"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.
Thanks to Judge Jeffrey Chase, leader of our Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges for sending this to me.
Also, I join Judge Chase in congratulating Gerald D. Wall and the Greater Boston Legal Services (a clinical program of Harvard Law School) for providing pro bono representation in this case.
Note how succinct, straightforward, logical, and well-supported by authority Judge Gagnon’s decision is. Compare that with the nearly incomprehensible 30+ page anti-asylum, lie-filled, intellectually dishonest, and legally incorrect screed written by Sessions in support of his cowardly extralegal attack on some of the most vulnerable and deserving of protection among us in his Matter of A-B- atrocity.
Now think of how the system could work if Judge Gagnon’s correct decision were the precedent and all asylum applicants had access to qualified pro bono counsel.
Many cases could be promptly granted by an honest USCIS Asylum Office committed to properly applying protection law. They would not even have to reach the backlogged Immigration Courts or be subjected to toxic, counterproductive “gimmicks” like “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” or absurdities like claiming that everyone should apply in Guatemala, from which this respondent was fleeing for her life and which has neither a functional government nor a credible asylum system.
That, plus perhaps using retired judges from all types of courts and bringing back retired Asylum Officers and adjudicators trained to recognize and quickly grant “slam dunk” asylum cases like this would be the key to establishing a credible, independent, Immigration Court and a reestablishing a functioning asylum system of which we all could be proud.
Instead, our current maliciously incompetent White Nationalist regime continues to ignore our laws, our Constitution, and our international obligations in leading a cowardly and disreputable “race to the bottom” in which the richest and most powerful country in the world conducts itself as a “Banana Republic” led by a tinhorn dictator.
WASHINGTON, DC — On July 29, 2019, Attorney General (AG) William Barr issued a precedent decision in Matter of L-E-A- and announced that in his view, families cannot be considered a particular social group (and thus grounds for asylum) unless they are recognized by society as such.
AILA Second Vice President Jeremy McKinney stated, “Matter of L-E-A- is a poorly-reasoned decision from an Administration that seems intent on ending legal asylum. AG Barr’s decision ignores decades of circuit court case law which has concluded that families are the ‘prototypical’ or ‘quintessential’ particular social group to qualify for asylum. Courts, like the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, have voluminous case law directly contradicting the Attorney General’s decision today.
“The impact of AG Barr’s decision, along with the other decisions issued by his immediate predecessors on asylum and the nation’s immigration courts, cannot be overstated. Last summer, the AG issued Matter of A-B- attempting to end the category of persecution – essentially restricting domestic violence victims and other victims of crimes perpetrated by private, non-government actors from their ability to qualify for asylum. Today, the AG’s office further attempts to restrict asylum by targeting a new category of asylum seekers: families. This will cause irreparable harm. We know that these are some of the most vulnerable of asylum seekers as parents flee with their children in order to protect them from persecution. This decision unnecessarily makes asylum harder. Clearly, our nation needs an independent immigration court system separate from the Department of Justice.”
Cowardice is the very definition of when those in power whose job and solemn duty is to protect and vindicate the rights of others, particularly the most vulnerable among us like refugees, instead grossly abuse their power by picking on them, bullying them, and abusing them. Whether or not Barr and the other White Nationalist restrictionists in the Trump Administration are committing actual crimes under U.S. law, they are certainly guilty of “crimes against humanity” in any normal sense of the word.
It is for legal scholars, historians, and moral philosophers to insure that Trump, Pence, Barr, Sessions, “Cooch Cooch,” “Big Mac With Lies,” Miller, Nielsen, Kelly, Homan, Morgan, and others who have enthusiastically supported and enabled this debacle do not escape the negative judgements of history!
Donald M. Kerwin Executive Director Center for Migration Studies
Don writes:
What’s less patriotic than abandonment of the US refugee protection program?
Donald Kerwin
Director
Center for Migration Studies
(Raúl Nájera/Unsplash)
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This week, the Trump administration has descended to a new level of contempt for the US refugee protection system. From its very first days in office when it evoked specious national security concerns to suspend the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days and indefinitely bar the admission of Syrian refugees, the administration has sought to discredit and diminish the US refugee resettlement, asylum, temporary protection, and other humanitarian programs.
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump regularly decried the ways in which President Barack Obama exercised Executive authority, including by offering status, work authorization and protection from deportation to undocumented residents brought to the United States as children. As president, however, he has far exceeded Obama in unilaterally exercising his immigration authorities, albeit in favor of indiscriminate enforcement and evisceration of humanitarian programs. Many of these measures – although often justified on rule of law grounds – have not survived legal challenge.
To provide just a sampling of the Trump administration’s misguided policies, it has cut refugee admissions to historically low levels at a time of unprecedented need; has sought to rescind Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 95 percent of the program’s beneficiaries; ended the Central American Minors (CAM) program which allowed El Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran children to undergo refugee screening in their own countries and join their legally present parents in the United States; cut aid to the Northern Triangle states, which have produced in recent years the lion’s share of migrants and asylum-seekers to the United States, and; denied access to the US asylum system through interception, border enforcement, and cruel deterrence strategies, such as separating children from parents and forcing asylum seekers to wait for months in dangerous Mexican border cities while their US claims are pending.
The president habitually impugns the patriotism of his critics, but has systematically attempted to dismantle quintessentially American programs, which have long reflected and projected US values. Some of the most shameful episodes in the US history – as when it turned away the Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on the S.S. St. Louis – involve the United States’ failure to protect refugees. By contrast, its leadership in responding to the refugees generated by World War II, the Vietnam conflict, the Cuban revolution, and the Balkans war in the former Yugoslavia – earned it the respect, gratitude and good will of many states and countless persons. They made it a beacon of freedom.
How do these programs serve US interests? They save lives (a core value). They promote regional and global stability. They reduce irregular migration. They promote US foreign policy goals. They encourage developing nations to continue to offer haven and integration opportunities to the bulk of the world’s refugees. They promote cooperation with US diplomatic, military and counterterror strategies. They link communities, including diverse faith communities, that work together to welcome and resettle refugees. As President Ronald Reagan put it in 1981, they continue “America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries” and shares the “responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression.”
On July 18, Politico reported that the administration has been trying to make the case for admitting no refugees in FY 2020 – not those already approved for admission, not the family members of refugees in the United States, not those who assisted the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not survivors of religious persecution, although the administration regularly touts its commitment to religious liberty. It has reportedly been weighing a farcical rationale for this extraordinary step; that is, the United States cannot both process asylum claims and resettle refugees, although it has been doing both for decades.
On July 15, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOD) issued final interim regulations – which became effective the following day – that seek to deny access to the US asylum system to virtually every asylum-seeker at the southern border. With narrow exceptions, the rule would bar asylum claims by those “who did not apply for protection from persecution or torture where it was available in at least one third country” outside his or her “country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which he or she transited en route to the United States.”
Yet the Immigration and Nationality Act allows any non-citizen physically present in the United States to apply for asylum. Removal is permitted only “pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement” to a third country where “the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and where the alien is eligible to receive asylum or equivalent temporary protection.” In short, this exception applies to “safe third country” agreements with other nations. The United States has only one such agreement – with Canada – which does not apply to asylum-seekers with family members in the other country, as the DHS and DOD regulation would. The pre-conditions for such an agreement are that an agreement actually exists, the state parties to the agreement are “safe,” and they have “full and fair” asylum policies and procedures. The DHS/DOJ rule flouts all of these statutory requirements.
