Category: Asylum Office

THE HILL: Welcoming Refugees & Other Immigrants Makes Countries Happier!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/421768-countries-that-welcome-refugees-and-immigrants-are-happier

Megan A. Carney writes for The Hill:

The Department of Health and Human Services recently reported that nearly 15,000 children are being held in immigrant detention centers across the United States. Most, if not all of these children are asylum-seekers, fleeing conditions of abject violence and poverty in their home countries. Regardless of one’s outlook on immigration, it is hard not to feel extremely saddened at the thought of so many children locked up, away from their loved ones and during the holiday season no less. It is even harder to fathom how this present scenario is making anyone happy. Imagine being separated from your family this holiday season.

Recent research shows that societies more open and welcoming to refugees and immigrants experience much higher happiness gains. Based on the findings of their research, the Migration Policy Institute concluded that “policies that contribute to migrant happiness are likely to create a win-win situation for both immigrants and natives.” In other words, both native- and foreign-born populations fare better in terms of overall happiness — also referred to as subjective well-being in the social sciences — when given a policy and social environment that accepts and promotes immigration.

Conversely, oppressive or negative attitudes toward immigrants and refugees are associated with declines in subjective well-being. Findings from a recent survey of 27 nations by the Pew Research Center suggest that many people worldwide, including a whopping 82 percent of Greeks, 72 percent of Hungarians, 71 percent of Italians, and 58 percent of Germans oppose immigration. That’s (potentially) a lot of unhappy people.

Policies and practices that restrict immigration such as building border walls, placing bans on certain nationalities from entering a country, and detaining and deporting individuals who lack legal status, may not only lead to happiness declines. They also heighten people’s fears and anxieties, predisposing them to negative psychological and physical health outcomes.

My research with Latin American communities in the U.S. for instance, has shown that immigrants’ fears and anxieties around the possibility of surveillance, detention, and deportation can lead to poor health in the form of depression, anxiety disorders, and avoidance of health care settings and providers.

What distinguishes societies that are more accepting of immigrants versus those that are less accepting?

This is a question that has been at the center of my own research in comparing contexts of immigrant reception in the U.S. and Italy for several years. In Italy, I’ve been particularly intrigued by the emergence of solidarity initiatives and networks between citizens and noncitizens that seek to collectivize risk and improve overall material and subjective well-being.

Building on findings from the medical and social sciences that societies rich in social capital, less unequal, and more egalitarian show higher life expectancies on average, one hypothesis of this research is that the promise of improved subjective well-being incentivizes people to enact solidarities such as take actions to feel aligned with one another — across lines of race, class and citizenship.

At a time of especially pronounced hostilities toward refugees and immigrants in the U.S., it is perhaps unsurprising that the U.S. trails far behind (18th) in world happiness rankings. Punitive immigration policies and negative attitudes toward immigrants not only harm the people directly targeted. These practices may also represent a sort of self-harm to the segment of the population that is native-born.

As the end of the year draws to a close, many of us exchange gifts because we think it will bring some shred of happiness. In our quest to spread this joy and bring more of it into our lives, perhaps this year more of us can act more humanely and compassionately toward refugees, asylum-seekers, immigrants, and other displaced persons who comprise an ever-growing segment of the global population.

Megan A. Carney is assistant professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and a Public Voices Fellow with The Op-Ed Project. She is the author of “The Unending Hunger: Tracing Women and Food Insecurity Across Borders” and director of the UA Center for Regional Food Studies.

TAGS MEGAN A. CARNEY IMMIGRATION CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANTS CHRISTMAS
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Countries that allow themselves to be “led” by sociopaths, not so much!
PWS
12-26-18

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

NQRFPT: I’M ALREADY PROVED RIGHT ON NIELSEN’S LATEST HAREBRAINED SCHEME TO SCREW ASYLUM SEEKERS: Mexico is “Completely Unprepared,” DHS is Massively Incompetent, The “Real Experts” Among Advocacy Groups & NGOs Are Sharpening Their Litigation Knives, & The House Is Getting Ready To Hold Nielsen & Her Toadies Accountable For The Inevitable Deaths, Rapes, & Assaults On Asylum Seekers In Mexico!

https://apple.news/ABxGIu1zQSumaDYsJutu1uA

Scott Bixby reports for The Daily Beast:

Opponents of the Trump administration’s plan requiring all migrants seeking asylum in the United States to remain in Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings have vowed to challenge the policy, which they say—like nearly every other aspect of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda—almost certainly violates constitutional protections, international treaties, and federal law.

The policy, dubbed the “Migration Protection Protocols” by the Department of Homeland Security, is “disgraceful and illegal” and “will result in the loss of life for vulnerable people seeking safety,” said Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “This president has, again, chosen to exploit and endanger the lives of women and children to advance his own self-serving agenda.”

