immigration laws.”

Withdrawing from the settlement is part of Trump’s “beautiful puzzle,” an assortment of tough immigration enforcement measures designed to reduce the flow of Central American families and unaccompanied minors streaming across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), chair of the congressional Hispanic Caucus, hailed the ruling Friday.

“I am pleased that our justice system has stopped the Trump Administration plans to indefinitely detain families in prisonlike conditions,” Castro said. “This victory gives us hope and is a reminder to us all — elected officials, immigration lawyers, organizers, and advocates — to keep fighting. Flores is not a loophole — it’s a lifesaving standard that protects the basic rights and dignity of migrant children.”

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who has pushed for the termination of the Flores pact, said officials did not want to hold families longer than 50 days, but critics said the proposed regulations left open the possibility that minors could be detained for months or years.

More than 800,000 migrants have been taken into federal custody at the border this year, and the majority have been in family units. Advocates say they are fleeing dangerous and unstable regions in Central America’s “Northern Triangle,” the nations of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

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

Undoubtedly, Trump’s personal “Solicitor General,” Noel Francisco, will ask the Supremes to bypass the Ninth Circuit and endorse official child abuse. And, based on she Supremes’ majority’s totally spineless performance in allowing the “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” program to proceed, notwithstanding its blatant Constitutional, statutory, and regulatory defects, why not? (Barr v. East Side Sanctuary Covenant). The Supremes are establishing themselves as “Trump’s Court” – a feckless and complicit body of judicial cowards — just like he arrogantly claims.

How many more kids and families will die, be mistreated, or scarred for life because the supposedly most powerful judges in our nation are afraid to stand up to lawless, immoral, and inhumane actions by Trump & his toadies?

PWS

09-27-19

WHILE IMPOTENT CONGRESS & FECKLESS ARTICLE IIIs TURN THEIR COLLECTIVE BACKS: THINK THAT U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT HASN’T BECOME “CLOWN COURT” WITH POTENTIALLY DEADLY CONSEQUENCES? – Try This Out For Size: “Border Patrol Agents Are Writing ‘Facebook’ As A Street Address For Asylum-Seekers Forced To Wait In Mexico: ‘It’s wild…People are having to make things up as they go along.’”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/asylum-notice-border-appear-facebook-mexico

Adolfo Flores reports for BuzzFeed News:

An asylum-seeker from Honduras who presented himself at the southern border this summer seeking protection was forced to wait in Mexico until his court date in the United States. In case the government needed to contact him, a Border Patrol officer listed an address on his forms: “Facebook.”

The man, who asked to only be identified by his last name Gutierrez, told BuzzFeed News that shortly before he was sent back to Mexico along with his family, a Border Patrol agent asked him to confirm that a shortened version of his name was indeed the one he used on Facebook.

“I said ‘Yes, why?'” Gutierrez recalled. “The agent told me ‘Because that’s how we’re going to send you information about your court case.’ I thought that was strange, but what could I do?”

The form Gutierrez was given, called a Notice to Appear (NTA), is a charging document issued by the Department of Homeland Security that includes information on where an immigrant must present themselves for their first court hearing, and critically, should include an address where the applicant can be contacted if the time, date, or location of the hearing is changed.

If an immigrant fails to appear at court hearings they run the risk of being ordered deported in absentia by an immigration judge, which makes having accurate and detailed information on the forms crucial for asylum-seekers.

Gutierrez said he was never contacted about his case via Facebook and it’s unclear how DHS officials would contact an immigrant via social media.

A US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson did not respond to questions about why an agent would write “Facebook” as a known address, or whether the agency was using immigrants’ social media accounts as a way to inform them of any changes or updates to their hearings.

Attorneys and advocates working with asylum-seekers at the border, including those forced to wait in Mexico under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) said they’ve seen other notices with “Facebook” addresses, or no address at all.

“‘Facebook’ is the most egregious example of the Department of Homeland Security doing away with the aspect of proper notice,” Leidy Perez-Davis, policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association told BuzzFeed News. “Facebook is not an adequate way to serve an NTA.”