Ironically, the Trump administration claims that it needs to take this step based on the numbers of people seeking protection from countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Yet great demand and need argue for a robust, well-resourced asylum system, not the shell of a program.
Some percentage of asylum-seekers from these countries will ultimately be found to be ineligible for asylum, although a very high percentage have been forced to leave their violence-torn homelands and will at least present credible claims. For its part, the Trump administration has not effectively addressed the causes driving the flight of these migrants, has not offered legal migration opportunities to those in great need, and has failed to take any of steps necessary to address a human crisis of this magnitude. These steps would certainly reduce irregular migration and the high numbers of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. Instead, it has resorted to deterrence, interception and border enforcement policies – a recipe for failure on humanitarian, legal, and enforcement grounds, and a boon only to human smuggling networks and for-profit prisons.
The administration is dismantling the US refugee resettlement program and the asylum system – at immense human cost, to the nation’s detriment, and with disastrous consequences for the international system of refugee protection which it once led. This isn’t patriotism. It’s an act of sabotage of a defining set of American value and a once proud program. One day – perhaps soon – it will be looked upon as a shameful episode in US history.
July 19, 2019
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Wow! Just when you might have thought Trump couldn’t be any more cowardly or unpatriotic, he sinks us even lower!
Under Trump, the U.S. has become a leading shirker of refugee resettlement responsibilities, encouraging other prosperous Western Nations to follow our cowardly and selfish example.
Lebanon (GNP approx. $52 billion) hosted 1.4 million refugees, or 156 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants; Jordan (GNP approx. $41 billion) hosted 2.5 million refugees, or 72 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, the U.S., GNP approx. $20 trillion+, has reduced its refugee resettlement commitment to less than 30,000 and now outrageously proposes to “zero it out.”
Cowardly, inhumane, irresponsible, selfish, racist leaders reflect on all of us, not just on the disturbing lack of values of the minority of Americans who installed them in office and keep them propped up.
The U.S. is now officially leading the “race to the bottom.” Will those of us who believe in a confident, generous, courageous, patriotic America, reestablishing ourselves as a human rights leader be able to get it together to “right the ship” in 2020. Or, will the Ship of State continue to sink with Trump and his unpatriotic White Nationalist racists at the helm?
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — For the two dozen migrant children living inside a small church on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, most days go like this: breakfast at 8 a.m., dinner at 6 p.m. and hours of nothing in between.
There is no school, and except for a handful of worn Bibles, there are no books. Dangers abound in the surrounding hills, so most haven’t left the razor-wire-ringed compound in weeks or even months.
“I feel imprisoned,” said 16-year-old Alison Mendoza.
She left Nicaragua with her parents and two younger sisters in March after her father received death threats for demonstrating against President Daniel Ortega, whose government has jailed and killed thousands of dissenters.
The family has been waiting here in Juarez for nearly two months for their chance to request political asylum in the United States. A Trump administration policy allows only a handful of asylum seekers to pass through ports of entry at the U.S. border each day.
Mendoza and her sisters, Sol, 6, and Michele, 11, are among the thousands of migrant children languishing along the border as a result of changing migration trends and White House policies that seek to deter asylum seekers.
They left friends and relatives behind and endured the trials of the migrant trail only to end up stuck in camps, cheap hotels and shelters such as Buen Pastor, which is now home to children and their families from as far away as Ghana and Congo. Pawns in an adult’s dispute, their future is entirely uncertain.
Two recent Trump administration mandates are almost certain to result in even larger numbers of migrant children being stranded here.
One calls for asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. About 3,000 migrant children and their families have been returned to Juarez under that program since April, according to Chihuahua state officials.
A mandate announced this week calls for asylum to be denied to migrants who did not apply for protection in at least one country they passed through while trying to reach the United States.
The rules mean that there is a very strong likelihood that if the Mendozas finally do cross the border to plead their case, they will be sent right back to Juarez.
“What will we do?” said Donald Mendoza, 37, who left behind a good job at a Managua university that would have allowed him to pay for all three girls’ college educations.
The Mexican government has committed to providing schooling to migrants who are returned from the U.S., but Mendoza doesn’t want to raise his girls in notoriously dangerous Juarez, where 10 people were slain on Sunday alone.
“This is not the life I planned for my children,” he said.
Buen Pastor opened its doors about 20 years ago to migrants — back then almost always single men — who passed through Juarez before seeking to sneak across the border.
“They would come, rest for a night or two, and then cross,” said Pastor Juan Fierro Garcia.
But over the last two years, entire families began trudging up the dirt road that leads to the church.
Many had heard that U.S. authorities were releasing migrants as long as they requested asylum and were traveling with children.
“We didn’t know much about the situation, just that families were passing,” said Joseph Venegas, 26, who left Honduras last month with his wife and their two sons.
After crossing into the U.S. illegally last week, and turning themselves in to border authorities, Venegas and his family were held for two days and then released back into Juarez with an order to appear at an asylum hearing in October. A Mexican official told them how to get to Buen Pastor.
Ten-year-old Jose sobbed on the way there. “I want to go back to Honduras,” he wailed.
“We had bad luck,” his father explained. “The law is the law and we have to respect it.”
“We are doing all of this for you,” Venegas added.
Venegas said the family decided to leave because a teachers’ strike meant Jose hadn’t been able to go to school for months.
But now, as he watched Jose sit morosely in one corner of the shelter and his wife nurse their coughing 4-month-old baby on a nearby bench, he wondered whether leaving had been in the best interest of his kids.
“What kind of childhood is this?” he asked.
The experience is a little easier on the younger children, many of whom don’t understand exactly what is happening, and who run around the shelter in a tight pack. The youngsters from Africa speak only a small amount of Spanish, but they still manage to make friends.
The lack of toys means the children entertain themselves around a big table, beating it like a drum until their parents complain or turning it into a fort under which they hide and whisper.
There are several small buildings clustered around the compound — a men’s dormitory, a women’s dormitory and the church sanctuary where families camp out each night on mattresses squeezed between the pews.
The crowded conditions and a constant stream of visitors — nongovernmental organization workers, pro bono lawyers and journalists all asking the same tired questions — mean there is zero privacy. Young women groom themselves and change clothes under the cover of blankets.
A psychologist from the state comes once a week. On a recent morning, she gathered the children around a big round table and led them in breathing exercises.
She asked them to go one by one, saying their names and where they were from.
“I’m Natalia from Honduras,” one girl said.
“I’m Akasia from Congo,” said another.
A thin child from Guatemala declined to speak, burying her head in her arms.
“She is sad,” the 7-year-old boy next to her explained.
“It’s OK,” the psychologist said. “It’s okay to be sad.”
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This kind of preventable harm inflicted by an Administration that has declared war on humanity and the rule of law is directly at the feet of three irresponsible Federal Judges of the Ninth Circuit who tanked by vacating the injunction against such gross abuses properly put in place by the U.S. District Judge in Innovation Law Labs v. McAleenan, ostensibly so that their colleagues could “deliberate” (actually “dither”) over a decision that would take responsible judges about 60 minutes to reach!How do guys like this sleep at night?