“Pushing asylum-seekers back into Mexico is absolutely illegal under U.S. immigration law,” Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at the nonprofit Human Rights First, told reporters on a conference call on Friday morning. “This scheme will increase, rather than decrease, the humanitarian debacle at the border.”

Under the proposed rule change, migrants who attempt to claim asylum in the United States at the southern border will almost universally be held in Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings, a process that could take years.

Calling the move “a historic measure,” the Department of Homeland Security revealed the plan on Thursday, at the same time Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was being grilled by members of the House Judiciary Committee on the Trump administration’s numerous immigration controversies, including its family separation policy (the existence of which Nielsen denied) and the recent death of a 7-year-old migrant girl in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In the announcement, Nielsen said that “aliens trying to game the system to get into our country illegally will no longer be able to disappear into the United States, where many skip their court dates.” Instead, “they will wait for an immigration court decision while they are in Mexico. ‘Catch and release’ will be replaced with ‘catch and return.’ ”

Mexico’s foreign ministry, contradicting the foreign policy platform that helped sweep the country’s new president into power, said that it “will authorize, for humanitarian reasons and temporarily, the entry of certain foreign persons from the United States who have entered the country through a port of entry or who have been apprehended between ports of entry, have been interviewed by the authorities of migratory control of that country, and have received a summons to appear before an immigration judge.” (The country’s top immigration official now says that Mexico is completely unprepared to fulfill its end of the bargain.)

Organizations on the ground say that the policy is a clear violation of both federal and international law, as well as constitutional guarantees of due process—and plan to fight it in court.

“This administration knows that the border area is unsafe for women and children,” Brané said, “and still, this administration doubles down on policies that make everyone less safe.”

“The administration seems to have no plan for implementation,” said Kennji Kizuka, a senior researcher and refugee protection policy analyst at Human Rights First. “Will lawyers be able to visit their clients before hearings? Where will those hearings take place?… Access to counsel is one of the most important factors in whether or not an asylum seeker is able to live in safety in the United States.”

In addition to Article 33 of the United Nations Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which prevents the forcible return of asylum-seekers to countries where they face persecution, torture or death—dubbed the principle non-refoulement in international law—advocates pointed to laws passed by Congress that mandate the admission of unaccompanied children seeking asylum at the U.S. border as being blatantly violated by the president’s policy.

“Refusing to process children very clearly violates the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, written specifically to protect this vulnerable population,” said Lisa Frydman, vice president for regional policy and initiatives at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a nonprofit that works on behalf of unaccompanied children who enter the U.S. immigration system alone. Speaking on a call with reporters, Frydman recounted interviews with unaccompanied children held in shelters in Tijuana, the conditions of which are “squalid,” Frydman said.

“Unaccompanied children are being systematically denied access to apply for protection in the United States” as they seek asylum protections, Frydman said, and their efforts to avoid both U.S. and Mexican immigration authorities are putting them in even more danger of exploitation.

Some of the children have even taken to living on the streets of Tijuana, Frydman said, where they have no access to medical treatment, food, or protection from those who might exploit them. The dangers are extreme: just this week, two Honduran children were murdered in Tijuana after being stopped by would-be robbers as they attempted to move from one shelter to another.

“All of our organizations have been on the ground in Tijuana recently and are united in our assessment that conditions there are very unstable and very unsafe,” said Wendy Young, president of KIND. Those conditions, Young continued, “are going to further deteriorate” as the number of asylum-seekers stuck at the border increases.

A 2017 study by Human Rights First documented 921 crimes against migrants committed by federal or state officials in Mexico, where nearly 70 percent of migrant children are held in “prison-like” immigration detention facilities, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, despite Mexican laws prohibiting children from being held in such facilities.

These unsafe conditions in Mexico make forcing asylum-seekers to remain their a blatant violation of the principle of non-refoulement, advocates said, and therefore a violation of international law.

“These migrant camps are not safe for children,” said Dr. Alan Shapiro, a pediatrician who co-founded Terra Firma, an organization that provides medical care to undocumented children. “They are not enclosed camps, they do not have roofs over their head.” On a recent visit to one camp in Tijuana, Dr. Shapiro said, he saw a two-year-old child who had recently suffered a seizure and had no access to medical care, or even proper food.

“This child was eating powdered baby formula out of the can—there was no water for them to mix it with,” Shapiro said.

“There are very real risks to unaccompanied children,” said Leah Chavla, a policy adviser at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “This is a system that is ripe for exploitation… Mothers that we’ve spoken with have flagged that there are a lot of new faces around the camps and they don’t necessarily feel comfortable leaving their children with strangers.”

Advocates also pointed to serious logistical hurdles for asylum-seekers to receive proper legal counsel as they navigate the labyrinthine immigration system from outside the United States, pointing to those difficulties as potential violations of due process.

