"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Biden’s “Shadow Attorney General” speaks through the likeness of Merrick Garland! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.comCNN Digital Expansion 2019, Priscilla Alvarez Politics Reporter, CNN
“Today we heard the same unconvincing arguments from the Biden administration that we’ve been hearing for the last year about this xenophobic and baseless policy, arguments that have already been rejected in federal court. Title 42 unjustly and unnecessarily inflicts harm on families seeking asylum at our border, and we will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that this policy ends once and for all,” said Diana Kearney, senior legal adviser with Oxfam America, in a statement.
In a recently released report, Human Rights First found nearly 9,000 reports of kidnappings and other violent attacks against people who had been expelled to Mexico or blocked from seeking protection in the US.
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Read Priscilla’s full story on the bottomless depths to which Garland has taken American “justice” and the Department of “Justice” at the link.
I can always count on Garland to illustrate and punctuate my points about his unfitness for the job of achieving racial equality, re-establishing the rule of law, and promoting human rights in America, not to mention his total unsuitability and inability to run a fair, impartial, due-process-oriented court system! He probably would have been right at home with the “GOP Six” on the Supremes.
A year ago, who would have thought that Biden and Garland share this guy’s vision of “justice” for migrants at the border and at EOIR? Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License
Dear Paul:
In this week’s First Page, we focus on the one-year anniversary of the Biden presidency — with a particular focus on policies that impact migrants and asylum seekers.
Our recently published report makes clear that the administration’s continuing use of Trump-era restrictions has led to escalating human rights violations and needless disorder.
We believe that the United States must welcome people seeking refuge with dignity, not deliver them to danger.
REPORTING THE RECORD
On Thursday, Human Rights First released a new report finding that after a year in office, the Biden administration’s continued implementation of Trump-era restrictions is sending to danger thousands of families and individuals who seek asylum protection in the United States.
The data assembled in our report, “A Shameful Record: Biden Administration’s Use of Trump Policies Endangers People Seeking Asylum,” is a damning indictment of the U.S. government’s border policies.
Courtesy Adrees Latif/Reuters
Between January 2019 and January 2022, our research identified more than 10,000 reported kidnappings, rapes, acts of torture, and other grievous acts of violence against migrants and asylum seekers blocked in, returned to, or expelled to Mexico under the U.S. government’s “Remain in Mexico” and “Title 42” policies.
At least 8,705, or 85%, of these attacks occurred during the first year of the Biden presidency.
“President Biden’s first year in office has set a shameful new record on human rights as his administration continues to deliver asylum seekers to danger in Mexico,” saidKennji Kizuka, associate director for refugee protection research at Human Rights First and co-author of the report. “The Biden administration is well aware of the grave harm asylum seekers suffer when sent to Mexico and yet it has continued to use a policy condemned by public health experts, international authorities, civil rights leaders, and even departing members of President Biden’s administration.”
Courtesy ReuterS
Our report makes clear that kidnappings and rapes of returned migrants – including of children – are common.
Cartels and other organized criminal groups in Mexico have turned torturing asylum seekers and extorting their U.S. family members into a new and lucrative illicit enterprise. At least three asylum seekers sent to Mexico by DHS under these policies were murdered.
Equally frightening, our research shows that Mexican police, immigration officers, and other authorities are often complicit in – if not directly responsible for – these attacks.
Courtesy Getty
As the Biden administration restarts the inherently flawed “Remain in Mexico” program in the wake of court rulings, they have already sent asylum seekers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other countries to “wait” for their day in immigration court in danger in Mexico.
In addition to inflicting grave and systematic suffering, these policies continue to perpetuate disorder, encourage repeat entries, inflate apprehension statistics, cause family separations, and fuel cartels by putting a bullseye on the backs of people seeking U.S. asylum who are blocked in Mexico.
Despite the Biden administration’s earlier efforts to terminate “Remain in Mexico,” when it was ordered by a federal court to re-implement the program, the administration has now chosen to expand its scope.
Today the administration is defending the expulsion policy in federal court, with a hearing in a lawsuit challenging expulsions of families at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
HIRING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Reports like A Shameful Record are just one element of our critical efforts to defend the dignity of all people.
Human Rights First seeks passionate team members who are interested in legal, communications, development, finance, and innovation work that can change lives, impact policy, and move public opinion.
Please check out our careers page and apply to join us today.
* * * * *
Watch for more news as our work for human rights continues. And please stay in touch on social media:
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You can read the full version of “A Shameful Record” at the above link.
Not to mention that the extreme lack of expertise, humanity, and quality control in Garland’s wholly-owned Immigration Courts is corroding American justice from the “retail level” up. So unnecessary! So divisive! Such a missed opportunity for Dems to actually govern with values and in the public interest!
Wow! Think of the incredible waste: So much talent, energy, creativity, and manpower that could be working with the Administration to solve problems and make things better for everyone. Instead they are engaged in an all-out war to stop the Biden Administration’s cruel, spineless, and highly ineffective immigration and human rights blunders and, once again, be the last line of defense for American democracy against the Dems’ self-destructive policies and actions.
Law360 (January 12, 2022, 2:09 PM EST) — A top U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney appeared elated when a sitting Massachusetts judge was indicted in 2018 for helping an immigrant in the country illegally evade custody, asking in an email if it would be “the first of many” such arrests, according to records made public in court Tuesday.
The email by then-ICE Principal Legal Adviser Tracy Short was part of a series of documents filed by a civil liberties group and government watchdog suing the agency to obtain even more records relating to the obstruction of justice charges against Newton District Court Judge Shelley Joseph.
Short posed the rhetorical question as a Fox News article circulated in emails among agency staff on the day Judge Joseph was indicted. In a later email to agency executives, Short said, “This is a great day.”
“Indeed,” responded Matthew Albence, ICE director of enforcement removal operations, according to the court filings. ICE chief of staff Thomas Blank allegedly chimed in, “Blessed.”
Judge Joseph is accused of helping the immigrant evade federal custody by allowing him to leave out the back door of her courtroom while agents from ICE were waiting out front to arrest him.
The case has been criticized by retired judges, academics and Massachusetts defense lawyers as an overreach by the federal government. Judge Joseph has argued that she acted within the scope of her judicial authority and therefore cannot be criminally charged. The issue is on appeal at the First Circuit.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and American Oversight, a government watchdog, attached the emails ICE produced to a motion for a pretrial win in the lawsuit they filed against the agency for records relating to the charges against Judge Joseph and her court officer Wesley MacGregor.
The civil liberties groups told U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley that the 83 pages of communications handed over by ICE in response to its records request “calls into serious question the adequacy of its search” for documents.
Among the groups’ concerns are that no records were produced for the 11 months that followed the incident, no text messages were searched, the search terms used were too narrow, and the agency never searched its Homeland Security Investigations Division even though the unit wrote a memo about the incident.
The groups asked the court to grant them summary judgment, order ICE to conduct a reasonable search — including emails and text messages — and release pages ICE is withholding under claimed exemptions from the public records law.
In December, ICE asked for a win in the case, saying it handed over what it needed to and withheld other sought-after documents that would harm pending criminal proceedings if released.
Judge Joseph and MacGregor have appealed a federal judge’s decision to not toss the charges on judicial immunity grounds. The First Circuit, in early December, heard the appeal and wrestled with how to define the judge’s immunity claim.
The ACLU’s records request was spurred by a November 2019 New York Times article that reported then-acting ICE Director Thomas Homan had been communicating with the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office in seeking legal recourse against Judge Joseph.
The ACLU requested records from March 15, 2018, through April 25, 2019, including emailed messages and letters between the U.S. attorney’s office and ICE about Judge Joseph, as well as records concerning an ICE investigation into the judge.
ICE told the ACLU in 2019 that it couldn’t do the search because the ACLU was a third party in the criminal case against Judge Joseph and needed her approval to access the records.
The ACLU protested and asked the agency to reconsider, saying that its request didn’t need Judge Joseph’s approval. In February 2020, the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor ruled that a records search could be made, but ICE has failed to respond to the ACLU’s request since then, the complaint says.
Daniel McFadden, an ACLU staff attorney on the case, said in a statement to Law360 that ICE’s decision to charge Judge Joseph was “unprecedented.”
“The public has a right to know how this prosecution arose, and whether it was part of a pressure campaign to force Massachusetts court officials to assist in federal immigration enforcement,” McFadden said.
ICE and the Department of Justice declined to comment on the filing when reached Wednesday.
The ACLU of Massachusetts is represented in-house by Krista Oehlke, Daniel L. McFadden and Matthew R. Segal.
American Oversight is represented in-house by Katherine M. Anthony.