The issue in Innovation Law Labs involves the bogus “Migrant Protection Protocols,” more accurately described as “Remain in Mexico” or “Die in Mexico” that intentionally violates both Fifth Amendment Due Process and numerous provisions of the INA, including the rights to access to counsel of one’s own choosing, fair notice of hearings, adequate time to prepare and present a case, and the right to assert withholding of removal to a country where one fears persecution or torture.
Failure of privileged Article III Judges to protect the most vulnerable among us from Executive overreach and abuse, in this case clearly racially motivated, has real life adverse consequences, beyond the “judicial ivory tower,” that in many cases are irreversible.
All of us who believe in justice should be outraged by the Ninth Circuit’s dilatory performance in this case! It’s nothing short of child abuse sanctioned by the Federal Judiciary. It must stop!
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday moved to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants in a major escalation of the president’s battle to tamp down the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to a new rule published in the Federal Register , asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border. The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone.
There are some exceptions: If someone has been trafficked, if the country the migrant passed through did not sign one of the major international treaties that govern how refugees are managed (though most Western countries have signed them) or if an asylum-seeker sought protection in a country but was denied, then a migrant could still apply for U.S. asylum.
But the move by President Donald Trump’s administration was meant to essentially end asylum protections as they now are on the southern border.
The policy is almost certain to face a legal challenge. U.S. law allows refugees to request asylum when they arrive at the U.S. regardless of how they did so, but there is an exception for those who have come through a country considered to be “safe.” But the Immigration and Nationality Act, which governs asylum law, is vague on how a country is determined “safe”; it says “pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement.”
Right now, the U.S. has such an agreement, known as a “safe third country,” only with Canada. Under a recent agreement with Mexico, Central American countries were considering a regional compact on the issue, but nothing has been decided. Guatemalan officials were expected in Washington on Monday, but apparently a meeting between Trump and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales was canceled amid a court challenge in Guatemala over whether the country could agree to a safe third with the U.S.
The new rule also will apply to the initial asylum screening, known as a “credible fear” interview, at which migrants must prove they have credible fears of returning to their home country. It applies to migrants who are arriving to the U.S., not those who are already in the country.
Trump administration officials say the changes are meant to close the gap between the initial asylum screening that most people pass and the final decision on asylum that most people do not win. But immigrant rights groups, religious leaders and humanitarian groups have said the Republican administration’s policies amount to a cruel and calloused effort to keep immigrants out of the country. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are poor countries suffering from violence .
Along with the administration’s recent effort to send asylum seekers back over the border , Trump has tried to deny asylum to anyone crossing the border illegally and restrict who can claim asylum, and Attorney General William Barr recently tried to keep thousands of asylum seekers detained while their cases play out.
Nearly all of those efforts have been blocked by courts.
Meanwhile, conditions have worsened for migrants who make it over the border seeking better lives. Tens of thousands of Central American migrant families cross the border each month, many claiming asylum. The numbers have increased despite Trump’s derisive rhetoric and hard-line immigration policies. Border facilities have been dangerously cramped and crowded well beyond capacity. The Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog found fetid, filthy conditions for many children. And lawmakers who traveled there recently decried conditions .
Immigration courts are backlogged by more than 800,000 cases, meaning many people won’t have their asylum claims heard for years despite move judges being hired.
People are generally eligible for asylum in the U.S. if they feared return to their home country because they would be persecuted based on race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social group.
During the budget year for 2009, there were 35,811 asylum claims, and 8,384 were granted. During 2018 budget year, there were 162,060 claims filed, and 13,168 were granted.
___
Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.
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The Trump Administration launches its most brazen attack yet on the rule of law, our Constitution, and American Democracy.But, ultimately it’s likely to fail for the following reasons:
As usual, the Trump Administration fails to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”) in publishing a major policy change without advance opportunity for notice and comment;
The regulation violates the Immigration and Nationality Act’s (“INA’s”) guarantee of a right to apply for asylum except in very limited circumstances not applicable here;
A similar regulation purporting to end asylum rights for those applying between ports of entry was immediately halted by the Federal Courts;
Even under the regulation, refugees arriving in the U.S. retain the right to apply for mandatory “withholding of removal” under the INA and the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) — although the standard is higher, those showing “past persecution” are entitled to a regulatory presumption of future persecution for purposes of withholding of removal under the INA;
Smugglers eventually can develop (more dangerous and expensive) water routes to the U.S. which do not require passing through any other “signatory country” on the way;
Smugglers could eventually shift their “business model” to higher risk more expensive schemes designed to avoid the U.S. asylum system completely and deposit individuals in the interior of the U.S. where most of them will be able to “lose themselves” among the millions of other foreign nationals residing and working in the U.S. without documentation.
We are diminishing ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration.
And, remember, YOUR legal and Constitutional rights might be the next casualty of Trump and his out of control band of scofflaws.
Join the New Due Process Army and fight for the legal and Constitutional rights and the human dignity of everyone in America!
Molly O’Toole Immigration Reporter LA TimesCarolyn Cole Staff Photojournalist LA Times
Molly O’Toole & Carolyn Cole Report for the LA Times:
A group of roughly 100 Haitians, Africans and South Americans cross the Rio Grande, just shallow enough for adults to wade despite an overnight storm.
As they wait on the muddy bank near Del Rio, Texas, to surrender themselves to the Border Patrol, the voices of children in the group carry across the river to the Mexican side.
There, in the city of Ciudad Acuña, hundreds of migrants have formed an impromptu refugee camp in an ecological park bound on one side by the river. Just outside the park, the official port of entry to the United States sits at the end of a short bridge.
They’ve crossed thousands of miles by foot, boat and bus to seek asylum in the U.S., only to find themselves stalled in a purgatory of soggy tents and overflowing bathrooms. Now, they face an uncertain wait prolonged by Trump administration policy.
The temptation to make the risky and illegal river crossing mounts daily.
“If you see people jumping over the river, it is because they are tired of staying here,” said one resident of the camp, Luis, who declined to give his last name out of fear for the safety of his family back home.
Home for him would be the West African nation of Cameroon, where Luis was vice principal of a school until he fled last fall. He escaped a widening conflict between the country’s English-speaking minority and its Francophone-majority government, which receives security assistance from the U.S.
He was jailed and tortured before escaping to neighboring Nigeria, Luis said. After a trek across three continents, he landed here, where he has waited for six weeks to present himself to U.S. officials at the Del Rio port of entry.
He hopes to join a sister in Ohio.
“At times, it is really disheartening,” he said, “so it is difficult to wait.”
. . . .
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Read the complete article along with Carolyn’s wonderful photography at the link.
Cruel, “designed to fail” policies and complicit judges who fail to protect the statutory, constitutional, and human rights of others are unlikely to stop the flow of forced migrants in the long run. They will, however, succeed in killing some, torturing others, ruining many lives, and causing permanent damage to large numbers of their fellow human beings, particularly children.