Perez-Davis said she’s heard from other attorneys who had viewed documents from immigrants with improper or inadequate addresses such as shelters, which are often already full or only allow immigrants to remain there for a few days. Asylum-seekers are often given initial US court dates months in the future.

“This is procedurally incorrect, but DHS has been doing it anyway because there hasn’t been oversight on insufficient NTAs,” Perez-Davis said.

An immigrant in Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), shows documents to a US border agent at Paso del Norte border bridge to attend a court hearing for asylum seekers.In June 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that an immigrant’s notice to appear was invalid because it didn’t have the date or location of his scheduled court appearance. Attorneys have pointed to the ruling to argue that NTAs with inadequate information should also be invalid.

The Trump administration policy, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” has seen more than 47,000 asylum-seekers sent back to the country, straining local resources that help immigrants in the border communities. In addition to facing violence, kidnappings, and discrimination, some immigrants live on the streets and rely on donations to feed themselves.

If an immigrant receives an improperly addressed notice to appear, they can challenge whether it was legally serviced in court, Perez-Davis said, giving an immigrant the chance to reopen their case if they do not appear at their scheduled hearing and are ordered removed in their absence.

“It goes back to the issue of due process,” Perez-Davis said. “They can’t initiate proceedings without telling someone the details of the proceedings.”

Zoe Bowman, a law student who interned with Al Otro Lado, a binational border rights project and legal service provider, said she saw at least five immigrant NTAs that had “Facebook” listed as the known address. The first of which she saw in May or June of this year.

“It’s wild,” Bowman told BuzzFeed News. “Some wouldn’t have any addresses listed at all.”

The US asylum process is not set up for cases to be fought from Mexico, making the issue uncharted territory for the US government, immigrants, and attorneys, Bowman said.

“The issues with the NTAs is just one branch of that,” Bowman said. “People are having to make things up as they go along.”

Many of the other asylum-seekers returned to Mexico along with Gutierrez left for their home countries almost immediately. Gutierrez tried to wait for his court date, but only lasted three weeks in Tijuana. Facing a months-long wait for their first court hearing without money or space in a shelter, Gutierrez said he decided to go back to Honduras with his family.

“Tijuana is dangerous, I can’t be traveling with my family to the bridge at 4 a.m.,” Gutierrez said of the early hour he was expected to appear at a border crossing for his hearing. “We were in Mexico without money or a place to stay, I couldn’t make my daughter suffer through that.”

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

Yup! This won’t go down as one the finest moments for America, the Executive, the Article III Courts, or any of the folks involved in implementing what can only be termed a program of blatantly illegal and overt human rights abuses.

Those of us fighting for our Constitution, human life, and the true rule of law appear to be losing the battle for the time being, given the cowardly and inept performances of those few institutions like Congress, the Supremes, and Article III Appellate Courts who could put an end to these travesties and require reform and compliance with the Constitution and the rule of law respecting treatment of refugee applicants.

But, we are making a legal and historical record of who stood up for human rights and who planned, executed, and enabled what can only be termed “crimes against humanity.”

This week’s coveted “Five Clown Award” goes jointly to the Supremes and Congress for their joint catastrophic failure to put an end to this illegal nonsense and reestablish Due Process and the Rule of Law.

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

PWS

09-27-19

REFUGEES FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES UNLIKELY TO BE DETERRED BY TRUMP’S & FEDERAL COURTS’ ILLEGAL & UNETHICAL “DETERRENCE THROUGH EXTREME CRUELTY” PROGRAM! — “The bleak reality is that, to deter people from seeking safety in our country, we would have to do so much worse than locking them up with their children indefinitely. Unless we are willing to be more cruel than what they are fleeing, deterrence is not an option.”

Dr. Eleanor Emery
Indian Health Services
New Mexico

https://apple.news/ARH8b07vVRPqkUzmRMrNNlw

Dr. Eleanor Emery writes in USA Today:

opinion

Asylum seekers I meet flee something even worse than Trump’s unethical immigration agenda

Our immigration policies seek to discourage border crossings by making life difficult for migrants. But almost nothing could be worse than going home.