Update: This article has been updated to include comments from the ACLU.
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Look, whether Short can be fired or not, he has no business being the Chief Immigration Judge at EOIR. Short never held a judicial position before his inappropriate appointment under Trump.
His career as a hard line, widely disrespected ICE Prosecutor took him through probably the worst Federal Court in America — the Atlanta immigration Court, a self-styled “Asylum Free Zone” where “due process and fundamental fairness go to die and be buried.”
No Senior Executive like Short has “life tenure” in a particular senior position. For example, former Chief Immigration Judge, current BIA Appellate Judge Michael J, Creppy, woke up one morning in 2006 to find himself“out at OCIJ” and on his way to OCAHO, widely considered the “Siberia of EOIR.” His “offense:” “losing the confidence” of the then powers that were at DOJ and EOIR during the Bush II Administration!
I had a similar experience when I was “pushed out” as BIA Chair and then Appellate Judge because Ashcroft and his team of hard liners (including the notorious neo-fascist nativist Kris Kobach) didn’t like my decisions standing up for the legal rights of migrants!
Once in power, the GOP makes good on its threats against asylum seekers and other migrants, without necessarily passing any legislation. By contrast, with weak-kneed, tone-deaf “leaders” like Mayorkas and Garland, Dems fail to keep their campaign promises and won’t even move the worst of the GOP holdovers out of key positions where they undermine justice and ruin human lives.
Two months after President Biden said migrant families separated at the border under the Trump administration deserve compensation, his administration’s lawyers are arguing in federal court that they are not in fact entitled to financial damages and their cases should be dismissed.
The Justice Department outlined its position in the government’s first court filings since settlement negotiations that could have awarded the families hundreds of thousands of dollars broke down in mid-December.
Government lawyers emphasized in the court documents that they do not condone the Trump administration’s policy of separating the children of undocumented migrants from their parents. But they said the U.S. government has a good deal of leeway when it comes to managing immigration and is immune from such legal challenges.
“At issue in this case is whether adults who entered the country without authorization can challenge the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration laws” under federal tort claims laws, the Justice Department said in a Jan. 7 brief in a lawsuit in Pennsylvania. “They cannot.”
The legal strategy reflects the Biden administration’s awkward position as it shifts from championing the migrant families politically to fighting them in court. Migrant families have filed approximately 20 lawsuits and hundreds of administrative claims seeking compensation for the emotional and sometimes physical abuse they allege they suffered during the separations.
. . . .
But while immigrant advocates and liberals are likely to be furious at the administration’s position in court, some Democrats say privately that it has a political upside. The image of the administration fighting against the large payments, they say, could blunt GOP arguments that the administration is too soft on immigration.
. . . .
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Read the full article at the link.
“Awkward” seems like a “sanitized term” for “duplicitous and immoral!”
So, I assume that the Dems who are unwilling to stand up for progressive values and the human rights of migrants will look to their GOP nativist, White Nationalist buddies for contributions and votes come election time. Contrary to DOJ’s misrepresentation to the courts, individuals regardless of status had a statutory and treaty right to seek protection in the U.S. regardless of manner of entry. The unconstitutional Sessions/Miller scofflaw conduct was intended to punish and deter individuals from asserting and vindicating their legal rights.
Additionally, so-called “illegal entries” are to a large extent fueled by illegal policies by both the Biden and Trump Administrations of not having an operating, fair, timely asylum system at legal ports of entry. This has been compounded by failure of both Administrations to establish robust, fair refugee processing systems for Latin America in the regions where the refugee situations are generated.
I have a different perspective: A party afraid to stand up for the values of its core constituency stands for nothing at all! And we already have a major “party of no values.” So, the “competition” for the “no values voters” might already be over.
Disgusting as the anti-democracy, White Nationalist GOP is, I must say that they know who their supporters are and aren’t afraid to act accordingly. Just who are the Dems representing in this disgraceful and cowardly race to the bottom being led by Garland and Mayorkas (with an assist from Vice President “Die in Place” Harris)?
The Biden Administration’s “policy” of abandoning asylum seekers and allowing the Immigration Courts to operate dysfunctionally with mostly “holdover judges” and ever-mushrooming backlogs hasn’t proved to be a “political winner” to date. So, why do the tone-deaf Dems pushing it believe it will help them in November?
Hopefully, at least some Federal Courts will see through Garland’s disingenuous smokescreen and stick the DOJ & DHS with judgements much larger than the ones they were afraid to agree to in settlement.
The Garland DOJ continues to squander time, resources, and goodwill by filling the Article IIIs withill-advised “Stephen Miller Lite” litigation positions. And, these are the folks progressives are depending on to vindicate voting rights and hold the leaders of the insurrection accountable? Good luck with that! Garland appears to be too busy defending Stephen Miller’s policies to effectively push progressive, due-process-oriented positions in the Article IIIs or reform his wholly owned, totally dysfunctional Immigration “Courts.”
Court orders in the class-action lawsuit caused Yuba’s detainee population to steadily decline, from 127 in May 2020 to zero on Oct. 27, 2021, when the last incarcerated noncitizen was released. Activists briefly celebrated and hoped to use the momentum to prevent the jail from accepting future detainees.
But ICE and Yuba County had quietly extended their contract indefinitely in 2018. The contract stipulates that Yuba County receive a minimum of $24,000 a day whether any detainees are in its jail or not. In the two months the jail was without detainees, the federal government paid Yuba County almost $1.4 million.
A report by the team overseeing the jail’s compliance with the court-ordered consent decree found that a “severe breakdown of the Jail’s mental health system” contributed to the suicide last month of a man who had been in the jail for only a few days. It also found that officials had failed to fix previously cited suicide risks, and that there was inadequate medical and mental health staffing and treatment.
“We’ve known for decades that Yuba County Jail has a horrific record of mental and medical care that has unfortunately resulted in tragic deaths and lots of pain for lots of families,” said Laura Duarte Bateman, communications director for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which organized last month’s protest against Yuba accepting new detainees.
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Read the full article at the link.
Fraud, waste, and abuse. No need for the GAO “hotline” on this one. It’s all hanging out in public view as Mayorkas & Garland bury their respective heads in the sand.
WASHINGTON — Angie Simms had been searching for her 25-year-old son for a week, filing a missing persons report and calling anyone who might have seen him, when the call came last August. Her son, Erik A. Molix, was in a hospital in El Paso, Texas, where he was strapped to his bed, on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma.
Mr. Molix had suffered head trauma after the S.U.V. he was driving with nine undocumented immigrants inside rolled over near Las Cruces, N.M., while Border Patrol agents pursued him at speeds of up to 73 miles per hour. He died Aug. 15, nearly two weeks after the crash; even by then, no one from the Border Patrol or any other law enforcement or government agency had contacted his family.
The number of migrants crossing the border illegally has soared, with the Border Patrol recording the highest number of encounters in more than six decades in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. With the surge has come an increase in deaths and injuries from high-speed chases by the Border Patrol, a trend that Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, attributes to a rise in brazen smugglers trying to flee its agents.
The agency recorded more than 700 “use of force” incidents on or near the southern border in the last fiscal year. Customs and Border Protection does not disclose how many of those ended in death, or how many high-speed chases take place each year.
Crossing the border without documentation or helping people do so is full of risk regardless of the circumstances, and stopping such crossings — and the criminal activity of smugglers — is central to the Border Patrol’s job. But the rising deaths raise questions about how far the agency should go with pursuits of smugglers and migrants, and when and how agents should engage in high-speed chases.
Customs and Border Protection has yet to provide Ms. Simms, a fifth-grade teacher in San Diego, with an explanation of what happened to her son. She saw a news release it issued two weeks after the crash; officials say it is not the agency’s responsibility to explain. She said she understood that officials suspected her son was involved in illegal activity, transporting undocumented immigrants.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to die for it,” she said.
Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has a policy stating that agents and officers can conduct high-speed chases when they determine “that the law enforcement benefit and need for emergency driving outweighs the immediate and potential danger created by such emergency driving.” The A.C.L.U. argues that the policy, which the agency publicly disclosed for the first time last month, gives agents too much discretion in determining the risk to public safety.
In a statement to The New York Times, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, said that while “C.B.P. agents and officers risk their lives every day to keep our communities safe,” the Homeland Security Department “owes the public the fair, objective and transparent investigation of use-of-force incidents to ensure that our highest standards are maintained and enforced.”
But previously unreported documents and details of the crash that killed Mr. Molix shed light on what critics say is a troubling pattern in which the Border Patrol keeps its operations opaque, despite the rising human toll of aggressive enforcement actions.