“It is unclear how attorneys in the United States would be able to work in and access their clients in Mexico—if at all,” said Jennifer Podkul, senior director for policy and advocacy at KIND. “Moreover, legal services capacity in Mexico would be insufficient to address these needs or to ensure the provision of accurate legal information and preparation of cases in accordance with U.S., rather than Mexican, law.”

Those difficulties are doubled for unaccompanied children, Podkul said, in light of their age and limited ability to testify in their own defense. “Without quality legal representation, unaccompanied children and other asylum seekers will be unable to fully present their cases for protection, and as a result, may be returned to harm, danger, or death.”

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Imagine what it would be like to have a Government committed to following the law, including the generous humanitarian standards for asylum, rather than coming up with costly, impractical, and often illegal schemes to avoid the law.

Of course, following the law would likely result in many more asylum seekers being rapidly accepted after screening and settling down to lead peaceful, law-abiding, productive lives in the U.S. That would be good for the country, but bad for the racist White Nationalist agenda that this Administration peddles to its so-called “base” (which actually represents a minority of U.S. opinion, but a minority that strategically props up a minority government controlled by a minority party and an incompetent, out of control, would-be autocrat).

PWS

12-23-18

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

I WAS RIGHT (BARELY): CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS SAVES ASYLUM & RULE OF LAW — ADMINISTRATION’S REQUEST TO IMPLEMENT ORDER TRUNCATING ASYLUM LAW TURNED DOWN 5-4!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/us/politics/supreme-court-asylum-trump.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fadam-liptak&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

By Adam Liptak  @ N Tmes:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday refused to revive a Trump administration initiative barring migrants who enter the country illegally from seeking asylum.

The court was closely divided, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the four-member liberal wing in turning down the administration’s request for a stay of a trial judge’s order blocking the program.

The court’s brief order gave no reasons for its action. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said they would have granted the stay.

In a proclamation issued on Nov. 9, President Trump barred migrants from applying for asylum unless they made the request at a legal checkpoint. Only those applying at a port of entry would be eligible, Mr. Trump said, invoking what he said were his national security powers to protect the nation’s borders.

Lower courts blocked the initiative, ruling that a federal law plainly allowed asylum applications from people who had entered the country unlawfully.

“Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States,” the relevant federal statute says, may apply for asylum — “whether or not at a designated port of arrival.”

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order blocking the initiative nationwide. “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority,” Judge Tigar wrote, “he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden.”

Mr. Trump attacked Judge Tigar, calling him an “Obama judge.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took issue with the characterization, saying that federal judges apply the law without regard to the policies of the presidents who appointed them.

A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, refused to stay Judge Tigar’s order. The majority opinion was written by Judge Jay S. Bybee, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.

“We are acutely aware of the crisis in the enforcement of our immigration laws,” Judge Bybee wrote. “The burden of dealing with these issues has fallen disproportionately on the courts of our circuit. And as much as we might be tempted to revise the law as we think wise, revision of the laws is left with the branch that enacted the laws in the first place — Congress.”

The Trump administration then urged the Supreme Court to issue a stay of Judge Tigar’s ruling, saying the president was authorized to address border security by imposing the new policy.

“The United States has experienced a surge in the number of aliens who enter the country unlawfully from Mexico and, if apprehended, claim asylum and remain in the country while the claim is adjudicated, with little prospect of actually being granted that discretionary relief,” Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco told the justices.

“The president, finding that this development encourages dangerous and illegal border crossings and undermines the integrity of the nation’s borders, determined that a temporary suspension of entry by aliens who fail to present themselves for inspection at a port of entry along the southern border is in the nation’s interest,” Mr. Francisco wrote.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing groups challenging the policy, said Congress had made a different determination, one that only Congress can alter.

“After World War II and the horrors experienced by refugees who were turned away by the United States and elsewhere, Congress joined the international community in adopting standards for the treatment of those fleeing persecution,” lawyers with the A.C.L.U. wrote. “A key safeguard is the assurance, explicitly and unambiguously codified, that one fleeing persecution can seek asylum regardless of where, or how, he or she enters the country.

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I had observed that attacking Federal Judges and dissing the Supremes and the Federal Courts as an institution was unlikely to help win the heart and mind of Chief Justice Roberts. Disturbingly, however, four of his colleagues appear to be ready and willing to hand the country over to Trump and Putin.

Stay well, RBG! The future of our American Republic depends on you and the your four colleagues who were willing to stand up for the rule of law against tyranny.