NBC/Reuters just reported on continuing concerns, confusion, and accusations regarding treatment of migrants in Mexico by the National Guard.https://apple.news/APdRhfQFnTneror8AprpRZQ I’m willing to bet that this is just the “tip of the iceberg.” Eventually, the true “body count” and extent of the human rights violations chargeable to Trump, the 9th Circuit, and the Mexican Government will surface. It will be unbelievably ugly.
Future generations will also find it difficult to understand and explain our national complicity, since the facts about the abuses the Trump Administration is heaping on humanity in our name are out in the open for life-tenured judges to ignore at the peril of their lasting reputations. And, too many of them are doing just that.
E.J. Dionne, Jr. Opinion Writer Washington PostDavid Miliband Chief Executive International Rescue Committee
E.J. Dionne, Jr. writes in the Washington Post commenting on a recent speech by David Miliband, Chief Executive of the International Rescue Committee:
. . . .
“A new and chilling normal is coming into view,” Miliband concluded. “Civilians seen as fair game for armed combatants, humanitarians seen as an impediment to military tactics and therefore unfortunate but expendable collateral, and investigations of and accountability for war crimes an optional extra for state as well as nonstate actors.”
But these evils cannot be isolated from the larger political corrosion in the rest of the world — and this includes the long-standing democracies themselves. “The checks and balances that protect the lives of the most vulnerable people abroad,” he said, “will only be sustained if we renew the checks and balances that sustain liberty at home.”
This isn’t simply about aligning principle and practice. More fundamentally, when governments abandon a commitment to accountability domestically, they no longer feel any obligation to insist upon it internationally. It’s no accident, as Miliband noted, that under President Trump, the United States “has dropped the promotion of human rights around the world from its policy priorities.”
He pulled no punches: “The new order is epitomized in the photo of Russian President [Vladimir] Putin and Saudi Crown Prince [Mohammed bin] Salman high-fiving each other at the G-20 meeting in Argentina in November last year. With Syria in ruins, Yemen in crisis, and political opponents like Boris Nemtsov and Jamal Khashoggi dead, theirs was the embrace of two leaders unencumbered by national institutions or by the fear of international law.”
Miliband acknowledged the mistakes of an earlier era (including the Iraq War) but argued that “accountability, not impunity” was on the rise in the 1990s, when there was “an unusual consensus across the left-right divide” about “the need for global rules.” We have said goodbye to all that.
In 2002, Samantha Power, later the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, published “ ‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide,” a book that stirred consciences about the world’s obligations to helpless people unprotected — and often targeted — by sovereign governments.
Nearly two decades on, we are numb, distracted and inward-looking.
Miliband understands that democratic citizens, grappling with their own discontents, will be inclined to look away from the travails of others “until there is a new economic and social bargain that delivers fair shares at home.”
But an Age of Impunity not only poses immediate dangers to millions confronting violence far away. It also corrodes the sense of obligation of the privileged in wealthy nations toward those left behind. When anything goes, no one is safe.
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Read the complete article at the above link.
The key point here for Americans who have been “tone deaf” to Trump’s (and his toadies at DHS, DOJ, DOS, and elsewhere) gross abuses of the rule of law, human rights, and human dignity is the following: “When anything goes, no one is safe.”
A Seattle federal judge ruled Tuesday that asylum-seeking migrants detained for being in the U.S. illegally have the right to a bond hearing in immigration court rather than being held until their cases are complete.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman said it is unconstitutional to indefinitely detain migrants who fled to the U.S. seeking asylum protections.
The decision reverses an April directivefrom Attorney General William Barr ordering immigration judges not to release migrants on bail after an applicant successfully establishes “a credible fear of persecution or torture” in the home country — a policy that has been in place since 2005.
“The court finds that plaintiffs have established a constitutionally-protected interest in their liberty, a right to due process, which includes a hearing before a neutral decision maker to assess the necessity of their detention and a likelihood of success on the merits of that issue,” Pechman wrote.
In her ruling, Pechman also took issue with an aspect of Barr’s policy that left open the possibility that migrants, still awaiting a hearing, could be re-detained by ICE after being released on bond.
“The Government’s unwillingness to unconditionally assert that Plaintiffs will not be re-detained means that the specter of re-detention looms and these Plaintiffs and many members of their class face the real and imminent threat of bondless and indefinite detention …,” she said.
The ruling comes amid a widespread shortage of immigration judges that has caused massive delays in processing hearings. The most recent dataavailable from The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse shows a total of 424 judges nationwide face a backlog of 892,517 cases on the courts’ active dockets as of the end of April.
“The three largest immigration courts were so under-resourced that hearing dates were being scheduled as far out as August 2023 in New York City, October 2022 in Los Angeles, and April 2022 in San Francisco,” TRAC reports
Pechman also modified a preliminary injunction issued earlier this year. The new injunction requires the government to ensure bond hearings are held within seven days after they are requested by eligible asylum-seekers. If the government exceeds that limit, the undocumented immigrant must be released.
Immigrant rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, sued to block the policy, which was set to take effect this month.
In a statement, Matt Adams, legal director of Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said: “The court reaffirmed what has been settled for decades: that asylum seekers who enter this country have a right to be free from arbitrary detention.”
Michael Tan, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, added: “Try as it may, the administration cannot circumvent the Constitution in its effort to deter and punish asylum-seekers applying for protection.”
The Department of Justice is expected to appeal the ruling quickly.
Go to the NPR website for a full copy of Judge Pechman’s decision in Padilla v. ICE.
So, while the 9thCircuit is bopping along violating human rights by enabling Trump’s absurdly illegal “Kill ‘Em in Mexico Program,” as a result of a three-judge panel who tanked on their oaths of office, Judge Pechman and some others at the “retail level” of the Federal Judiciary are still on the job and upholding our Constitution against the all-out assault led by Barr on behalf of Trump.
It’s also worth remembering that the U.S. Attorney General is supposed to uphold the Constitution and protect individual rights, rather than serving as tool of racist White Nationalist extremism as Sessions and Barr have done. Already in shambles and a disgraceful ethical morass, there won’t be anything left of the “Justice” Department by the time Barr’s toxic tenure ends.
Bill Barr is a national disgrace and an affront to American justice. But, hey, it’s the Trump Adminisration, so what else is new?
Professor Kate Cronin-Furman University College, London
Professor Kate Cronin-Furman writes in the NY Times:
The debate over whether “concentration camps” is the right term for migrant detention centers on the southern border has drawn long-overdue attention to the American government’s dehumanizing treatment of defenseless children. A pediatrician who visited in June said the centers could be compared to “torture facilities.” Having studied mass atrocities for over a decade, I agree.
At least seven migrant children have died in United States custody since last year. The details reported by lawyers who visited a Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Tex., in June were shocking: children who had not bathed in weeks, toddlers without diapers, sick babies being cared for by other children. As a human rights lawyer and then as a political scientist, I have spoken to the victims of some of the worst things that human beings have ever done to each other, in places ranging from Cambodia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Sri Lanka. What’s happening at the border doesn’t match the scale of these horrors, but if, as appears to be the case, these harsh conditions have been intentionally inflicted on children as part a broader plan to deter others from migrating, then it meets the definition of a mass atrocity: a deliberate, systematic attack on civilians. And like past atrocities, it is being committed by a complex organizational structure made up of people at all different levels of involvement.