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ACLU of Texas Released the following related fact sheet:
FACT SHEET: THE DEADLY TREND OF BORDER PATROL VEHICLE PURSUITS
Vehicle pursuits may make for exciting movie scenes and reality TV, but in real life, police chases are dangerous and often deadly. Yet the United States Border Patrol, the largest law enforcement agency in the country, increasingly engages in vehicle pursuits that result in mounting injuries and deaths. The agency operates with almost no transparency. This culture of impunity puts lives and communities at risk of grave harm each time a chase occurs.
The ACLU of Texas and ACLU of New Mexico partnered to produce the following fact sheet on the disturbing trend of deadly Border Patrol vehicle pursuits. We analyzed Border Patrol’s recently released vehicle pursuit policy, which reveals troubling discretionary authority given to agents. We also evaluate the department’s deeply flawed oversight and investigation protocols surrounding the pursuits, including the involvement of Border Patrol’s Critical Incident Teams – internal investigative units tasked with protecting the agency from liability and further obscuring the truth behind deadly vehicle pursuits.
Click the link below to download and read the fact sheet.
Read Sullivan’s complete article and get the full version of the ACLU fact sheet at the above links.
ACLU of Texas Attorney Shaw Drake is one of my former Georgetown Law “Refugee Law & Policy” students and a proud member of the New Due Process Army. Proud of you Shaw! 😎It’s what the “new generation of practical scholars” or “applied scholars” does!👍🏼⚖️
“I could not be more grateful for Esther Olavarria’s myriad contributions to the Biden-Harris Administration, particularly her work to reverse the cruel and reckless policies of the previous Administration and to implement President Biden’s vision for a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system,” DPC head Susan Rice said in a statement to Politico.
A source told Politico that Olavarria hasn’t decided when her last day at the White House will be and will continue to work with the administration for the time being.
The Hill has reached out to White House for comment.
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The suggestion by Susan Rice that Olavarria was able to help implement a “fair, orderly, humane immigration system” is preposterous.
The Biden Administration dishonestly continues to use Stephen Miller’s bogus, racially motivated Title 42 ruse to deny fair treatment of asylum seekers at the Southern Border. Garland’s regressive “Miller Lite” Immigration Courts are in free fall, paralyzed by an astounding, ever-expanding 1.5 million case backlog. There is no functioning due process asylum system at our borders. Nor has Biden established robust, realistic “overseas” refugee programs in Latin America that could help obviate the pressure at the border.
Most of Mayorkas’s and Garland’s ill-conceived proposed asylum regulations have been panned by the Round Table and other experts. Biden’s promise to reform and strengthen gender-based asylum has disappeared into the bureaucratic morass at DHS and DOJ. In plain terms, Biden’s human rights’ program is a mess — lacking leadership, moral courage, practical experience, and legal expertise.
These are the real reasons why the “progressive practical experts” who should be leading human rights and immigration reforms for Biden are instead abandoning ship. The “deterrence crowd” and those who live in mortal fear of the nativist right are “driving the train” for Biden.
Garland blew the chance to use Marks’s last six to nine months prior to retirement to harness her incomparable knowledge and leadership to institute long overdue progressive personnel, procedural, and policy reforms to his disastrously dysfunctional Immigration Courts. Talk about loss of institutional knowledge of everything that has gone wrong at EOIR over the past two decades!
Also, ICE Principal Legal Advisor John Trasvina departed after an unusually short stint on the job, although he was replaced with another experienced immigration lawyer, Kerry Doyle.
Obviously, some of the “best and brightest” who once were willing to lend their expertise to an incoming Administration that (apparently disingenuously) claimed that it would reverse the “dehumanization of the other” by Trump and his cronies now believe their talents can be better used elsewhere.
As to the claims that the Olavarria and Moran departures were “normal,” don’t believe a word of it. Senior level policy advisors who believe their views are respected, making government better, and saving lives don’t “retire” after a few months on the job. It’s not like they weren’t bright enough to know their jobs would be highly stressful and personally inconvenient when they accepted their positions.
All this comes at a time when America is experiencing a worker shortage that many experts believe is being fueled by a declining birth rate and declining immigration. Seems like many of the workers we could use are legal asylum seekers who are being illegally turned around at our border while Mayorkas and Garland refuse to stand up for the rule of law. Could that have something to do with why those who have spent careers understanding the shortcomings of our immigration and human rights systems are “voting with their feet” on the Biden Administration’s muddled and wildly inconsistent approach to immigration?
NPR: President Biden had an ambitious agenda to overhaul the nation’s border policies. But as the end of the year approaches, many of those proposals have been blocked, reversed or simply abandoned.
Reuters: The Biden administration on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court whether it needed to continue to implement a Trump-era policy that has forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. asylum cases. See also ‘Remain In Mexico’ Renewal May Bring More Solo Migrant Kids
AP: Since the U.S. withdrawal, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140, Victoria Palmer, an agency spokesperson, said this week. See also Months later, Afghan evacuees abroad and at US bases still wait to be resettled.
KQED: Advocates say the current system has more safeguards for migrant families and isn’t placing them in detention facilities, but the accelerated pace still makes it tough for asylum seekers like López to find legal representation.
Law360: Federal courts in 2022 will grapple with immigration law questions ranging from the extent of the president’s authority to set immigration enforcement priorities to federal courts’ ability to review immigration decisions made by the executive branch. Here, Law360 breaks down the cases to watch.
ImmProf: The petition, which asks to review a decision of the Fifth Circuit court of appeals, addresses issues relating to the Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly known as the “Remain in Mexico” program.
CA2: In light of the recent surge in Covid-19 infections, beginning January 4, 2022 oral arguments will be conducted remotely, by Zoom or teleconference.
LexisNexis: Lima-Gonzalez v. Garland “Lima-Gonzalez’s NTA did not contain the information required to trigger the stop-time rule. See Niz-Chavez, 141 S. Ct. at 1478-79, 1485; see also § 1229(a)(1)(A)–(G). Neither did any of the subsequent notices of hearing. As a result, the Government has not furnished Lima-Gonzalez with the “single compliant document” required by statute. Niz-Chavez, 141 S. Ct…
WaPo: Three Illinois counties with such federal agreements faced a Jan. 1 deadline to end contracts. While one in downstate Illinois complied last year, two others are involved in a federal lawsuit challenging the law. The case was dismissed last month, but a federal judge on Thursday granted an extension while an appeal is considered. Authorities in McHenry and Kankakee counties now have until Jan. 13.
AILA: DOS proposed rule which would raise several nonimmigrant visa application processing fees, the fee for the Border Crossing Card for Mexican citizens age 15 and over, and the waiver of the two-year residency requirement fee. Comments are due 2/28/22. (86 FR 74018, 12/29/21)
AILA: USCIS and EOIR interim final rule further delaying until 12/31/22 the effective date of the final rule “Security Bars and Processing” (85 FR 84160, 12/23/20). Comments on the extension of the effective date as well as the possibility of a further extension are due 2/28/22. (86 FR 73615, 12/28/21)
AILA: Effective December 31, 2021, 12:01 am (ET), Presidential Proclamation 10315 was revoked, thus rescinding travel restrictions on Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Vaccine requirements remain in effect.
AILA: USCIS stated that healthcare workers with a pending EAD renewal application, Form I-765, and whose EAD expires in 30 days or less or has already expired, can request expedited processing of their EAD applications. Proof of employment will be required.
Somalia: Situation of ‘Westernised’ Returnees (AFR2021-16)
Mexico: Persecution by and local/national presence of Cartel Jalisco and Familia Michoacana (AME2021-17)
Afghanistan: Treatment of Family Members of Human Rights Activists and Former Government Supporters after the Taliban Take-over (ASI2021-13)
Afghanistan: Availability of Psychiatric Treatment for Returnees with Mental Health Conditions and Treatment of Returnees with Mental Health Conditions by the Taliban (ASI2021-12)
Egypt: Opposing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Social Impact, and Availability of State Protection (MEN2021-18)
Egypt: Christians in Egypt & Obtention of Citizenship (MEN2021-17)
EOIR: Appearance Requirements at the New York – Varick Immigration Court (attached)
The problem with “ADR” @ EOIR is chronic! It’s one that Garland seems determined to repeat, despite ample advice to the contrary.
Also, he’s ignored the availability of many “practical experts” on the outside who, if appointed to key EOIR positions, could have helped him solve this without stomping on due process (although, I admit the solution would have been easier in March 2021, when Garland was sworn in as AG, than it is after 9 months of his making it worse — not to mention that his “defiant tone-deafness” has probably “turned off” some of the top-flight talent he needed to “reach out” to). As the KQED article points out:
“But there’s a lot of room for improvement, and I don’t know if the people that are being named to supervise this actually know what’s happening in the trenches.”