PWS

12-21-18

Related posts:

  1. WHILE LIFE-TENURED FEDERAL JUDGES CHICKEN OUT, FORMER ASYLUM OFFICER DOUG STEPHENS SPEAKS OUT IN NYT VIDEO EDITORIAL AGAINST JUDICIALLY-ENABLED NATIONAL DISGRACE OF “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” — “A former asylum officer says ‘remain in Mexico’ and other policies undermining asylum aren’t just racist, they’re illegal.”
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SCOFFLAWS’ LATEST PLOT AGINST ASYLUM SEEKERS SURE TO CAUSE INTERNATIONAL CHAOS & DRAW NEW LEGAL CHALLENGES – No Wonder These Immoral Cowards Have Such Fear Of Truly Independent Judges (Not To Be Confused With EOIR’s “Captive Judges”)

HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES COULD BACKFIRE

 

  • “The Devil is in the Details.” Typical for this group of incompetents, nobody at DHS or in the Mexican Government actually appears to be ready to implement this “historic change.”
  • Expect chaos. After all, the ink wasn’t even dry on Judge Sullivan’s order in Grace v. Whitaker for USCIS to rewrite its credible fear “Policy Memorandum” to comply with law. Want to bet on whether the “credible fear” interviews in Mexico or at the border will be lawful? How about the reaction of Judge Sullivan if they ignore his order? (Nielsen and her fellow scofflaws might want to consult with Gen. Flynn on that one. This is one judge with limited patience for high level Government officials who run roughshod over the law, are in contempt of court, or perjure themselves.)
  • By screwing around with procedures, the Administration opens itself up for systemic challenges in more U.S. District Courts instead of being able to limit litigation to Courts of Appeals on petitions to review individual removal orders.
  • Every “panic attack” by this Administration on the rule of law and the most vulnerable energizes more legal opposition. And, it’s not just within the immigration bar and NGOs any more. “Big Law” and many of the brightest recent graduates of top law schools across the country are getting involved in the “New Due Process Army.”
  • By concentrating asylum applicants at a limited number of ports of entry, pro bono legal groups could actually find it easier to represent almost all applicants.
  • Representation of asylum seekers generally improves results, sometimes by as much as 5X.
  • It could be easier for individuals who are free and authorized to work in Mexico to obtain counsel and prepare their cases than it is for individuals detained in substandard conditions in obscure locations in the U.S.
  • Freed of the intentionally coercive and demoralizing effects of DHS detention, more applicants will be willing to fully litigate their claims, including taking available administrative and judicial appeals.
  • As more cases reach the Courts of Appeals (primarily in the 5th & 9th Circuits) more “real” Article III Judges will “have their eyes opened” to the absolute travesty that passes for “justice” and “due process” in the Immigration Courts under Trump.
  • Shoddily reasoned “precedents” from the BIA and the AG are already failing in the Article III Courts on a regular basis. Three “bit the dust” just within the last week. Expect this trend to accelerate.
  • The 5th and 9th Circuits will find their dockets overwhelmed with Not Quite Ready For Prime Time (“NQRFPT”) cases “dumped” on them by DOJ and EOIR and are likely to react accordingly.
  • The last massive assault on Due Process in Immigration Court by the DOJ under Ashcroft basically caused a “mini-rebellion” in the Article III Courts. There were numerous “remands for redos” and Circuit Court rulings harshly reversing and publicly criticizing overly restrictive treatment of asylum cases by Immigration Judges and the BIA, particularly in the area of credibility determinations. Expect the Circuit Courts to “reverse and revise” many of the current anti-asylum precedents from the BIA and the AG.
  • With almost universal representation, a level playing field supervised by Article III Courts, and all Immigration Judges actually forced to fairly apply the generous standards for asylum enunciated by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, and by the BIA in the (oft cited but seldom actually applied) Matter of Mogharrabi, I wouldn’t be surprised to see grant rates for Northern Triangle applicants exceed 50% (where most experts believe they belong).
  • Overall, there’s a respectable chance that the end result of this ill-conceived policy will be an exposure of the rampant fraud, intellectual dishonesty, and disregard for the true rule of law in this Administration’s treatment of bona fide asylum seekers.
  • Inevitably, however, asylum seekers will continue to die in Mexico while awaiting hearings. DHS politicos probably will find themselves on a regular basis before enraged House Committees attempting to justify their deadly, cruel, and incompetent policies. This will be a “culture shock” for those used to the “hear no evil, see no evil” attitude of the GOP House.
  • The Administration appears to have “designed” another of their “built to fail” systems. If they shift the necessary Immigration Judges to the border, the 1.1 million backlog elsewhere will continue to mushroom. If they work on the backlog, the “border waiting line” will grow, causing extreme pressure from the Mexican Government, Congress, and perhaps the Article III Courts. Every death of an asylum seeker (there were three just within the last week or so) will be laid at DHS’s feet.

NOTE TO THE NDPA:

 The outstanding historical analysis by Judge Emmet Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker illustrates what we already know: For years, the Executive Branch through EOIR has been intentionally applying “unduly restrictive standards” to asylum seekers to artificially reduce the number of grants in violation of both the Refugee Act of 1980 and our international obligations. This disingenuous treatment has particularly targeted bona fide asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle, those asserting claims based on a “particular social group,” unrepresented individuals, women, and children.