Thinking of what’s happening in this way gives us a repertoire of tools with which to fight the abuses, beyond the usual exhortations to call our representatives and donate to border charities.
Those of us who want to stop what’s happening need to think about all the different individuals playing a role in the systematic mistreatment of migrant children and how we can get them to stop participating. We should focus most on those who have less of a personal commitment to the abusive policies that are being carried out.
Testimony from trials and truth commissions has revealed that many atrocity perpetrators think of what they’re doing as they would think of any other day job. While the leaders who order atrocities may be acting out of strongly held ideological beliefs or political survival concerns, the so-called “foot soldiers” and the middle men and women are often just there for the paycheck.
This lack of personal investment means that these participants in atrocities can be much more susceptible to pressure than national leaders. Specifically, they are sensitive to social pressure, which has been shown to have played a huge role in atrocity commission and desistance in the Holocaust, Rwanda and elsewhere. The campaign to stop the abuses at the border should exploit this sensitivity and put social pressure on those involved in enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Here is what that might look like:
The identities of the individual Customs and Border Protection agents who are physically separating children from their families and staffing the detention centers are not undiscoverable. Immigration lawyers have agent names; journalists reporting at the border have names, photos and even videos. These agents’ actions should be publicized, particularly in their home communities.
This is not an argument for doxxing — it’s about exposure of their participation in atrocities to audiences whose opinion they care about. The knowledge, for instance, that when you go to church on Sunday, your entire congregation will have seen you on TV ripping a child out of her father’s arms is a serious social cost to bear. The desire to avoid this kind of social shame may be enough to persuade some agents to quit and may hinder the recruitment of replacements. For those who won’t (or can’t) quit, it may induce them to treat the vulnerable individuals under their control more humanely. In Denmark during World War II, for instance, strong social pressure, including from the churches, contributed to the refusal of the country to comply with Nazi orders to deport its Jewish citizens.
The midlevel functionaries who make the system run are not as visibly involved in the “dirty work,” but there are still clear potential reputational consequences that could change their incentives. The lawyer who stood up in court to try to parse the meaning of “safe and sanitary” conditions — suggesting that this requirement might not include toothbrushes and soap for the children in border patrol custody if they were there for a “shorter term” stay — passed an ethics exam to be admitted to the bar. Similar to the way the American Medical Association has made it clear that its members must not participate in torture, the American Bar Association should signal that anyone who defends the border patrol’s mistreatment of children will not be considered a member in good standing of the legal profession. This will deter the participation of some, if only out of concern over their future career prospects.
The individuals running detention centers are arguably directly responsible for torture, which could trigger a number of consequences at the international level. Activists should partner with human rights organizations to bring these abuses before international bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council. They should lobby for human rights investigations, for other governments to deny entry visas to those involved in the abuses, or even for the initiation of torture prosecutions in foreign courts. For someone who is “just following orders,” the prospect of being internationally shamed as a rights abuser and being unable to travel freely may be significant enough to persuade them to stop participating.
When those directly involved in atrocities can’t be swayed, their enablers are often more responsive. For-profit companies are supplying food and other material goods to the detention centers. Boycotts against them and their parent entities may persuade them to stop doing so. Employees of these companies can follow the example of Wayfair workers, who organized a walkout on Wednesday in protest of their company’s sale of furniture to the contractor outfitting the detention centers. Finally, anyone can support existing divestment campaigns to pressure financial institutions to end their support of immigration abuses.
Many Americans have been asking each other “But what can we DO?” The answer is that we call these abuses mass atrocities and use the tool kit this label offers us to fight them. So far, mobilization against what’s happening on the border has mostly followed standard political activism scripts: raising public awareness, organizing protests, phoning our congressional representatives. These efforts are critical, but they aren’t enough. Children are suffering and dying. The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences.
Dr. Cronin-Furman is an assistant professor of human rights.
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“The fastest way to stop it is to make sure everyone who is responsible faces consequences.”
That includes attorneys who defend indefensible policies in Federal Court as well as Federal Judges all the way up to the Supremes who fail to stand up for Due Process for individuals, and who insist on treating Trump’s overt attacks on our Constitution, democracy, and human dignity as within the scope of “normal” Executive actions rather than intentional and dishonest abuses requiring censure and strong, courageous, unconditional disapproval.
Ken Cuccinelli immediately stands out in an Administration that values cruelty. What a despicable and heartless thing to say.
Quote Tweet
The Washington Post
@washingtonpost
Jun 28
Ken Cuccinelli, head of citizenship service, blames migrant father for drowning deaths captured in photo (link: https://wapo.st/2NlcWTb) wapo.st/2NlcWTb
Thanks, Don, and well said! I’m proud to have you for our Representative here in Alexandria. You have been a constant voice of decency, common sense, and opposition to the “malicious incompetence” of the Trump Kakistocracy. And those of us in Virginia who survived the “Modern Day Jim Crow Era” of “Cooch Cooch” as Virginia Attorney General know just what a nasty, vile, unqualified, racist hack he has always been and always will be. Heck, even Mitch McConnell can’t stand him, and that says something!
“Cooch Cooch’s” latest despicable act of note comes along with provoking an immediate rebellion among Asylum Officers. As I predicted, “Cooch Cooch” has already distinguished himself as a “lowlife among bottom dwellers.”
Hi all: I volunteer on Tuesday nights at a free immigration law clinic run by the New Sanctuary Coalition, based in Judson Church In Greenwich Village, NYC. As you can imagine, fear has been running high since the announcement of multi-city raids. Micah Bucey, a minister at Judson, composed the following non-denominational centering prayer that is now recited before each clinic. I share with you for inspiration:
Spirit of Resistance,
You who are beyond the capacity of any border or name,
You who stretch beyond the indignity of any cage
You who envelop us in the power to persist, to protest, and to rehumanize, //
As we bring our passion and our pain to this place,
We offer gratitude for small gatherings that do monumental things,
We offer gratitude for a fierce community that unbuilds walls
And we offer gratitude for dreams of the world we are creating. //
We ask that you
Refresh us with new breath and energy for the long haul,
Guide us through fear, frustration, and panic,
Expand our hearts to envelop all those who pass through this room tonight and all those who have yet to make it to this room,
Ignite the fire of our faith in the truth that love knows no borders. //
Help us to never forget
That ICE is meant to melt,
That you cannot deport a movement,
And that the moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice if we keep bending it together. //
Four toddlers were so severely ill and neglected at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas, that lawyers forced the government to hospitalize them last week.
The children, all under age 3 with teenage mothers or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting and had diarrhea, immigration attorneys told HuffPost on Friday. Some of the toddlers and infants were refusing to eat or drink. One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was “completely unresponsive” and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney.
She described seeing terror in the children’s eyes.
“It’s just a cold, fearful look that you should never see in a child of that age,” Gialluca said. “You look at them and you think, ‘What have you seen?’”
Another mother at the same facility had a premature baby, who was “listless” and wrapped in a dirty towel, as HuffPost previously reported.
The lawyers feared that if they had not shown up at the facility, the sick kids would have received zero medical attention and potentially died. The Trump administration has come under fire for its treatment ― and its alleged neglect ― of migrants who have been crossing the southern border in record numbers. The result is overcrowded facilities, slow medical care and in some instances, deaths.