Updated 8:38 am EDT Sep. 24, 2019

The Trump administration recently announced it intends to end the Flores settlement, an agreement that has been in place since 1997 and sets minimum standards for the treatment of children in detention. Under Flores, the detainment of children is restricted to a maximum of 20 days in order to limit their exposure to the harsh conditions and negative health impacts of detention. Overturning this agreement would allow children to be detained with their families indefinitely.

As a physician who works with adults seeking asylum in the United States, part of my role is to understand the magnitude of violence that a person has experienced and that has motivated their journey to our country. The stories I hear, and the physical and psychological scars that these asylum seekers bear, are a vivid portrayal of the forces driving migration.

The Trump administration has rationalized their decision to overturn Flores using the concept of deterrence. Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, explained the decision this way:

“This is a deterrent, because they know that instead of rushing the border, which is what’s been going on for a number of years now, by using the massive numbers coming to the border and overwhelming our facilities and our capacity to hold folks and our court rulings, which is what the Flores rule was, that now they can and will to the extent we’re able to do so, hold them until those hearings happen.”

In other words, if migrant families know they face prolonged detainment in the United States, they might reconsider making the journey at all. This flawed logic exemplifies a fundamental misunderstanding of the context of migration to our southern border today.

‘Push’ and ‘pull’ — but especially ‘push’

Migration is driven by a combination of “push” and “pull” factors. In economic migration, migrants are being pulled to the USA by promises of better jobs or educational opportunities in the destination country.

But much of the record level of migration from Central America here has been driven, not by the allure of better opportunities, but by an epidemic of violence in the home countries — by push factors. In fact, a recent Doctors Without Borders report found that nearly 40% of migrants cited direct attacks or threats to themselves or their families as the main reason for fleeing their countries. The majority of these people originate from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — the Northern Triangle — one of the most violent parts of the world today.

Latinos have no excuse: I asked Latinos why they joined immigration law enforcement. Now I’m urging them to leave.

The principle of deterrence is based on the idea that any act has associated positive and negative outcomes. If you are able to increase the associated negative outcomes, then you may ultimately reach a tipping point where it is no longer in the actor’s best interests to perform the act.

In the case of migration, if you can increase the negative consequences of crossing the border without legal status, then at some point the harm of doing so outweighs the potential benefit. But as I listen to the histories of asylum seekers — to the accounts of torture, of gang rape, of family members, including children, being murdered in front of you — deterrence seems not only morally dubious but futile. When this is the push, is there anything in the world that could deter you from running?

How cruel are we willing to be?

I recently met one asylum seeker fleeing years of imprisonment and brutal sexual violence by a gang in her home country in the Northern Triangle. After a harrowing escape and journey leading to our border, she presented herself to Customs and Border Patrol Protection agents and requested asylum. She was taken into custody and sent to a detention facility in California, where she had been awaiting her asylum hearing for months.

After sitting with her for hours, hearing her story and examining her scars, I asked her how she felt about being in detention. She shrugged. When she arrived at the U.S. border seeking safety, she certainly hadn’t expected to be put in jail. But she also told me that the detention center wasn’t all that bad — no one rapes her there.

Our immigration policies hurt Americans: An illegal immigrant killed my daughter. Trump’s right — we must complete the border wall.

Many of the asylum seekers I have met give a similar, stark assessment of the pros and cons of migrating to the USA. I have led clinics in New York, Massachusetts and California that conduct forensic medical evaluations for people seeking asylum, and the terror that they are fleeing is consistent.

Through my work with the Los Angeles Human Rights Initiative, I met another young woman who had been imprisoned by a gang and subjected to torture and gang rape before escaping and coming to the United States. She told me she would rather die in detention than be deported home to the Northern Triangle to face her former captors who awaited her there.

A third woman in California, who was applying for asylum on the grounds of domestic violence, was resolute when she spoke with me about her heart-breaking decision to leave her son behind with family when she fled her ruthless husband, a police officer in her town. When I asked whether she ever regretted her decision, she said no. Leaving her son had felt like dying, but the abuse her husband had subjected her to was worse than death.