Worse yet, this totally cynical and disingenuous Administration is using the intentionally and unlawfully “skewed system” and “illegal denials” as well as just downright fabricated statistics and knowingly false narratives to paint a bogus picture of asylum seekers and their lawyers as the “abusers” and the Government as the “defenders of the rule of law.” What poppycock, when we all know the exact opposite is the real truth! Only courageous (mostly pro bono) lawyers and some conscientious judges at both the Immigration Court and Article III levels are standing up for the real rule of law against a scofflaw Administration and its outrageous plan to send genuine refugees back into harm’s way.

Nowhere in the racially charged xenophobic actions and rhetoric of Trump, Sessions, and Whitaker, nor in the intentionally derogatory and demonstrably dishonest rhetoric of Nielsen, nor in the crabbed, intentionally overly restrictive interpretations of asylum law by today’s BIA is there even a hint of the generous humanitarian letter and spirit of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees or the “non-narrow” interpretation of “particular social group” so well described and documented by Judge Sullivan. On the contrary, we can well imagine folks like this gleefully and self-righteously pushing the refugee vessel St. Louis out to sea or happily slamming the door in the face of desperate Jewish refugees from Europe who would later die in the Holocaust.

Now is the time to force the Article III Courts and Congress to confront this Administration’s daily violations of law and human rights. We can develop favorable case precedents in the Article III Courts, block unethical and intentionally illegal interference by the Attorney General with Due Process in Immigration Court, and advocate changes in the law and procedures that will finally require the Executive Branch and the Immigration Courts to live up to the abandoned but still valid promise of “becoming the world’s best tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all.” And, the “all” certainly includes the most vulnerable among us: refugees claiming asylum!

In the end, through a combination of the ballot box, Congress, the Article III Courts, and informed public opinion we will be able to thwart the rancid White Nationalist immigration agenda of this Administration and return honest, reasonable Government that works within the Constitution and governs in the overall best interests of our country to the United States.

Thanks for all you do! Keep fighting the “good fight!”

Go for it!

Due Process Forever! Scofflaw Administration Never!

PWS

12-21-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

HERE’S WHAT’S BOGUS ABOUT NIELSEN’S LATEST RESTRICTIONIST SCHEME!

Ever the reliable sycophant and incompetent manager, Nielsen rolls out yet another cruel, ill-considered scheme for mistreating asylum seekers instead of doing her job the way it should be done. Like all the rest of these White Nationalist repressive measures, this one’s likely to fail. The only real questions are how and how soon?

HERE’S WHAT’S BOGUS ABOUT NIELSEN’S LATEST RESTRICTIONIST SCHEME!

  • There is no known evidence of any widespread “asylum fraud” at the Southern Border; most arriving asylum applicants either wait at a port of entry to be processed or turn themselves in to the Border Patrol immediately upon entry;
  • As pointed out by Judge Sullivan in Grace v. Whitaker, the law requires that a much lower standard be applied at the “credible fear” stage; naturally, that means that many individuals who pass credible fear will not ultimately be granted asylum;
  • Not being granted asylum by an Immigration Judge does not mean that the asylum application is frivolous or lacks merit; most individuals face actual danger or death upon return, but whether or not they get asylum depends on difficult, somewhat arcane legal determinations about “causation;”
  • Also, as pointed out by Judge Sullivan in Grace, the Immigration Courts under the Trump Administration have been applying unlawful and unduly restrictive standards to asylum seekers from Central America; these illegal actions undoubtedly have artificially suppressed the asylum grant rate;
  • Contrary to Nielsen, the Government’s own numbers as analyzed by TRAC show that 35% of asylum applications are granted by Immigration Judges following merits hearings; the merits asylum grant rates for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are 23%, 20%, & 18%, much higher than Nielsen’s bogus “nine in ten denied;”
  • Unquestionably, Immigration Courts grant rates have been suppressed by illegal interpretations by DOJ and, as widely reported, biased anti-asylum attitudes by some U.S. Immigration Judges;
  • Contrary to Nielsen’s claim, nearly 100% of asylum seekers who are given an opportunity to be represented by counsel appear for their hearings;
  • It’s highly unlikely that there actually are 786,000 “real” asylum cases in Immigration Court; that’s because court procedures require the filing of all possible applications at the earliest point in time even if they might not actually pursued at the merits hearing; in some cases, asylum is a “backup” application rather than the primary application for relief;
  • As a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Pereira v. Sessions, many asylum seekers are now eligible for “cancellation of removal” based on time in the U.S. and close relatives and will likely pursue that form of relief instead;
  • The Immigration Court backlog is more the result of shifting priorities, poor enforcement strategies, chronic understaffing, and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” by successive Administrations than it is because of any actions taken by asylum applicants to delay the process;
  • Sending more Immigration Judges to border locations to hear cases of those waiting in Mexico is likely to artificially increase the court backlog by diverting resources from cases pending in Immigration Courts in interior locations;
  • The Administration has yet to put forth a reasonable plan for reducing the Immigration Court backlog;
  • Given known dangerous conditions in Mexico, vulnerable asylum seekers are unlikely to receive effective protection from the Mexican Government while waiting in Mexico.