Immigration authorities say they’re overwhelmed; activists say they’re not trying hard enough.
“It’s intentional disregard for the well-being of children,” Gialluca said. “The guards continue to dehumanize these people and treat them worse than we would treat animals.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The Associated Press reported this week that children in border facilities don’t have adequate access to food, water, soap or showers. On Tuesday, a Justice Department attorney argued in court that the government should not have to provide detained children with soap, toothbrushes or beds.
The AP report is based on interviews a group of lawyers conducted with hundreds of children in three Texas-based Border Patrol stations last week as part of the Flores settlement ― an agreement that outlines conditions for detained children. The lawyers say children are also being held in these facilities for longer than the 72-hour limit the settlement specifies, and in some cases up to three weeks.
Lawyers are particularly concerned about the spread of illness inside Border Patrol facilities, which can sometimes turn fatal. Five children have died in Border Patrol custody since December, some of whom were initially diagnosed with a common cold or the flu. The processing center in McAllen, known as Ursula, recently quarantined three dozen migrants who were sick after a 16-year-old died of the flu at the same facility.
Children and their parents told lawyers that in some cases they didn’t have any access to medical treatment in Border Patrol facilities despite being visibly ill. Gialluca spoke with one 16-year-old mother whose toddler had the flu, but was told by a guard the child “wasn’t sick enough to see a doctor.” She said others also reported being denied medical attention despite having critically sick babies.
Medical experts say that because children have less developed immune and respiratory systems, their symptoms can escalate quickly if they aren’t properly treated.
Dr. Julie Linton, the co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics, previously told HuffPost that children can’t recover from illnesses in Border Patrol facilities. These centers are described as “hieleras” ― Spanish for iceboxes ― because of their freezing temperatures, and migrants describe sleeping on floors under bright lights that shine 24/7, with nothing but Mylar blankets to keep warm.
Gialluca met one 16-year-old mother whose 8-month-old baby was sick with the flu and forced to sleep outside for four days at the McAllen Border Patrol station. The mother said the guards took the clothing off the baby’s back, leaving her in a diaper, and forced them to sleep on concrete without a blanket.
A sick 2-year-old girl was shivering in a T-shirt and had shallow breathing, according to Mike Fassio, a Seattle-based immigration attorney who visited Ursula.
“I was very, very concerned,” he said, adding lawyers spoke with immigrants in a room outside of the facility. “When she left us, I knew she was going back to a place that was cold, crowded and unsanitary.” Fassio noted that guards referred to the children as “bodies.”
Some children were so exhausted they fell asleep during the interviews, said Clara Long, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch who spoke with kids at a facility in Clint, Texas. Long met a 3-year-old boy who was dirty with matted hair and was being taken care of by his 11-year-old brother. She said that more than 10 sick children were being quarantined in cells.
While the group of roughly eight lawyers and interpreters at Ursula were supposed to be interviewing children about conditions in the facilities, they also ended up asking guards and government officials to bring kids to the hospital because they were so worried about their state. Gialluca added that she and her colleagues interviewed only a small portion of migrants in the facility, which is the largest processing center in the U.S. and can hold up to 1,000 people. She believes the number of migrants in need of hospitalization is likely much higher.
Government officials have blamed horrific conditions at detention facilities on the fact that Congress has not yet passed an emergency funding package that would include almost $3 billion to help care for unaccompanied migrant children. But Gialluca says border officials shouldn’t need more resources to treat immigrants like human beings.
“Money isn’t keeping guards from allowing people to access toilets,” she said. “Money isn’t causing guards to take clothing and medicine away from children.”
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Nicole Goodkind Political Reporter, Newsweek
Here’s Another report from Nicole Goodkind at Newsweek on the “malicious incompetence” and intentional misallocation of resources by Trump and his DHS sycophants that is willfully endangering kids’ lives as part of a cheap White Nationalist political stunt:
8-YEAR-OLD MIGRANTS BEING FORCED TO CARE FOR TODDLERS IN DETENTION CAMPS
A team of lawyers conducted 60 interviews with migrant children being held in an El Paso, Texas, detention camp and found conditions to be dismal.
Fifteen of those in the holding center had the flu and 10 more are quarantined with illness, according to the lawyers, who first gave the data to the Associated Press. Three infants are being detained alongside their teenage mothers, and many children are under the age of 12.
“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one teenaged girl told the lawyers in an interview. The boy was not wearing a diaper and his shirt was covered in mucus, she said.
Law professor Warren Binford, who aided in the interviews, said she witnessed an 8-year-old girl caring for a 4-year-old child who was very dirty, the girl was unable to get the boy to take a shower. She also described the children she interviewed as sleep-deprived, often falling asleep while speaking with her.
“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, co-director of the University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic, to the AP.
The lawyers were inspecting the facility as part of the Flores agreement, which resulted from a landmark 1985 case that established that facilities where minor migrants are held must be kept “safe and sanitary.”
A representative of the Trump administration, the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian, argued Tuesday that safe and sanitary conditions don’t necessarily have to include toothbrushes, soap or towels for children.
Nicole Goodkind is a political reporter at Newsweek. You can reach her on Twitter @NicoleGoodkind or by email, N.Goodkind@newsweek.com.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS MAJOR ICE RAIDS FOR SUNDAY
U.S. immigration authorities plan to raid Miami, Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles and other cities. They intend to arrest up to 2,000 families, three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans told The Washington Post. The orders reportedly come directly from President Donald Trump.
On Monday, the president tweeted: “Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in.”
Officials told The Washington Post that the Department of Homeland Security agency plans to hold families in hotel rooms until they are deported. Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan is allegedly targeting families that have completely dropped out of the court process, but has warned that the operation could lead to further cases of families being separated.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore confirmed the raids on Friday, saying that about 140 families in southern California will be targeted in pre-dawn raids early next week. The chief also made clear that the raids are done on a federal level and that the police department will not be involved.
On Thursday, Carla Provost, chief of the United States Border Patrol argued that the Department of Homeland Security was not receiving enough money to properly care for migrants on the southern border, and that was leading to terrible conditions in detention centers. On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed to $4.6 billion in emergency funds for what the Trump administration has referred to as a “border crisis.”
Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro questioned how the agency could afford mass raids while asking for more money Friday. “The Trump Administration says it needs more money (supplemental bill) for the situation at the border yet they may be starting massive immigration raids next week. So how do you have the money for that if you’re running out of money ICE?” he tweeted.
“These potential raids are a disgusting political ploy to stoke fear and rile up Trump’s base for 2020,” wrote Sandra Cordero, Director of Families Belong Together, an immigration advocacy group, in a statement. “Past raids have left children alone and afraid in empty homes, praying they won’t be left to care for younger siblings by themselves, with no idea if they’ll see their parents again. This is yet another flagrant disregard for the welfare of children on behalf of a cruel administration bent on fomenting fear and creating chaos.”
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Come on, Carla, cut the BS and butt covering. The “mix” of arrivals at the Southern Border began to shift to refugee families from the Northern Triangle back in the summer of 2014. So, CBP and DHS have had five years to prepare for this “change” which is actually “old news.”