Apart from being unethical, the human rights abuses generated by the Trump administration’s immigration policies will simply not accomplish their objective of stemming the tide of migration. The bleak reality is that, to deter people from seeking safety in our country, we would have to do so much worse than locking them up with their children indefinitely. Unless we are willing to be more cruel than what they are fleeing, deterrence is not an option.

Dr. Eleanor Emery is a member of the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network and a program officer at the Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy at Cambridge Health Alliance. She lives and practices internal medicine with the Indian Health Service in New Mexico. Her views do not reflect the views of her employer.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

get our free app

Originally Published 6:00 am EDT Sep. 24, 2019

**Updated 8:38 am EDT Sep. 24, 2019**

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

Unfortunately, I think that Dr. Emery has underestimated the racism-fueled intentional cruelty of the Trump Administration as well as the cowardice and fecklessness of many Federal Judges, particularly at the appellate level.

Sending asylum applicants to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, some of the most dangerous country in the world, plagued by corruption, and without functional asylum systems takes lawlessness, cruelty, complicity, and open mockery of our justice system to a new level!

I agree with her that it probably won’t be enough to stop refugees from coming. But, it might well be enough to stop them from using our legal system and to just take their chances with the smugglers and the extralegal immigration system that Trump and his courts have been working so hard to expand and enable.

As I have said numerous times, Trump and his immoral scofflaw DHS & DOJ sycophants are the “best friends” of professional smugglers, cartels, gangs, rapists, kidnappers, and extortionists. By diverting attention and resources from real law enforcement to punishing individuals who are trying to use our legal system, Trump and his cronies and enablers have been an amazing boon and “profit center” for criminals.

PWS

09-25-19

HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE BLOG PRESENTS “THE FLORES EXHIBITS” – Truth, No Matter How Terrible & Disturbing, Is The Best Antidote To Notorious Human Rights Abuser “Big Mac With Lies” & His Truly Despicable Knowingly False Narratives & Immoral Actions! – “At this time when our nation is led by scoundrels, we are in need of heroes.”

Elora Mukherjee
“American Hero”
Clinical Professor of Law & Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic
Columbia Law School

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/9/22/vjwdefjb62lfre600ktwsfj8q1dsab

The Flores Exhibits

“I’m held with my son in a cage. There are about 60 people in my cages, and more in some of the other cages. There are six cages in my area. They are all very, very full.”

The above words are part of “Exhibit 29,” which is read by my friend Lenni Benson, a professor at New York Law School and founder of the school’s Safe Passage Project, which provides representation to unaccompanied children in immigration court. The words are the sworn declaration of a 17-year-old girl, identified by the initial “L.”

There are 65 such declarations, each the actual statement of a child detained at border detention facilities in this country in June 2019. Recently, Waterwell, the wonderful civic-minded theater and film production company responsible for the immigration court based play The Courtroom filmed a number of actors, lawyers, clinical professors, advocates, and other interested individuals in a dark studio in the East Village in New York City. I was honored to be one of those filmed. We each sat at a simple table with the written exhibit and a glass of water, and under the direction of Waterwell’s Artistic Director, Lee Sunday Evans, each read a single declaration.

Article 37(b) of the Convention of the Rights of the Child states that “No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.” A 1997 settlement agreement, known as the Flores Settlement, legally binds our government in limiting the length of time it can detain immigrant children, and holding the government to a standard of humane treatment under prescribed conditions of health, hygiene, education, and privacy. From the contents of the declarations, the Trump Administration has made a mockery of these rules.

Exhibit 3, read by David Gomez, the president of Hostos Community College, memorializes the words of a five year old from Honduras separated from his father upon arrival at the border, as he states “I have not been told how long I have to stay here. I am frightened, scared, and sad.” My fellow former immigration judge, Betty Lamb, read the statement of a 14 year old girl, who was taking care of two younger parentless girls (one of them 4 years old and sick), who said that she was holding the two in her lap as she spoke trying to comfort them. She then added “I need comfort, too. I’m bigger than they are, but I am a child, too.” (Exhibit 54).