 

What if we had a Government actually committed to making the generous asylum system enacted by Congress and described by Judge Sullivan and Judge Tigar work to protect refugees, rather than working to make it fail to punish and “deter” some of the world’s most courageous, determined, and vulnerable individuals who actually could help our country if they were given a fair chance in a fair system?

 

PWS

12-20-18

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!
  3. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  4. WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”

NIELSEN LAUNCHES NEW ATTACK ON ASYLUM SEEKERS AT BORDER, ALONG WITH BOGUS STATS AND FALSE NARRATIVES! – Could This Latest Move Backfire On White Nationalist Regime?

Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen Announces Historic Action to Confront Illegal Immigration

U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent this bulletin at 12/20/2018 10:42 AM EST

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 20, 2018

Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen Announces Historic Action to Confront Illegal Immigration

Announces Migration Protection Protocols

WASHINGTON – Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen M. Nielsen announced historic action to confront the illegal immigration crisis facing the United States.  Effective immediately, the United States will begin the process of invoking Section 235(b)(2)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.  Under the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), individuals arriving in or entering the United States from Mexico—illegally or without proper documentation—may be returned to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings.

“Today we are announcing historic measures to bring the illegal immigration crisis under control,” said Secretary Nielsen.  “We will confront this crisis head on, uphold the rule of law, and strengthen our humanitarian commitments.  Aliens trying to game the system to get into our country illegally will no longer be able to disappear into the United States, where many skip their court dates.  Instead, they will wait for an immigration court decision while they are in Mexico.  ‘Catch and release’ will be replaced with ‘catch and return.’  In doing so, we will reduce illegal migration by removing one of the key incentives that encourages people from taking the dangerous journey to the United States in the first place.  This will also allow us to focus more attention on those who are actually fleeing persecution.

“Let me be clear:  we will undertake these steps consistent with all domestic and international legal obligations, including our humanitarian commitments.  We have notified the Mexican government of our intended actions.  In response, Mexico has made an independent determination that they will commit to implement essential measures on their side of the border.  We expect affected migrants will receive humanitarian visas to stay on Mexican soil, the ability to apply for work, and other protections while they await a U.S. legal determination.”

Background

Illegal aliens have exploited asylum loopholes at an alarming rate.  Over the last five years, DHS has seen a 2000 percent increase in aliens claiming credible fear (the first step to asylum), as many know it will give them an opportunity to stay in our country, even if they do not actually have a valid claim to asylum.  As a result, the United States has an overwhelming asylum backlog of more than 786,000 pending cases.  Last year alone the number of asylum claims soared 67 percent compared to the previous year.  Most of these claims are not meritorious—in fact nine out of ten asylum claims are not granted by a federal immigration judge.  However, by the time a judge has ordered them removed from the United States, many have vanished.

Process

  • Aliens trying to enter the U.S. to claim asylum will no longer be released into our country, where they often disappear before a court can determine their claim’s merits.
  • Instead, those aliens will be processed by DHS and given a “Notice to Appear” for their immigration court hearing.
  • While they wait in Mexico, the Mexican government has made its own determination to provide such individuals humanitarian visas, work authorization, and other protections. Aliens will have access to immigration attorneys and to the U.S. for their court hearings.
  • Aliens whose claims are upheld by U.S. judges will be allowed in. Those without valid claims will be deported to their home countries.Anticipated Benefits
  • As we implement, illegal immigration and false asylum claims are expected to decline.
  • Aliens will not be able to disappear into U.S. before court decision.
  • More attention can be focused on more quickly assisting legitimate asylum-seekers, as fraudsters are disincentivized from making the journey.
  • Precious border security personnel and resources will be freed up to focus on protecting our territory and clearing the massive asylum backlog.
  • Vulnerable populations will get the protection they need while they await a determination in Mexico.

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. THE HILL: NOLAN ON THE CURRENT BORDER CRISIS
  3. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  4. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!

“OUR GANG” OF RETIRED JUDGES ISSUES STATEMENT ON GRACE v. WHITAKER!

Thanks to “Our Leader” Judge Jeffrey Chase for making this happen!

Retired Immigration Judges and Former Member of the Board of Immigration Appeals Statement on Grace v. Whitaker

December 19, 2018

Today’s decision in Grace v. Whitaker provides a lesson in what it truly means to return to the rule of law. In a 107-page decision, Judge Sullivan reminded the current administration of the following truths: that more than 30 years ago (in a decision successfully argued by our former colleague,Immigration Judge Dana Marks), our nation’s highest court recognized that the purpose of the 1980 Refugee Act was to honor our international treaty obligation towards refugees, and that the language of that treaty was meant to be interpreted flexibly, to adapt to changes over time in the agents, victims, and means of persecution, and to be applied fairly to all. The decision affirms that our asylum laws are meant to be applied on an individual, case-by-case basis and not according to a predetermined categorical rule. The decision wisely considered the interpretation of the UNHCR Handbook, and afforded it greater weight than the personal agenda of a former Attorney General in determining our legal obligations to afford protection to refugees who are victims of domestic violence.