Duh! That’s what all of us have been saying. Truth is, they aren’t the right people, and they don’t know what’s happening. Not by a long shot!
I also understand why Torres, who’s trying to maintain a relationship with Garland’s “Clueless Crew” is trying to be charitable.
But, as someone not currently “out there in the trenches,” I don’t have to be so reticent. So, I’ll say what she can’t. This is a totally unacceptable and inexcusable performance from Garland!
Another reason why this program is a massive failure is that, like their ADR-promoting, backlog-building predecessors, Garland & Mayorkas started this misguided and mishandled program without seeking the advice, counsel, and support of the pro bono lawyers who have to staff it to make it work!
Think of the total absurdity of what Garland is doing here! While a pro bono (or low bono) lawyer is having already prepared cases “orbited” years out on the docket (a process that usually requires re-preparation of the entire case), the phone is ringing off the hook with desperate, perspective new clients given unrealistically expedited hearing dates that should have been used for the cases “orbited” to the end of the docket.
Also, having not practiced privately for many years, Garland appears to have forgotten the Code of Ethics.
Attorneys are obligated not to take on work (even pro bono work) that they can’t professionally and timely handle.
Yet, Garland is pushing them to do exactly that! The choice is let folks try to prepare their own cases (literally tantamount to a “death sentence” in many cases); or
Take on work you can’t handle (a clear ethical violation that could have the same unfavorable result for the client).
There actually are ways of working with outside experts to increase pro bono representation. One of the most promising is the the amazing VIISTA Program created and run by Professor Michele Pistone at Villanova Law to train non-attorney “Accredited Representatives” to handle pro bono asylum cases.
I have no knowledge that Garland or anyone at EOJ/EOIR has ever reached out to Professor Pistone, despite recommendations that Garland do so.
Worse yet, Garland has allowed his “EOIR Clown Show” to also create a “new backlog” in the approval process for Accredited Representatives! Talk about clueless, counterproductive mismanagement!
Garland’s mis-handling of EOIR and his new round of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” raises serious issues about his own performance.
Whatever happened to Democratic oversight of EOIR in Congress? Why is Garland getting a “free pass” on mismanagement of EOIR, his furtherundermining of Due Process in Immigration Court, and his disrespectful treatment of the immigration pro bono and low bono bar?
One year in, Biden has been slow to unwind Trump immigration policies
WASHINGTON — As President Biden approaches a year in office, immigration advocates fear he may have learned some lessons from his predecessor, Donald Trump — and not the ones they would have wanted.
Most immigration advocates abhor virtually every policy in the sphere that Trump pursued, but they do give him credit for two things: showing how much change an administration can make quickly, and driving home the power of fully committing to a salient political message. But they fear that instead of using those lessons to enact Biden’s stated objective — a fair, orderly and humane immigration system — the president has borrowed too many of his predecessor’s policies and not enough of the fervor.
Biden has extended Trump’s policy turning away the vast majority of immigrants at the border ostensibly because of COVID. The administration has also, under court order, reinstated and expanded a policy forcing migrants to wait in Mexico for court hearings, despite Biden running against the policy in his campaign. And his Justice Department is defending some of Trump’s policies in court against challenges from immigrant advocates.
Several immigration groups worked together on what became known as the “Big Book,” a collection of more than 500 policy recommendations for the incoming Biden administration. The pro-immigration group Immigration Hub has tracked about 150 that have been implemented so far. Many of those were reversing Trump policies.
“What we don’t have is a White House that’s committed to moving forward on the stated Biden administration agenda in the way that the Trump White House was committed to moving forward on theirs, and as a result, we’re living in a world where a whole lot of those Trump policies are still around,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project with the American Civil Liberties Union.
A White House spokesperson objected to the notion that Biden has not delivered progress on immigration, citing actions in the early days of the administration to roll back some of Trump’s policies, extend protections to young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and new protections for migrants whose home countries are in turmoil.
“This administration is committed to working day in and day out to provide relief to immigrants and bring our immigration system into the 21st century,” spokesperson Vedant Patel said.
During the presidential campaign, Biden ran on turning the page from Trump’s hardline immigration policies and talked up a plan to get a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented into law. He also emphasized the importance of letting asylum-seekers make their case to stay in the U.S., and said the Obama administration in which he served made a mistake in waiting too long to enact immigration reforms.
In his early days in office, Biden did introduce policies cheered by immigration advocates, including rescinding Trump’s travel bans and embracing an aggressive legislative strategy to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants through procedural maneuvers that would require only Democratic votes.
But he also kept in place a controversial policy known as Title 42 that essentially closed the southern border to virtually all immigrants. Then in the spring, when border crossings soared to historic levels, the Biden administration doubled down on deterring migration, vexing many advocates who saw that strategy as essentially an embrace of the right’s talking points. Others have pinned their hopes on Vice President Kamala Harris, who forged a strong progressive streak on immigration while serving as California’s senator. She has led administration efforts to improve conditions in Central America, but also adopted deterrence talking points, including urging would-be migrants directly while in Guatemala: “Do not come.”
As Tal and others have observed, the Trump Administration “hit the ground running” on its White Nationalist anti-immigrant agenda, which was a key part of it’s overall anti-democracy, neo-fascist program.
The Biden Administration’s campaign pledges to undo the damage — not so much. In the end, lack of backbone, failure to leverage and use the expert talent available, not acting quickly, and treating values-based campaign promises as “fungible political capital” has left the Administration “wandering in the wilderness” on this key issue. Usually, standing for the right thing, even if risky, is a far better path than aimlessly wobbling around.
Biden promised to establish a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system. Has he done it?
Paul Schmidt, a former chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals, doesn’t think so. He claims that Biden could have established due process and the rule of law at the border and expanded refugee programs in potential sending countries but he didn’t, “preferring instead to use modified versions of ‘proven to fail deterrence-only programs’ administered largely by Trump-era holdovers and other bureaucrats insensitive to the rights, needs, and multiple motivations of asylum seekers.”
Predictably, nobody is pleased.
The problems Schmidt describes are not limited to the border and the treatment of asylum seekers. They are reflected in many of Biden’s other immigration measures too.
Nolan Rappaport for the Hill reports that Paul Schmidt, former chair of the Board of Immigration Appeals who now blogs at Immigration Courtside, does not think that President Biden has done enough on immigration. Schmidt claims that Biden could have established due process and the rule of law at the border and expanded refugee programs in potential sending countries but he didn’t, “preferring instead to use modified versions of ‘proven to fail deterrence-only programs’ administered largely by Trump-era holdovers and other bureaucrats insensitive to the rights, needs, and multiple motivations of asylum seekers.”
Thanks, guys! As I have told both of you, I really appreciate the huge contributions you have made to informing the public about this all-important, yet often misunderstood or “mythologized,” issue!
Following up on my last thought, I urge everyone to view this recent clip from “Face the Nation,” posted by Kevin on ImmigrationProf, in which reporter Ed O’Keefe succinctly and cogently explains how immigration is the “most underreported issue of 2021.” It’s fundamental to everything from COVID, to the economy, to voting rights, to racial justice, to climate change, to our position in the world.
And, I say that the absolute dysfunctional mess that Garland has presided over in hisbroken and jaw-droppingly backlogged Immigration Courts is the most widely ignored, misunderstood, mishandled, and under-appreciated part of this under-reporting!
As an example of how even “mainstream liberal progressive pundits” get it wrong by not focusing on the spectacular adverse effects of Garland’s botched handling of the Immigration Courts, check out this article by Mark Joseph Stern over at Slate. https://apple.news/AvmEJc5V0RXa8hCgKICcTOA
Overlooking Garland’s disastrous mis-handling of his “wholly owned” U.S. Immigration Courts and the unparalleled “missed opportunity” to put more brilliant progressive judges on the Federal Bench is an all too common “blind spot” for progressive pundits. Mark Joseph Stern Reporter, Slate
Stern does a “victory lap” over Biden’s 40 great Article III judicial appointments to the lower Federal Courts, closing with the astounding claim that: “Democrats are finally playing hardball with the courts.”
In truth, Dems are only belatedly starting to do what the GOP has been doing over four decades: Get your guys in the positions where they make a difference for better (Dems, in theory) or worse (GOP in practice).
Appointing a diverse, talented, progressive group of 40 out of 870 Article III Judges is an important, necessary, and long, long overdue start; but, it’s not going to make a cosmic difference overnight!