At this time when our nation is led by scoundrels, we are in need of heroes. Towards this end, please take a moment to write down the name of Elora Mukherjee, a true hero. She is a clinical professor of law and Director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She has devoted her career to aiding immigrant children, whom she began visiting in detention facilities in 2007, and litigating violations of the Flores Settlement. Watching her read her own 22 minute statement gave me nightmares. She described the overwhelming stench of the hundreds of detained children, who were very hungry and seriously traumatized. One six year old she tried to question ended up sitting in her lap crying inconsolably, until a guard eventually gave him a lollipop “as an incentive to bring him back to his cell.” (Exhibit 63). Many of the children were seriously in fear of the guards. A number of the children were sick.

I am a native-born American citizen. I have lived here my entire life. Yet I never felt more foreign than while watching these videos. I hope that readers of these words feel the same way. No government of a country that is truly ours, that reflects the morals and values that we possess and believe in, could ever treat children this way. And no decent, moral people, regardless of their political affiliation or their views on immigration, could ever support or approve of the government responsible for such treatment. These children will never get over this. It is one thing for children to arrive here already traumatized and be granted safe haven under our laws. It is entirely another matter for the government of this country to deliberately cause children to suffer in a way that will scar them for life.

Please visit the site of these powerful videos through this link. You can also view the one-minute trailer here. And then please, please help amplify by sharing through social media and email.

Thanks for this project go to Columbia Law School’s Center for Institutional and Social Change and Immigrants’ Rights Clinic; to Waterwell, the Broadway Advocacy Coalition, and Project Amplify; and to all those who participated as readers in the videos.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.

(Below: iPhone photo of me filming my segment, taken by Elizabeth Lamb).

Go to Jeff’s blog at the link for the picture of him presenting.

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

What kind of country tortures and torments vulnerable children in search of legal protection while actually employing their corrupt, cowardly, and totally dishonest abusers, like Kevin “Big Mac With Lies” McAleenan, on the public payroll? Big Mac was at it again today, presenting a fictionalized defense of the Administration’s policy of promoting and encouraging human rights abuses, lying about the Flores settlement, and endangering the lives of refugee families!

McAleenan and his fellow immoral sycophants are a disgrace to America!

And, as I have said before, both Congress and the Federal Judges who have enabled these crimes against humanity by failing to take strong action to stop the Trump Administration’s abuse and to hold perpetrators like McAleenan legally accountable also share a major part of the responsibility!

PWS

09-23-19

RUTH ELLEN WASEM @ THE HILL: When Child Abuse Becomes Our Nation’s Official Policy, We All Share The Shame!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/460349-report-on-migrant-children-documents-the-painfully-obvious

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG)’s new report found the Trump administration’s policy changes in 2018 exacerbated the mental health needs of “unaccompanied alien children” in their custody. The unaccompanied alien children in this study are overwhelmingly asylum seekers from Central America. No one should be surprised that the OIG found two particular policies — separating children from their parents and prolonging the time children are in custody — are especially harmful to the children’s mental health.

Researchers, mental health professionals and policymakers have known for years that refugee children are likely to have experienced traumas that challenge their mental health. Studies in the United States and in Europe have established that asylum-seeking children and adolescents are likely to have post-traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety, depression and externalizing behaviors. Given that the escape of many of these Central American children was prompted by violence and deprivation in their home countries, they certainly are at high risk of developing mental disorders.

Last year I wrote that the Trump administration “knew it would cause lasting harm, and still took children from parents.” In July 2018, Jonathan White, the former deputy director of children’s programs in the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), testified to Congress that he had warned administration officials, early in the discussions to ramp up the zero tolerance toward asylum seekers, about the harm such policies pose to children. White argued that the separation of children from parents entails “significant risk of harm to children” as well as “psychological injury.” But administration officials overruled White.