More “old news” is the increased flow of asylum seekers with kids which began back before Thanksgiving. Plenty of time for CBP and DHS to bring back retired asylum officers and adjudicators and reassign other adjudicative personnel to the border to insure prompt, orderly, safe, and efficient processing of asylum applicants at ports of entry, thus eliminating the incentive (or necessity) for folks to turn themselves in after crossing the border between ports.
Also, plenty of time to work with NGOs, pro bono groups, states, and communities to insure representation and proper placement of family groups in various locations throughout the country without panic or “dumping.”
Another bogus claim spread by Trump, Provost, and the rest of the sycophants: that the prevalence of kids among new asylum arrivals is somehow totally a response to the Flores settlement (which actually has been in effect for decades).
Undoubtedly, with the Trump Administration’s active assistance, unscrupulous smugglers and coyotes are encouraging some folks to bring children as the only way to have a shot at fair processing under the tilted U.S. asylum system promoted by Trump. Indeed, as I have observed before, the Trump Administrations has consistently been a “best friend” to gangs, smugglers, traffickers, cartels, and druggies seeking to “jack up” profits by further exploiting the human misery caused by the Trump Administration’s “maliciously incompetent “ approach to immigration, effective law enforcement, and humanity generally. https://apple.news/AFQw_eqcHSZCYxUznmP0wpQ
Undoubtedly, some of these unscrupulous individuals are telling families to travel with kids. But, the truth is that according to the UNHCR, over one-half of today’s refugees are children. https://www.unhcr.org/children-49c3646c1e8.html.
So, the prevalence of children among new arrivals should properly been seen as part of a sad worldwide trend that Trump and his cronies disgustingly have done everything possible to encourage, exploit, and aggravate. It most certainly is not primarily caused by the Flores settlement or by giving soap, toothbrushes, blankets, or medical care to children being abused in the “DHS Gulag” administered in part by disingenuous folks like Provost.
Any honest observer of what’s going on knows that the majority of the asylum applications that passed credible fear probably could have been granted (or given protection under the Convention Against Torture — “CAT”) by the Asylum Office without even going to Immigration Court under the proper generous interpretation of our asylum laws, an honest interpretation of CAT that reflects the true conditions in the Northern Triangle, and a very “doable” change in procedures.
Only dishonest fools in the Trump Administration (and a few from the Obama Administration) would maintain that gender isn’t a social group subject to widespread persecution in the Northern Triangle, deny that gangs have assumed the role of quasi-governmental entities thus making most of the harm they inflict on resisters “political persecution,” and make the beyond ludicrous claim that the corrupt failed states of the Northern Triangle have either the ability or much real interest in protecting those subject to persecution.
And, Carla, why aren’t you out there today registering a public protest of the waste of time and funds in ICE going after families with ridiculously inappropriate “raids” when everyresource could and should be focused instead on providing humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers arriving at the Southern Border?
This racist-inspired “Sunday Morning Reign of Terror” directed at U.S. ethnic communities is specifically designed to return helpless families to the very dangerous countries from which they originally fled! Thus, Trump and his phony DHS are intentionally feeding “fresh meat” to gangs and cartels and insuring that the cycle of northward migration, no matter how dangerous, will continue until everyone who needs to leave its either gone or dead (the latter apparently the “solution” favored by Provost, Trump, Morgan, McAleenan, Miller, and others).
Provost, McAleenan, Morgan, and their co-conspirators are all participants in a cynical scheme to intentionally “crash” the asylum system, rather than competently administering it. They are intentionally endangering the lives of children and other vulnerable asylum seekers, many entitled to legal protections, to promote, along with GOP restrictionists, totally bogus, dishonest, and completely unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions of the precious, life-saving right of refugees to seek asylum in the U.S.
It’s an unbelievably dishonest and cowardly scheme, and a complete breach of both oaths of office and public trust. It might be that those who long ago abandoned American values will lap up this insult to human values and human dignity.
But, there are plenty of us out here who know and understand exactly what you are doing. We will not only resist it, but will be historical witnesses to your cruel, inhuman, and unlawful schemes and gimmicks to “abuse and kill the innocent.” And, we’ll be keeping count.
Trump admin considers temporary courts along the southern border
5:44 PM EDT June 17, 2019
Washington
The Trump administration is considering building temporary courts along the southern border as part of an effort to expand its policy of returning some asylum seekers to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings, according to two administration officials.
The US recently struck an agreement with Mexico that included expanding the policy, which, the administration argues, serves as a deterrent since it keeps migrants waiting in Mexico, instead of within the US.
Site assessments have been completed for almost all the ports of entry to determine where such temporary immigration courts, described by sources as “soft-sided,” would be needed, according to an administration official.
The facilities could be used to conduct hearings via video teleconference, which has previously been used by immigration courts elsewhere in the country, the official said.
The deal to expand the “Remain in Mexico” program across the border earlier this month came amid threats to impose tariffs on Mexico if it didn’t bolster enforcement.
Mexico, the joint declaration said, would authorize the entrance of asylum seekers, and offer jobs, health care and education to those individuals. In return, the US must expedite the asylum adjudication process. Consideration to erect immigration courts, which are overseen by the Justice Department, appears to be a step in that direction.
Migrants who are sent to Mexico to await their court hearings return to the US through a port of entry along the southern border to then be transported to their hearing. The temporary courts would allow migrants to have their hearings near or at the port, rather than being bussed miles away, said the official.
It also would likely help alleviate the caseload at San Diego and El Paso immigration courts, which have been taking these cases.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review referred questions about the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols program to the Department of Homeland Security. A DHS official confirmed that the temporary structures are being considered, adding that the crisis has strained the immigration courts along the border. The administration has repeatedly requested additional immigration judges to chip away at a massive backlog that’s led to cases being scheduled years down the road.
The “Remain in Mexico” policy began in January and immediately received pushback back from immigrant advocates and lawyers who argue that it puts migrants who are predominantly from Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador and seeking asylum in the US in harm’s way.
As of May, the US had returned around 6,000 people to Mexico to await their court hearings. The number of migrants falling under the policy appears to be doubling over time, but it is unclear how many additional people have been added to the program since the agreement with Mexico was struck.
One of the locations actively working toward implementing the program is the Rio Grande Valley region in Texas, the busiest sector for arrests of people illegally crossing the border, a senior Border Patrol official told CNN.
Before the program can get underway in the region, officials need to first have the infrastructure in place, including logistics for court hearings. The US also needs to engage with Mexico and ensure its government is willing to receive migrants across the border, said the official.
Like other administration immigration policies, returning migrants to Mexico has also been challenged in court.
In May, a federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to continue returning some asylum seekers to Mexico for the time being. A panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, while split on some issues, listed a number of factors that went into the decision, including risk of injury in Mexico and negotiations between the US and Mexico.
Not surprisingly, no mention of guaranteeing attorney access, effective notice, or reasonable access to legal resources for those retuned to Mexico. Trump is emboldened by a dysfunctional Congress under Mitch McConnell and complicit Article III Courts like the 9th Circuit, unwilling to put an end to this grotesque perversion of our statutory laws, our Constitution, and human rights. It’s also a recipe for more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and bigger backlogs in Immigration Courts. But undoubtedly, Trump will blame others for the problems he has created.