By contrast, there are about 550 Immigration Judges, the majority appointed by GOP restrictionist AGs, many with mediocre to totally inadequate credentials for the job. And, it shows in the consistently substandard performance and mistake-riddled, haphazard “jurisprudence” emanating from Garland’s EOIR.
The main qualifications for a number of these pedestrian to totally outrageous appointments appears to be willingness to carry out former GOP AGs’ restrictionist, nativist policies, or at least to adhere to the DOJ’s enforcement-oriented agenda, while ignoring, distinguishing, or downplaying the due process rights of migrants!
This is “complimented” by an appellate branch (the BIA) with about two dozen judges hand-selected or retained for notorious anti-immigrant records or willingness to “go along to get along” with the wishes of DHS Enforcement. The BIA turns out some truly horrible, almost invariably regressive, “precedents.” A number are so lacking in substance and coherent analysis that they are unceremoniously “stomped” by the Article IIIs despite limitations on judicial review and the travesty of so-called “Chevron deference” that serves as a grotesque example of Supremes-created “judicial task avoidance” by the Article IIIs.
From an informed Dem progressive perspective, it’s an infuriating, ongoing, unmitigated disaster! Only one BIA appellate judge, recently appointed “progressive practical scholar” Judge Andrea Saenz, would appear on any expert’s list of the “best and brightest” progressive legal minds in the field.
Unlike Article III Judges, who are life-tenured, EOIR Judges serve at the pleasure and discretion of the Attorney General and can be replaced and reassigned, including to non-quasi-judicial attorney positions, “at will.”
Starting with Attorney General John Ashcroft’s notorious “BIA Purge of ‘03,”GOP AGs haven’t hesitated to remove, transfer, “force out,” marginalize, demoralize, discourage from applying, or simply not select EOIR judges who stood for due process and immigrants’ rights in the face of nativist/restrictionist political agendas.
Yet, for eight years of the Obama Administration and now a year into the Biden Administration, Dem AGs have lacked the guts, awareness, and vision to fight back by “de-weaponizing” the regressive GOP-constructed Immigration Judiciary and recruiting replacements from among the “best and the brightest” among the “deep pool” of expert, intellectually fearless “progressive practical scholars.”
Not only that, but Dems have totally blown a unique opportunity to remake and establish the Immigration Judiciary not only as “America’s best judiciary” — a model for better Article IIIs — but also as a training ground for the diverse progressive judiciary of the future!
Even more significantly, tens of thousands of lives that should have been saved by an expert, due-process-oriented, racially sensitive judiciary have been, and continue to be, sacrificed on the alter of GOP nativism and Dem indifference to quality judging and human suffering in the Immigration Courts!
Compare the diverse, progressive backgrounds and qualifications of “Stern’s 40” with those on the totally underwhelming list of the most recent Garland “giveaways” of precious, life-determining Immigration Judge positions! See, e.g., https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1457171/download
The progressive talent is definitely out there to change the trajectory of the Immigration Courts for the better! Garland’s failure to inspire, recruit, appoint, and tout the “best and brightest” in American law for his Immigration Courts is a horrible “whiff” with disturbing national and international implications!
Article III Federal Courts deal with the mundane as well as the profound. By contrast, lives and futures are on the line in every single Immigration Court case! Often effective judicial review of EOIR’s haphazard, widely inconsistent, unprincipled, and one-sided decisions is unavailable, either as a legal or practical matter. The exceptionally poor performance of the Immigration Courts that continues under Garland threatens the underpinnings of our entire justice system and American democracy!
Right now, Garland’s broken system has a largely self-created 1.5+ million case ever-expanding backlog! At a very conservative estimate of four family members, co-workers, employees, employers, students, co-religionists, neighbors, and community members whose lives are intertwined with each of those stuck in Garland’s hopelessly broken, biased, and deficient system, at least 6 million American lives hang in the balance — twisting in the wind among Garland’s “backlog on steroids!” Yet, amazingly, it’s “below the radar screen” of Stern and other leading progressive voices!
I doubt that any Federal Court in America, with the possible exception of the Supremes, holds as many human lives and futures in its hands. Not to mention that “dehumanization” and “Dred Scottification” of the other in Immigration Court drifts over into the Article III Courts on a regular basis. Once you start viewing one group of humans as “less than persons” under the Constitution, it’s easy to add others to the “de-personification” process.
Yet, Garland cavalierly treats the Immigration Courts as just another mundane piece of his reeling bureaucratic mess at the DOJ. The long overdue and completely justified “housecleaning” at Trump’s anti-democracy insurrectionist regime seems far from Garland’s serenely detached mind!
For Pete’s sake, even ICE Special Agents understand the need to “rebrand” themselves by escaping the inept and disreputable ICE bureaucracy left over from Trump:
They say their affiliation with ICE’s immigration enforcement role is endangering their personal safety, stifling their partnerships with other agencies and scaring away crime victims, according to a copy of the report provided to The Washington Post.
But, Garland doesn’t understand the well-deserved toxic reputation of EOIR among legal experts? Gimme a break!
Garland also stands accountable for his spineless failure to insist on a dismantling of the bogus, illegal, immoral, and ultimately ineffectual Title 42 abomination at the Southern Border and an immediate return to the rule of law for asylum seekers.
Unless and until the Dems get serious about gutsy, radical progressive reforms of the Immigration Courts, the downward spiral of American justice will continue! Lives will be lost, and many of those who helped put Dems in power will be pissed off and “de-motivated” going into the midterms. That’s a really bad plan for Dems and for America’s future!
As Dems’ hopes of achieving meaningful Article III judicial reforms predictably are stymied, their inexcusable failure to reform and improve the Immigraton Courts that belong to them becomes a gargantuan, totally unnecessary “missed opportunity!” Talk about “unforced error!” See, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/28/supreme-court-term-limits/
If Dems suffer an “enthusiasm gap” among their key progressive base going into the key 2022 midterms, they need look no further than Garland’s tone-deaf and inept failure to bring long overdue and readily achievable progressive personnel, procedural, management, and substantive reforms to his dysfunctional Immigration Courts. That — not a false sense of achievement — should have been the “headliner” for Stern and other progressive voices!
“Expedience over excellence, enforcement over equity, gimmicks over innovation is good enough for Government work!” — The “vision” for Garland’s EOIR! But, progressive experts aren’t buying his “tunnel vision.” PHOTO: Thomas Hawk Creative Commons Amateur Night
Here’s hoping in this season of fellowship that these latest “tempest-tost” — to use the words poet Emma Lazarus appropriated from Shakespeare to inscribe on the Statue of Liberty — find there is room for them in our countrymen’s hearts. So far, the signs are encouraging. Resettlement agencies, gutted in the Trump years when refugee admissions were slashed to historic lows, are overwhelmed but staffing up as fast as they can. In far-flung places around the nation, there is little political pushback as the evacuees become more numerous and visible.
One reason is that U.S. veterans, former soldiers and Marines, have their backs. Having fought side by side with and depended critically on their Afghan interpreters, fixers and guides, those veterans are going to bat for their former comrades in arms, officials say. In Republican communities such as Tulsa, as in Democratic ones like Northern Virginia, some of the arriving evacuees may be nearly penniless, but they are not without allies and advocates.
Let this Christmas, these Afghans’ first, be a moment when they tap into this country’s innate generosity, so that the American Dream is as successful for them as it has been for so many who arrived before them.
Mr. President, hear this plea from Afghan war vets
The Washington Post25 Dec 2021BY JAYSON HARPSTER The writer is a U.S. Army veteran. He lives in D.C.
Please don’t let my friends die. It’s a simple plea to the U.S. government from many American veterans of the Afghanistan war. And so far, that plea is being ignored. My friends Nabi and Kohee are what our political class calls “Afghan allies.” They were Afghan intelligence officers whom I served with during my second deployment to Afghanistan. God blessed me the day I was assigned to work with such fine men. They taught me about their country, I taught them about intelligence analysis, and together we tracked Taliban threats.
Now our immigration system is leaving these men and their families to die at the hands of the Taliban. The special immigrant visa (SIV) for interpreters excludes Afghan soldiers like my friends. The Refugee Admissions Program is backlogged. And now Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) is blocking Afghans from accessing humanitarian parole, their only remaining lifeline. Director Ur M. Jaddou of CIS and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas need to fix humanitarian parole for our Afghan allies.
The Army gave me a Bronze Star for the work that I did with Nabi and Kohee. That helped get me into a good school, get a good job, a good life — the American Dream. But for my friends, the fact that they worked with the Americans is a death sentence, and I dare not use their full names given the ongoing threats to them and their families. The Taliban raided Nabi’s house the very night it conquered Kabul. If he had not already gone into hiding, he’d be dead. Kohee and his family had to flee their home when their pro-taliban neighbors threatened them with death and promised to “take care of ” their teenage daughter. “Take care of ” means forcibly marrying her off to a Taliban fighter to be raped.
If it is U.S. policy to turn away veteran-endorsed Afghan allies, then our bureaucracy isn’t just passively ‘letting them die’; it is actively killing them.
Working with fellow veterans and volunteers, I desperately tried to get Nabi, Kohee and their families into the Kabul airport so they could escape. But U.S. guards turned them away, all while some planes were taking off with unfilled seats. Nabi evaded a half-dozen Taliban checkpoints to get within six feet of his assigned pickup location, only to be attacked with tear gas by American guards and whipped by a Taliban fighter. It was only after days of failure at the airport that we made the difficult decision to help them flee to Pakistan.
In Pakistan, they live with the risk of being deported back to Afghanistan. They can barely go outside. The kids can’t go to school. And they can’t go to another country that will accept them. Every time I see a message notification on my phone, I’m afraid.
. . . .
UGLY:
. . . .
It felt to Chic as if her whole family had cohered in Florida while she was in Guatemala, leaving her on the outside. During Adelaida’s birthday parties, she was the square box on the FaceTime calls, peering through the screen, until she hung up and cried alone.
David listened. More parents had arrived at the hotel; some were eavesdropping. When they shared their own stories, they would describe the moments of separation almost identically. But in each case, the familial chaos and dislocation that came next was different for each parent.
David’s son was also in South Florida, about an hour from Adelaida. But his wife and other children were still in Guatemala. To reunite with one of his children, he would have to leave the others. His son, who had slipped in and out of depression, needed him in Florida.
“So that’s my trouble,” he said. “One solution creates another problem.”
This time, it was Chic who nodded, permitting herself, briefly, to feel fortunate.
. . . .
*************
Read the full version of all of these pieces at the respective links above.
So, inflicting irreparable harm on refugees and vulnerable asylum seekers became the official policy of the U.S.Government and a vile rallying cry for a morally bankrupt GOP. It would be naive to ignore that actively killing refugees and other migrants was part and parcel of the Trump regime’s hate and lie-based immigration policies. And, the Biden Administration has been too wobbly to undo Trump’s toxic legacy with integrity, dynamic leadership, and courage.
So, families suffer, Vets beg in vain, atrocious Government policies continue at the border, and NGOs and citizens struggle to fill the gap.
The “Gauleiter”s” policies of “transportation” of legal asylum seekers to danger zones or death has, to a totally unacceptable extent, been adopted by the Biden Administration. America’s cowardly, immoral, illegal, and unethical treatment of these vulnerable individuals will haunt our nation for generations to come! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
Asylum grant rates have often been the focus of public attention and discussion. An implicit assumption is often made that if the immigrants’ asylum applications are denied that they have been unsuccessful in their quest to legally remain in the U.S. However, this may not always be the case. In addition to asylum, there are often other avenues for relief, and other types of decisions where the Immigration Court can determine that an individual should be allowed to legally remain in the U.S. This report breaks new ground in empirically documenting just how often asylum seekers’ quests to legally remain in the U.S. have been successful.
According to case-by-case records of the Immigration Courts, Immigration Judges completed close to one million cases (967,552) on which asylum applications had been filed during the last 21 years (October 2000 – September 2021). Of these, judges granted asylum to 249,413 or one-quarter (26%) of these cases.
However, only about half of asylum seekers were ordered deported. More specifically, just 42 percent received removal orders or their equivalent,[4] and an additional 8 percent received so-called voluntary departure orders. These orders require the asylum seekers to leave the country, but unlike removal orders voluntary departure orders do not penalize individuals further by legally barring them for a period of years from reentry should their circumstances change.
The remaining one-quarter (24%) of asylum seekers were granted other forms or relief or Immigration Judges closed their cases using other grounds which allowed asylum seekers to legally remain in the country.[5] When this proportion is added to asylum grant rates, half of asylum seekers in Immigration Court cases — about twice the individuals granted asylum — have been successful in their quest to legally remain in the United States at least for a period of time. See Figure 5.
Figure 5. Outcome of U.S. Asylum Applications, October 2000 – September 2021
Focusing on just Immigration Court asylum cases, however, does not take into consideration asylum seekers who have asylum granted by Asylum Officers from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Those cases end there with the asylum grant. Only unsuccessful cases are forwarded to the Immigration Court for review afresh, and thus included in the Immigration Court’s records. These referrals of asylum denials by USCIS Asylum Officers are classified in the Court’s records as affirmative asylum cases,[6] to distinguish them from those that start with DHS seeking a removal order from the Immigration Court and the asylum claim being raised as a defense against removal.
Thus, a more complete picture of asylum seekers to the U.S. would add in the asylum grants by USCIS on these affirmative cases. Over the period since October 2000, the total number of asylum grants totals just under 600,000 cases – more than double the asylum grants by Immigration Judges alone.[7] Asylum Officers granted asylum in just over 350,000 cases, while Immigration Judges granted asylum in an additional close to 250,000 cases. See Tables 5a and 5b.
Asylum grants thus make up almost half (46%) of the outcomes on the total number of 1.3 million cases closed in which asylum applications were filed. An additional one in five (18%) were granted some other form of relief or otherwise allowed to legally remain in the U.S. Thus, almost two-thirds (64%) of asylum seekers in the 1.3 million cases which were resolved have been successful over the past two decades.
Figure 5 above presents a side-by-side comparison of asylum case outcomes when examining Immigration Court completions alone, and how outcome percentages shift once Asylum Officers’ asylum grants are combined with decisions made by Immigration Judges.
. . . .
Outcome on Asylum Cases
Number
Percent**
IJ Outcome on Asylum Cases
Asylum Granted by IJ
249,413
26%
Other Relief, etc.
236,889
24%
Removal Order
403,252
42%
Voluntary Departure Order
77,998
8%
Total IJ Asylum Completions
967,552
100%
USCIS + IJ Outcome on Asylum Cases
Asylum Granted by USCIS+IJ
599,772
46%
Other Relief, etc by IJ
236,889
18%
Removal Order by IJ
403,252
31%
Voluntary Departure Order by IJ
77,998
6%
USCIS + IJ Asylum Completions
1,317,911
100%
. . . .
****************
Read the complete TRAC report, containing all the graphs and charts that I could not adequately reproduce, at the link.
Applying the 50% “granted protection of some type” rate in Immigration Court to the ever expanding backlog of 667,000 asylum cases in Garland’s dysfunctional EOIR, that means that there are at least 333,000 asylum seekers who should be “out of Garland’s backlog” and legally living, working, and/or studying in the U.S., probably over 165,000 of whom should be on the way to green cards, citizenship, or already citizens in a functional system!
And, the TRAC-documented success rate has been achieved in a system that has been designed with bias to deter and discourage asylum seekers with mediocre, or even hostile, judges, a BIA that lacks asylum expertise and turns out incorrect restrictionist precedents, and administrative leadership that specializes in ineptitude, toadyism, and mindless “aimless docket reshuffling.”
Better problem-solving-focused judicial leadership at EOIR could come up with innovative ways of screening and getting the many aged, grantable cases of asylum seekers and other migrants (cancellation of removal, SIJS, and “stateside processing” come to mind) out of the Immigration Court backlog and into an alternative setting where relief could granted more efficiently. For the most part, there is no useful purpose to be served by keeping cases more than three years old on the Immigration Court docket.
The Immigration Courts must work largely in “real time” with real judges who can produce consistent, fair results on a predictable timetable. Big parts of that are increasing competent representation, providing better legal guidance on recognizing and promptly granting meritorious cases (that, significantly, would also guide the USCIS Asylum Office), and standing up to efforts by DHS Enforcement to overwhelm judicial resources and use Immigration Courts to “warehouse and babysit” the results of their own mismanagement and misdirection of resources.
There’s no chance that Garland (based on inept and disinterested performance to date, and his near total lack of awareness and urgency) and the crew, largely of Sessions/Barr holdovers, currently comprising his EOIR can pull it off. That’s a monumental problem for migrants and American justice generally!
Without an AG with the guts, determination, expertise, and vision to “clean house” at EOIR and DOJ, or alternatively, a Congress that takes this mess out of the DOJ and creates a real Article I Immigration Court system, backlogs, fundamental unfairness, and incompetence at EOIR will continue to drag down the American legal system.
Worthy of note: The TRAC stats confirm the generally held belief that those asylum seekers held in detention (the “New American Gulag” or “NAG”) are very significantly less likely to be granted relief than those appearing in a non-detained setting. But, what would be helpful, perhaps a task for “practical scholars” somewhere, would be to know “why.”
Is it because the cases simply are not a strong, because of criminal backgrounds or otherwise? Or, is it because of the chronic lack of representation, intentional coercion, and generally less sympathetic judges often present in detention settings? Or, as is likely, is it some combination of all these factors?
Also worthy of note: Three major non-detained courts, with approximately 31,000 pending asylum cases, had success rates significantly below (20% or more) the national average of 50%:
Houston (19%)
Atlanta (29%)
Harlingen (24%)
On the “flip side,” I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to see that the oft-criticized El Paso Immigration Court (non-detained) had a very respectable 48% success rate — a mere 2% off the national average! Interesting!
Also worthy of watching: Although based on a tiny, non-statistically-valid sampling (2% of filed asylum cases), Houston-Greenspoint had a 53% grant rate, compared with “Houston non-detained’s” measly 19%. If this trend continues — and it well might not, given the very small sample — it would certainly be worthy knowing the reasons for this great disparity.
In addition to “giving lie” to the bogus claims, advanced mostly by GOP nativists, but also by some Dems and officials in Dem Administrations, that most asylum seekers don’t have valid claims to remain, the exact opposite appears to be true! Keeping asylum seekers from getting fair and timely dispositions of their cases hurts them at least as much, probably more, than any legitimate Government interest.
Moreover, it strongly suggests that hundreds of thousands of legitimate asylum seekers with bona fide claims for protection have been illegally and immorally returned to danger or death without any semblance of due process under a combination of a bogus Title 42 rationale and an equally bogus “Remain in Mexico” travesty. It should also prompt some meaningful evaluation of the intellectual and moral failings of Administrations or both parties, poorly-qualified Article III judges, and legislators who have encouraged, enforced, or enabled these “crimes against humanity” — and the most vulnerable in humanity to boot!
🎅🏻🎁🧸🎄😇“Happy Holidays from the U.S. Government! Don’t these folks know they could avoid this fate if they only would take our advice and ‘due in place’ — out of sight, out of mind.” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
Arelis R. Hernandez Southern Border Reporter Washington Post
EL PASO — Chaos, confusion and disillusionment marked the experience of many of the first asylum seekers to be enrolled in the Biden administration’s revised “Remain in Mexico” program, saying they understood little about what was happening or why they were selected.
The Trump-era program — formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — returns border-crossers to Mexico to await the outcomes of their asylum claims and resumed earlier this month under court order. Although the Biden administration said it has made changes to the program that make it more humane, several of the first enrollees interviewed by The Washington Post said they did not understand documents they were asked to sign, did not have access to lawyers and were puzzled about why they were not released along with some of their compatriots.
Three men — two from Nicaragua and one from Venezuela — who were among the more than 160 migrants enrolled so far, said they had been robbed or extorted before crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The men, who were fleeing political persecution, said they hoped for relief in the United States, but instead felt as if they had won a raffle they never entered.
“I told the asylum officer I’d rather be in a U.S. detention center than be sent back to Mexico,” said Pedro, a 27-year-old asylum seeker from Nicaragua. “It’s dangerous for us.”
(The Washington Post is identifying the men only by their first names because they fear they might jeopardize their cases by speaking publicly.)
Biden’s Department of Homeland Security is still trying to terminate MPP, even though it was ordered to reimplement it by a federal judge. The administration lost an appeal of the ruling this week after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in Louisiana upheld the lower court decision. The circuit court order said the Biden administration erred when it issued a memo earlier this year terminating the program, “affecting billions of dollars and countless people.” The program, which is in effect in one border community and accepting only men, will soon expand to six more communities and could soon include families.
[‘Remain in Mexico’ program begins in El Paso amid skepticism from advocates]
Advocates say that MPP subjects migrants to a policy as hazardous to their lives as the reasons that prompted them to flee to the United States for protection. They say the revised version of the program is as flawed as it was under the Trump administration, when the New York-based nonprofit Human Rights First tracked more than 1,500 “violent attacks” against migrants.
“The Biden administration’s revamped ‘Remain in Mexico’ is already presenting security and due process concerns we saw under the Trump administration,” said Julia Neusner, who interviewed 16 MPP enrollees for Human Rights First. “I anticipate this process will deny people their due process rights and accessing counsel. This policy is inherently dangerous and I expect it to cause tremendous suffering as the rollout expands.”
. . . .
*******************
Read the full article at the link.
”Let ‘Em Die In Mexico!” What a thoughtful way for the world’s richest and most powerful nation to recognize and honor the birth of Christ. Doubt that Jesus would approve, though! He’d more likely be found among the “floaters” than with the arrogant, privileged, inhumane politicos and judges who came up with this idea and then enabled it!
Completely unnecessary! The incoming Biden Administration had the blueprints to reestablish due process and the rule of law at the border and to start robust, realistic, expanded refugee programs in potential sending countries. The practical human rights/immigration experts who could have pulled it off were out there.
The Administration could have “hit the ground running” with bold innovative actions, practical expert leadership, and a show of competence and humanity. But, they didn’t!
Instead, Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland dissed the progressive experts, ignored their recommendations, and froze them out of key judicial and leadership positions, preferring instead to use modified versions of “proven to fail deterrence-only programs” administered largely by Trump-era holdovers and other bureaucrats insensitive to the rights, needs, and multiple motivations of asylum seekers. (There is an important legal doctrine of “mixed motive” that politicos, bureaucrats, and bad judges often choose to ignore when it suits them.)
Not surprisingly, this ridiculous, muddled “Miller Lite” approach has been spectacularly unsuccessful! Predictably, flows of desperate refugees, generated largely by circumstances outside our immediate control (contrary to restrictionist myths reinforced by some enforcement aficionados and mindlessly repeated by some mainstream media) have continued. Humans have continued to needlessly suffer and die. Backlogs have grown without credible plans to address them. The rule of law and the U.S. justice system (led by failed Immigration Courts, but also including poorly functioning and too often “brain dead” jurists at all levels of the Federal Judiciary) has continued to flounder and lose credibly. The “die in place and never darken our doors” message delivered by Gauleiter Miller and his acolytes, cluelessly repeated by VP Harris, hasn’t convinced anyone. Would YOU basically accept an invitation to “commit slow suicide by persecution rather than taking a chance on survival.”
And, also predictably, nobody is pleased or supportive of the Biden Administration’s inept and disingenuous approach. From hard core racist nativists to liberal asylum advocates, nobody, but nobody, outside the Administration’s party line flackies, supports this approach! Indeed, nobody in the Administration can even explain what they are doing on any particular day in a coherent manner.
Humanity, moral courage, common sense, and the rule of law might be taking a holiday. But death and despair don’t.
“Make the record” to fight the ignorant nonsense and grotesque misconstruction of the asylum law and country conditions by the Third Circuit & far, far too many Federal Judges & Bureaucrats with this authoritative report authored by Natalie Gonnella-Platts, Jenny Villatoro, and Laura Collins of the George W. Bush Institute:
No Justice: Gender-based Violence and Migration in Central America
Gender-based violence affects one in three women worldwide, making it an urgent and important policy challenge. Violence against women and girls is often excluded from conversations on the nexus of Central American migration, regional development, and domestic immigration reform.
Key Excerpts:
. . . .
Though there has been increasing focus from US and international influencers on the levels of violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (known as the Northern Triangle) and its impact on migration, an adequate response to the gendered differences in the ways violence is perpetrated remains limited and at times nonexistent.
This needs to change, especially since gender-based violence within the Northern Triangle constitutes a daily threat to women and girls—one that has been significantly worsened by corruption, weak institutions, and a culture of impunity toward perpetrators. At individual and community levels, gender-based violence drives women and girls to be displaced internally, migrate to the United States, or a somber third path—death either by femicide or suicide. At national levels, it seriously inhibits security, opportunity, and development.
As circumstances at the southern border of the United States demonstrate, gender-based violence has a direct influence on migration flows across the region and is deeply tangled with cyclical challenges of inequity and poverty. For those who choose to seek assistance or flee their communities, high rates of revictimization and bias further obstruct access to justice and safety.
Until policies and programs respond to the serious violations of agency and human rights perpetuated against women and girls (and within systems and society at large), instability in and migration from the Northern Triangle only stand to grow.
As the United States and the international community consider a comprehensive plan on Central America and immigration reform, proposed strategies must anchor the status and safety of women and girls at the center of solutions.
. . . .