The policy of family separation happens less frequently now; the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that 911 children were taken from their asylum-seeking parents in the year after the June 26, 2018, court order to stop the practice. About 30 children whom DHS took from their parents during the peak of the policy in 2018 still remain separated from their parents. The new OIG report documents the deleterious effects this policy has had on the mental health of these children.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform in July released a report of their investigation of the child-separation policy. The committee’s set of findings on how long children were held in custody is among the deeply troubling results — and not just because they found evidence the administration violated federal law on how long DHS can hold a child in detention. After DHS transferred custody to ORR, the committee reports that “records show that children of all ages were held in ORR custody for extensive periods of time.” The average was 90 days, with some children in ORR custody for more than 18 months.

When the committee’s findings are overlaid on the OIG study, the picture of the extensive damage to children’s mental health becomes even sharper. More precisely, the other policy the OIG found that was especially damaging to asylum-seeking children is the practice of prolonging the time children are in custody. “Facilities reported that children with longer stays experienced more stress, anxiety, and behavioral issues, which staff had to manage. Some children who did not initially exhibit mental health or behavioral issues began reacting negatively as their stays grew longer.”

If you are thinking that these compelling, thorough reports are prompting an end to this human tragedy — enter stage right the new DHS rule for the “Apprehension, Processing, Care and Custody of Alien Minors and Unaccompanied Alien Children.” This regulation takes aim at the 1997 court-ordered consent decree, known as the Flores settlement, that limits the detention of children and set standards for their care. Among other things, the new rule would allow DHS to indefinitely detain migrant families, including those arriving to seek asylum. Administration officials assured that they would provide high standards for the care of children. The official press release stated “all children in the Government’s care will be universally treated with dignity, respect and special concern, in concert with American values and faithful to the intent of the settlement.”

However, the new rule eliminates the requirement that facilities holding families with children be state-licensed facilities. DHS would be responsible for licensing the family detention centers. Given the reports this summer of squalid conditions at facilities overseen by DHS, including a scathing “management alert” report by DHS’s Office of Inspector General, a new policy of prolonged detention of families and children seeking asylum is frightful. Attorneys general representing 20 states have sued to stop the policy change.

Two wrongs don’t make a right — but they do make a place in this administration’s immigration policies.

Ruth Ellen Wasem is a professor of policy practice at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas in Austin. She has testified before Congress about asylum policy, legal immigration trends, human rights and the push-pull forces on unauthorized migration. Follow her on Twitter @rewasem.

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

Yup!

And, it’s only going to get worse, Ruth, as the Federal Courts have now joined in furthering and justifying the abuses of children, women, gays, and all migrants.

Astoundingly, we’re seeing an institutional failure of our democratic republic that took more than two centuries to build in a little more than two years of Trump’s lawless authoritarian rule.

Trump might not be the brightest bulb in the pack, but he has proved to have amazing talent for exploiting democracy’s weaknesses and co-opting and “weaponizing” supposedly democratic institutions to further his plan of destroying them completely. Lots of supposedly smart guys out there these days sucking up and doing his bidding.

PWS

09-12-19

Related posts:

Children Die at Record Speed on U.S. Border While Coyotes Get Rich

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Recession Factor

The Legal Route

Related posts:

She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border

Related posts:

Due Process Forever; “Malicious Incompetence” Never!

Related posts:

Disappearances bring back a Cold War nightmare

A crusading attorney general promises answers

A discovery brings new hope, and fear

Related posts:

Customs and Border Protection may be violating the law by holding asylum-seeking children longer than the agency is allowed to, according to lawyers who represent migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Related posts:

Related posts:

“BIG MAC WITH LIES” OUT AT DHS — Implementing White Nationalist Agenda & Parroting Anti-Immigrant False Narratives Failed To Win Him Favor With Trump, Miller, & Other Neo-Nazi Extremists Running Administration’s All-Out Attack On Due Process & Human Rights!

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Related posts:

Related posts:

Go New Due Process Army! Beat back the Trump Administration’s extralegal attacks on migrants and the rule of law.

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: