"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”“Justice” Star Chamber StyleRecent Barr Appointee Prepares to Take Bench Fangusu, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
“Over 87,000 comments were filed. DOJ and DHS ignored them. This is Steven Miller’s final FU to us all,” says my friend Dan Kowalski over at Lexis Nexis Immigration Community.
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Man, the ink was barely dry on my speech last night to Houston AILA, when EOIR graphically illustrated my points about:
why the EOIR Clown Show/Kakistocracy has got to go; and
why we finally need an Attorney General with a human rights background who will act immediately to suspend these absurd and unlawful regs and remove the “perps” of this “crime against humanity” at EOIR and their accomplices.
It also illustrates why the new DHS Secretary needs to do a thorough housecleaning and reorganization of the immigration kakistocracy that has aided and abetted Miller in his neo-Nazi campaign against immigrants of color.
Also, it shows why the NDPA and the human rights advocacy community must speak out and be heard on who should be the next AG and what his or her priorities must be in immediately acting on immigration and human rights as the keys to civil rights and equal justice for all!
This issue can’t be “back burnered” as past Dem Administrations have done! An attack on justice and humanity for asylum applicants is an attack on justice for all of us. We need immediate, decisive action to restore human values and human dignity to our justice system!
That requires a real Immigration Court, with real independent judges unswervingly committed to due process, equal justice, and human rights, not the current “Star Chamber Charade.” 🏴☠️🤮 The Immigration Courts will be under the control of the Biden Administration. Fixing them must be a top priority!
As I told the Transition Team about EOIR, “Either you fix it immediately, or you own it.”
And this is not a disgraceful mess that I would want to own if I were the Biden-Harris Team. Particularly if I wanted more goodwill in the Hispanic and African American (African asylum seekers are one of the groups targeted on racial grounds by Miller and the current regime) communities in future elections!
Suzanne Suzanne Gamboa, Political Editor, NBCLatino, NBC NewsDate: October 21, 2013 Place: Washington, DC Credit: Maria Patricia Leiva/OAS Creative Commons LicenseAl Cardenas Last of A Dying GOP Breed? Al Cardenas speaking at CPAC FL in Orlando, Florida. Gage Skidmore, Photo Creative CommonsAlejandro Mayorkas DHS Secretry – Designate Official DHS Photo Public Domain
Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino chosen for President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet, will head a Department of Homeland Security that is expected to drastically overhaul President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, as well as put Mayorkas at the forefront of the new administration’s anti-terrorism strategy.
Mayorkas will be the first Latino and first immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security, if confirmed by the Senate. The highest-ranking Cuban American in the Obama administration, Mayorkas was deputy secretary of DHS under then-Secretary Jeh Johnson, and before that was the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of DHS that oversees granting citizenship and other immigration benefits.
Mayorkas, if confirmed, will take over the nation’s third-largest agency in terms of employees, one that was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and that oversees several smaller agencies such as Customs and Border Protection, Transportation Security, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service.
The Trump administration has drastically transformed the nation’s immigration system with over 400 executive actions — including refusing entry to asylum-seekers, taking children from parents at the border and restricting travel to the U.S. by Muslims.
There will be pressure on the Biden administration to act quickly on immigration and uphold pledges he made on the campaign trail, such as ending travel bans and protecting young immigrants, known as Dreamers, and to take such actions in the first 100 days of his administration.
Much of Trump’s immigration policy was the work of his adviser Stephen Miller, who cited and promoted white nationalist beliefs in emails leaked to the Southern Poverty Law Center last year.
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Read the rest of Suzanne’s report at the link.
Al Cardenas has been one of very few Republicans to appear on “Meet the Press” over the past four years who has 1) dealt with facts, and 2) said something worthwhile. The normal GOP guest on MTP is either a Trump toady or a disingenuous apologist for the worst and most corrupt Administration in U.S. history.
I do suggest that Al needs to sit down and have a “heart to heart” with his Senate buddies Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as well as lots of Cuban-Americans in Florida about the future of America. They don’t seem to be on the same page, or indeed even in the same universe, as Al and the substantial majority of American voters.
This also illustrates the vital importance to DHS reform of a strong, due process, human rights, efficiency oriented, “best practices” EOIR with expert judges from the NDPA in leadership positions and on the BIA (and eventually the Immigration Courts). In the past, true reform at DHS has often been inhibited by refusal of supervisors and line officials to follow “policies sent out from Washington” specifically designed to enhance individual justice, insert reality, and promote docket and litigation responsibility and efficiency. In other words, the type of practical, reasonable, humane, experience-based prosecutorial discretion policies that every other law enforcement agency in the U.S., save DHS, routinely follows.
DHS reforms won’t be fully effective unless preceded by an EOIR under new leadership with an expert, courageous, independent due process committed BIA unswervingly dedicated to protecting the rights of asylum seekers and other migrants and effectively requiring DHS to operate within the law and conform to rational, practical, non-discriminatory policies. The talent is out there, just waiting be tapped!
A friend recently asked me what I expected to happen when the U.S. asylum system is reinstituted as President-Elect Biden and Vice President Harris have pledged. Here’s my answer:
[The Biden Administration] will get them [asylum applications] adjudicated in a timely and professional manner; more will qualify for protection, thereby allowing more of the work to be shifted to the Asylum Office; the refugee program will expand; America will prosper!
I hope I’m right. But, it won’t happen without a “new awakening and some new faces” at EOIR. Remember, it’s not rocket science!
Alejandro Mayorkas DHS Secretry – Designate Official DHS Photo Public Domain
Mayorkas, currently a partner at Wilmer Hale, was Deputy DHS Secretary under Obama from 2013-2016. If confirmed, he will be the first Latino to hold the post.
He helped design and implement DACA, certainly the most rational, cost effective, and astoundingly successful Executive immigration initiative of the 21st Century. But, then, there was not really much else to choose from in two decades of largely wasteful, counterproductive, “designed to fail uber enforcement” from all Administrations.
On one level, Mayorkas faces “mission impossible”” — reform an agency without mission or recognizable humane values that has been totally out of control over the past four years and has shown that it is infected with institutionalized racism, hate, ignorance, disrespect for the rule of law, rampant unprofessionalism, and overt political corruption at every level.
But, on another level it should be easy for Mayorkas to look good! Following the early departure of Gen. John Kelly, who looked pretty good on paper but showed neither the inclination to understand immigration policy nor the willingness to buck Trump, the agency has been “run” by a succession of toadies and war criminals. The current (NOT) Acting Secretary Chad “Wolfman” Wolf, a “super-hack,” is totally unqualified for the job, and also happens to be serving illegally in an “acting capacity.” That’s an easy act to follow!
Just by respecting the Constitution and the law, simply refraining from overt lying, racism, committing crimes against humanity, and child abuse, and wasting less taxpayer money on stupid walls, detention, and counterproductive “civil” enforcement, Mayorkas will be perceived as a “breath of fresh air” by many long-suffering members of the immigration and human rights community, even if he never accomplishes much else.
Expectations were extraordinarily low for the Trump regime. But, his “chosen toadies and scofflaws” consistently performed far below even our worst fears, demonstrating exceptional “malicious incompetence” at virtually all aspects of their jobs. DOJ and EOIR are by no means the only rings under the “Big Top” 🎪where the deadly “clown show” 🤡 has been in continuous performance for the past four years!
Due Process Forever. Let the Biden Team Know That The Clown Show 🤡 Must Go!