PANEL: GREGORY, Chief Judge, and DIAZ and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.
OPINION BY: PAMELA HARRIS, Circuit Judge
KEY QUOTE:
Sindy Marilu Alvarez Lagos testified credibly that she and her then-seven-year-old daughter, natives and citizens of Honduras, were threatened with gang rape, genital mutilation, and death if they did not comply with the extortionate demands of a Barrio 18 gang member. Unable to meet those demands and fearing for their lives, Alvarez Lagos and her daughter fled to the United States, where they sought asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture.
Now, almost five years later, an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals have issued a total of three separate decisions denying Alvarez Lagos’s claims. The government defends none of those decisions, including the most recent, which came after we agreed, at the government’s request, to remand the case for reconsideration. Instead, the government admits that errors remain, but argues that we should leave them unaddressed and simply remand once again so that the agency may have a fourth opportunity to analyze Alvarez Lagos’s claims correctly.
We decline that request. A remand is required here on certain questions that have yet to be answered, or answered fully, by the agency. But we take this opportunity to review the agency’s disposition of other elements of Alvarez Lagos’s claims. For the reasons given below, we reverse the agency’s determination with respect to the “nexus” requirement for asylum and withholding of removal. And so that they will not recur on remand, we identify additional errors in the agency’s analysis of the “protected ground” requirement for the same forms of relief, and in the agency’s treatment of Alvarez Lagos’s claim under the Convention Against Torture.
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It’s partially on the Article IIIs. Great decision in many ways. But, this type of injustice occurs daily in our unconstitutional U.S. Immigration Courts. How many Central American asylum applicants get this type of representation—Steve Shulman of Akin Gump for a pro bono lawyer, Tom Boerman as an expert? Not very many.
How many can be this persistent, particularly if detained or sent to Mexico to wait? Almost none! I think that if these respondents were in “Return to Mexico” they would have long ago been forced to give up and accept “Death Upon Return.”
This case should have been a “no brainer grant” five years ago. Could have been done at an Asylum Office (under a more rational system) or by DHS stipulation. THIS abuse of the legal system and gross waste of public resources by DHS and DOJ is the reason why we have unmanageable Immigration Court backlogs, not because asylum applicants and their representatives assert their legal rights.
The Office of Immigration Litigation (“OIL”) didn’t even bother to defend any of the EOIR actions here! So, after five years why is it “Due Process” for the Fourth Circuit to give the BIA yet another opportunity to come up with bogus reasons to deny asylum.
An Article III Court fulfilling its oath to uphold the laws and Constitution could have ordered this case to be granted and either exercised contempt authority against those at DOJ responsible for this mess or ordered an independent investigation into the judicial incompetence and bias evident here. At the least, the court should have removed any judge having had a role in this abomination from any future proceedings involving these respondents.
Cases such good as this also illustrate the continuing dereliction of duty by Article III Courts who continue to “go along top get along” with the absurdly unconstitutional position that unrepresented asylum applicants can receive “Due Process” in today’s overtly unfair and biased Immigration Courts. The Due Process clause applies to all persons in the U.S., and the right to a fair asylum hearing exceeds the rights at stake in 98% of the civil litigation and most of the criminal litigation in the Federal Courts. If the Article III Courts actually viewed asylum applicants as “persons,” that is “fellow human beings,” rather than dehumanized “aliens,” this farce would have ended decades ago! Folks represented by Steve Schulman and Akin Gump can’t get a “fair shake” from EOIR; what chance does any unrepresented applicant have?
You reap what you sow, and what goes around comes around! If Article III Courts want to be taken seriously and respected, they must step up to the plate and stop the systematic bias against asylum applicants (particularly women and children from Central America) and the abuses like this occurring every day in our unconstitutional U.S. Immigration Courts!
History is watching and making a record, even if those wronged by the Article IIIs all too often don’t survive or aren’t in a position to confront them with their dereliction of legal duties and the obligations human beings owe to each other.
Cages With ‘Kids’ Pop Up Around NYC To Protest Immigrant Detention
The art installations were meant to bring awareness to the horrific conditions children and other migrants face at the southern U.S. border.
Some people in New York City were confronted with an alarming image as they walked down the street on Wednesday morning: a chain-link cage on the sidewalk containing a child-size mannequin wrapped in a foil blanket, with audio playing of migrant children crying.
It was meant to draw Americans’ attention to the children and other migrants being held in alarming conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Speakers in the cages played the viral recording released by ProPublica last summer of kids wailing for their “mamá” and “papá” after having been separated from them at the border as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
“We want to bring this back to the consciousness of the American people,” RAICES CEO Jonathan Ryan told HuffPost. “One of the many unfortunate consequences of the repeated traumatic stories coming from the border is that, as horrified and angry as people have been, we also become desensitized. It’s important for people … to be confronted with the reality that this is about children, human beings, whose lives are forever affected.”
“This is being done in our name by people who we elected,” he added. “And if we don’t do something to stop this, this will become who we are.”
About two dozen cages were dropped around the city from about 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., Ryan said. By midafternoon most of them had been taken down by police or city employees, with three remaining around 2 p.m., per Ryan. The New York Police Department confirmed to HuffPost that more than half a dozen cages had been removed around Manhattan, but did not respond to questions as to why.
The online campaign associated with the installations recalls the family separations under President Donald Trump’s hard-line zero-tolerance policy, which led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents last year. The policy sparked protests nationwide and was reversed by executive order in late June. But a January report from the Department of Health and Human Services found the administration may have separated thousands more kids from their families than was previously known, and it did not know how many or whether they were reunited.
RAICES also wants people to become aware of other issues migrants face, Ryan said.
He noted undocumented immigrant families are still separated “routinely” at the border, including when migrant kids are split from other guardians like uncles and aunts or older siblings. Separations occur inside the country too, he said, when a child’s undocumented mom or dad is arrested by immigration agents, for instance in a workplace raid.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended over 109,000 people at the border in April ― more than double the number of migrants detained during that month last year. A majority of the migrants apprehended were either families traveling together or unaccompanied kids.
A Department of Homeland Security watchdog, reporting on Border Patrol facilities in El Paso, Texas, found last month that detained migrants were kept in dirty and extremely crowded conditions, forcing some people to stand on toilets to get some breathing room.
Last week, Trump said he reached an agreement with Mexico that includes “rapidly” returning to Mexico anyone who crosses the border seeking asylum in the U.S. Advocates are concerned about the dangerous conditions in cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, where more migrants will now be forced to wait as their claims are processed.
“When the American people hear stories of this problem being fixed by the ‘remain in Mexico’ policy, it hasn’t been fixed, it’s just further from their view,” Ryan said. “The suffering will only increase.”
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Ah, life in the ivory tower of the Article III Federal Judiciary, where you seldom are confronted with the human faces or ugly reality of your abuses and failures to protect the human rights of others.
The “Remain in Mexico” Program is an ongoing affront to our Constitution, the rule of law, and simple human decency for which the judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who are enabling this ongoing humanitarian outrage and giving it “legal cover” should be held fully morally and historically accountable!