The decision imposes a permanent injunction on DHS from applying the awful decision of the former Attorney General in Matter of A-B- in its credible fear determinations. This reasoned decision will prevent this administration from continuing to deny women credibly fearing rape, domestic violence, beatings, shootings, and death in their countries of origin from having the right to their day in court. We applaud Judge Sullivan’s just decision, as well as the truly heroic efforts of the lawyers at the ACLU and Center for Gender and Refugee Studies that made such outcome possible. We also thank all of the attorneys, organizations, judges, experts, and others whose contributions lent invaluable support to this effort.

Hon. Steven R. Abrams

Hon. Sarah M. Burr

Hon. Teofilo Chapa

Hon. George T. Chew

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase

Hon. Cecelia M. Espenoza

Hon. Noel Ferris

Hon. John F. Gossart, Jr.

Hon. Rebecca Jamil

Hon. William Joyce

Hon. Carol King

Hon. Elizabeth A. Lamb

Hon. Margaret McManus

Hon. Charles Pazar

Hon. George Proctor

Hon. John Richardson

Hon. Lory D. Rosenberg

Hon. Susan Roy

Hon. Paul W. Schmidt

Hon. Polly A. Webber

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

Thanks to Jeffrey and the rest of the “Gang” for speaking out so promptly and forcefully!

PWS

12-20-18

 

Related posts:

  1. NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!
  2. SCOFFLAWS THWARTED: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE EMMET G. SULLIVAN EXPOSES SESSIONS’ S OUTRAGEOUSLY ILLEGAL WHITE NATIONALIST ATTACK ON U.S. ASYLUM LAW — MATTER OF A-B- EXCEEDED SCOFFLAW A.G.’S AUTHORITY — Grace v. Whitaker
  3. JUDGE SULLIVAN STUFFS TRUMP’S REQUEST TO KEEP ON VIOLATING ASYLUM LAW PENDING APPEAL — Stay Denied In Grace v. Whitaker!
  4. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!

KAKISTOCRACY IN ACTION: “APPLY @ THE PORT OF ENTRY” IS A SCOFFLAW HOAX — Why Aren’t Nielsen & Other Administration Officials Being Held Personally Liable For Life-Threatening Dereliction Of Duty?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/19/us-mexico-border-migrants-claim-asylum-difficulties?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Ana Adlerstein reports for The Guardian:

After the death of seven-year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin, the US Department of Homeland Security asked parents to “not put themselves or their children at risk attempting to enter illegally”. Instead they urged: “Please present yourselves at a port of entry and seek to enter legally and safely.”

But what the US authorities failed to acknowledge after the young girl’s death just after she was taken into US custody, was just how difficult it is to ask for asylum at any port of entry into the US along the sprawling border with Mexico.

Those seeking asylum – like Guatemalan migrants Jakelin and her father – face a difficult task in actually making a claim, something that often forces migrants to instead risk their lives in illegal treks across the desert. This is especially true at the more than 40 smaller border crossings, such as the one nearest to where the Maquins crossed.

Advocates say it has become increasingly and deliberately difficult to claim asylum at these remote spots. Migrants are often illegally turned away, despite a constant threat of violence from drug gangs, traffickers, smugglers and even the local police. They say that it is only when local activists try to exert pressure on border officials that asylum claims are logged. When no one is watching, it becomes almost impossible.

Just take Alberto’s example. If Alberto, who does not want his real name used out of a fear of retribution, had known the extent of cartel control in the small Mexican border town before he showed up there one month ago, he says he never would have come.

“I would have stayed in Mexico City and asked for asylum there,” he said. But by the time he was kidnapped, thrown out of a truck with a bag over his head, and told he would be killed if the men with guns ever saw him again, it was too late. Alberto had to seek asylum immediately.

Alberto spent a sleepless week at a northern Mexican shelter, trying to figure out how to present an asylum claim. He heard from a Nicaraguan man that the nearest US port of entry, Lukeville, was not accepting claims and that border agents had thrown out the man by his shirt collar. But Alberto tried anyway. On 28 November, he presented himself to make a claim with accompaniment from the shelter. He too was turned away, after officials told him Lukeville was not a 24-hour port of entry and despite his fears he could be killed for hanging around on the border.