In Guatemala, teenage girls face a substantial risk of being “disappeared,” with 8 out of every 10,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17 reported missing each year.7
. . . .
Guatemala: In Guatemala, about 8 of every 1,000 women and girls were the victim of violence in 2020. Thirty women were murdered on average each month last year, or almost one per day, the lowest rate in the last 10 years. Reported rape cases averaged 14 per day.17 One of the most extreme and recognizable forms of gender-based violence is sex slavery. According to a report by the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and UNICEF: “A combination of gangs, crime families, and drug trafficking organizations run sex trafficking rings in Guatemala that may involve some 48,500 victims.”18
Women in Indigenous and rural communities may have it even worse. For example, Indigenous women in Guatemala face multiple layers of discrimination, including a history of repression and genocide.
During the genocidal Guatemalan civil war that lasted from 1960 to 1996, state sanctioned mass rape during massacres was used to repress the Indigenous populations—with offenses committed publicly and bodies often left on display with the intent to instill terror in the Mayan communities.19 Truth commissions state that more than 100,000 Indigenous women were raped and forced into sex slavery.20
State-sanctioned and state-accepted gendered violence may have contributed to a culture that tolerates violence against women. Guatemalans were the most accepting of gender-based violence in a 2014 survey of Latin American countries by Vanderbilt University, while El Salvador came in second.21
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the risk of violence to women and girls in the Northern Triangle, as it has in every region
of the world. Exploited by gangs and others, lock-downs have forced those most at risk for violence to shelter in proximity to their abusers. All three countries within the region have reported sizable increases in intrafamily violence since the start of the pandemic. El Salvador has also seen a notable increase in intrafamily femicide.
. . . .
Coupled with the trauma already experienced by survivors, each of these factors contributes to a lack of trust in institutions, high levels of impunity for perpetrators, and a vicious cycle of repeat violence against women and girls.
Faced with this dire reality, women and girls often have three choices: (1) report and face disbelief, (2) stay and risk additional violence, or (3) flee.
. . . .
Women and girls undertake this risky journey with no guarantee of legal protection in the United States. But they come because the horrors they face at home are so much worse.
It’s important to remember that seeking asylum
is often the only legal means that migrants who qualify have of entering the United States. Although requesting asylum is legal, the path to asylum is not
safe. An understanding of legal rights and access to services—including health, trauma, and legal support—also remain out of reach for many female migrants, furthering cycles of exploitation.
Current US refugee and asylum law does not recognize gender-based violence as its own category warranting protection. According to the American Bar Association, US protections for victims of gender-based violence are built upon 20 years of advocacy and sometimes favorable legal opinions.54 These protections are tenuous, with any presidential administration able to roll back the decisions made under its predecessor. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently reinstated prior precedent for gen- der-based violence asylum requests and announced that the Department of Justice would pursue a formal rule.55 But even this could be reversed in the future.
Until legislation enshrines gender-based violence as a condition warranting humanitarian protection, the United States will continue to turn away women and girls who merit refuge.
. . . .
The Northern Triangle, Mexico, and the United States are at a crossroads. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras can either take advantage of a young population of prime working age by promoting pol- icies that create a safe, stable environment where women and girls can fully participate, or they can continue on a path that is leading to substantial lev- els of gender-based violence, instability, migration, and economic stagnation.
As research continuously demonstrates, when empowered, active, and engaged, women and girls are a critical catalyst for security and prosperity. Countries with higher levels of gender equity are more peaceful and stable overall.66 Gender equality can provide better outcomes for children, increased labor productivity, lower poverty rates, and reduced levels of violence.67
In seeking to secure a brighter future across the Western Hemisphere, immigration and develop- ment policies must include solutions to address gender inequity and gender-based violence. As current circumstances at the southern border of the United States demonstrate, stability and prosperity are not possible without them.
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Debi Sanders ESQ “Warrior Queen” of the NDPA PHOTO: law.uva.edu
Many thanks to my good friend and “founding mother of the NDPA,” Deb Sanders for bringing this to my attention.
The Bush Institute has done some great “practical scholarship” on gender-based asylum, exposing many of the lies and misinformation upon which Government policies have been based, particularly GOP nativist policies and the overtly misogynistic attack on migrant women of color by the Trump regime.
And let’s not forget that Ms. Chavez-Chilil is actually one of the lucky ones! She got a chance to make her claim and was awarded life-saving protection by an Immigration Judge under the CAT, albeit protection that leaves her unnecessarily and perpetually “in limbo” — ineligible to fully join our society and maximize her own human potential for everyone’s benefit.
By contrast, thousands of women and girls (also men and boys) are insanely, illegally, and immorally “orbited” back to danger zones without any opportunity to even make a claim and without any legitimate process whatsoever, let alone due process!
Why this is important:
Compelling documentation and cogent arguments will win individual cases and save lives;
We can build case law precedent for gender-based asylum grants;
We must make a clear historical record of which jurists and bureaucrats stood up for the rule of law and the humanity of refugee women and which of them purposely have aligned themselves with the “dark side of history.” See, e.g., Chief Justice Roger Taney.
Why is the Biden Administration mindlessly and immorally attempting to “deter” legal asylum seekers from seeking to save their own lives? What’s the excuse for treating a moral and legal requirement under domestic and international law as a “bogus political strategy option” rather than the legal obligation it is? Why was the DOJ “pushing” a legally wrong, corrupt, factually wrong position before the Third Circuit? Where’s the expertise? The backbone? The moral courage? The accountability?
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” — Even death won’t deter desperate humans from seeking refuge. But, it’s certainly diminishing us as a nation! EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)
At Mexico’s insistence, the Biden administration has agreed to measures designed to help and protect migrants seeking asylum north of the border, but forced by a recent court edict to wait south of the border as their claims are processed.
Once, it may have been difficult to imagine that Mexico had coaxed Washington to adopt humanitarian and other improvements to benefit asylum seekers. For decades, the United States was a beacon of hope for migrants seeking such protections, including those fleeing abuse and violence in Mexico and points farther south.
The Trump administration turned that equation on its head, devising a policy in 2019 known colloquially as “Remain in Mexico” and formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols. It forced asylum seekers awaiting adjudication of their asylum claims into squalid tent camps south of the border. Fewer than 2 percent of those claims were successful — and President Donald Trump seized on the pandemic to shut down the asylum process altogether, using an obscure public health rule called Title 42.
The painful irony of the Migrant Protection Protocols is that they protected no one. Thousands of migrants forced into tent camps south of the border became targets of rapists, violent gangs and kidnappers demanding ransom.
Mr. Biden ended the MPP upon entering office, though he also retained Title 42 to expel many migrants, especially men traveling alone, without an asylum hearing. But a federal judge ordered the program reinstated, and the Supreme Court let the judge’s order stand for now. Even as the administration presses ahead with a legal fight to terminate the policy, officials were compelled to negotiate its renewal with Mexico.
It’s nice to think that the agreed-upon humanitarian, medical and legal protections will make a real difference to migrants who are returned to Mexico under MPP, which started this month. Some steps may help. They will be offered covid-19 vaccines, and the administration has committed to a six-month limit on adjudicating their asylum claims, which under the previous administration often languished for years.
Migrants who would be particularly vulnerable if returned to Mexico, including minors and those at risk of persecution, will be exempted from the program. And asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico will be moved away from two spots across the border from the Texas cities of Laredo and Brownsville, which have been especially dangerous for migrants in the past.
Still, it seems like wishful thinking to believe that a written agreement will erase the squalor and peril that previously awaited asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico. Legal counsel, previously in egregiously short supply, may be even scarcer now; some legal assistance organizations say they won’t cooperate with MPP. And many, if not most, migrants — especially single men apprehended on their own — will continue to be shunted across the border, with no hope of asylum whatsoever under Title 42, just as they have been for the past 20 months.
MPP was a disgrace to the United States; now it is being resurrected. The disgrace will be compounded if the current administration, in coordination with Mexico, fails to ensure muscular protections that ensure that asylum seekers are safe, treated with dignity and receive fair hearings.
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Be assured that innocent folks are dying and will continue to die in Mexico as a result of poorly-qualified right-wing U.S. Judges, feckless politicians, and an Administration that can’t get its act together and “find its spine” on human rights, immigration, and racial justice issues!Failure to recognize the reality of forced migration, create a safe orderly asylum and refugee processing system (as required by law), and rationally expand the categories for legal immigration, will continue to kill, maim, and harm. See,e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/09/tractor-trailer-full-migrants-crashes-southern-mexico-killing-least-49/
Also, if we want other countries to help in a constructive way, and to regain our position as a leader among democracies, “leading by example” would be most helpful!