A sign warns against illegal smuggling and immigration near Lukeville, Arizona.
Pinterest
A sign warns against illegal smuggling and immigration near Lukeville, Arizona. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Antelope Wells, the closest port of entry to where Jakelin and her father crossed, receives possibly the least amount of traffic of any port of entry across the US-Mexican border. “There is literally nothing there,” said Nia Rucker of the New Mexico American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Those who monitor the border describe just how hard making a claim there can be. Juan Ortiz, a University of Arizona PhD candidate, took the four-hour drive from Tucson on 17 December to see Antelope Wells for himself. The two border officers on duty that day told him they would discourage people from seeking asylum there at a port with such limited capacity.

Experts and advocates up and down the border share a similar skepticism of small border posts. Though US border officials say asylum seekers are being accepted at all border ports of entry, activists who have tested the system paint a similar picture of US officials unwilling or unable to accept asylum claims – no matter that the administration is asking migrants to present themselves there.

Francisco Lemus of the Aguilas del Desierto was told at Tecate, California, that claims could only be processed in San Ysidro or Calexico. Christina Patiño Houle of the Equal Voices Network said Progreso, Texas, had not been accepting claims, nor had Roma, Texas, last time she checked. Instead they were sending asylum seekers to Hidalgo, Texas, the border town to Reynosa, which has been dubbed “the migrant kidnapping capital” of Mexico.

At other small posts such as Sasabe, Arizona, and Del Rio, Texas, local advocates had not heard of any migrants recently seeking asylum.

Activists with legal not-for-profits simply do not have the resources to consistently monitor these remote outposts.

Mayor Ramón Rodríguez Prieto of Puerto Palomas, Chihuahua, has not yet even tried to pressure officials across the border in Columbus, New Mexico, to accept asylum claims. Three weeks ago three separate families showed up to his small municipal shelter reporting that they had been turned away.

Further south, in Piedras Negras, Catholic priest José Guadalupe Valdés Alvarado, or “Padre Pepe”, feels as if he himself is responsible for keeping the Eagle Pass, Texas, port of entry open. He runs the migrant shelter there and some days only one person is let in, others up to 10.

Border agents have told Valdés Alvarado that whether the port of entry accepts asylum seekers depends on whether he maintains order, that no one storms the wall or tries to cross the river. So the priest works hard, educating migrants on credible fears, pre-screening them before taking their names. The border agents’ word is not a guaranteed assurance, though: as an approaching caravan of migrants began to dominate headlines before the US midterm elections Eagle Pass stopped accepting asylum claims for the better part of a week.

Activists supporting the port of entry between Agua Prieta and Douglas, Arizona, also felt the impact of the caravan. The small, under-the-radar port had shuttled families with young children up to 10 at a time. But the number of asylum seekers received dropped substantially in mid-November. And when they began to bring a group of Central American transgender women to present themselves for asylum, the number of accepted claims lowered to just two per day.

Local attorney Perla Ramos said that all of a sudden, asylum seekers had to wait all night outside to enter the facility. Some women became ill, others got sick in the cold desert air.

Ramos isn’t afraid of Douglas closing its doors entirely. Groups on either side of the border have strong connections between churches, legal clinics and other solidarity organizations. They will try to keep a trickle of claims flowing.

But elsewhere on the border, Alberto has moved on. With outside support, Alberto was safely transported to a larger port of entry with legal teams, clergy, shelter coordinators and others ensuring that asylum claims there were being accepted. He was placed on a list, his number was called, and he is now awaiting an asylum hearing in detention.

He hopes it will work: “I mean, if I don’t get in now, I’m going to have to try again.” He admitted he feels that he has no other options. “If I didn’t die this time, I probably will next time. I don’t want that. It’s just really hard,” he said.

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

Where’s the accountability when the Government is the one breaking the law? Given the advance intelligence, the amount of attention on the border, and the obscene amounts of money wasted by this Administration on “publicity stunts” like “troops to the border,” pursuing frivolous litigation, abusive and useless prosecutions, child separation, unnecessary detention, and aimlessly placing cases of immigrants who aren’t going anywhere on already overloaded court dockets, (not to mention the bogus “Wall” a/k/a “Trump’s Folly”) the processing “problems” could be solved.

What’s it going to take to make this Administration obey the law?

PWS

12-19-18

Related posts:

  1. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  2. SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”
  3. SPRINT TO THE BOTTOM: Trump Administration Trashes Refugees & Human Rights In A Despicable Return To “1939-Style Fascism Lite!” — America’s Rancid Conduct & Negative Leadership Presages Another Worldwide Refugee Tragedy — This Time The Blood Will Be Directly On Our Hands!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

MOLLY OLMSTEAD & MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: Administration Should Heed Judge Sullivan’s and Judge Tigar’s Warnings: “The president and attorney general have no right to manipulate the law to accomplish their nativist agenda.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/federal-judge-ruling-trump-domestic-violence-asylum-rules.html

Olmstead & Stern write:

A federal judge on Wednesday struck down Justice Department rules that made it harder for asylum seekers to make successful claims based on fear of domestic abuse or gang violence, offering yet another judicial blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally rewrite immigration law.

In his ruling, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington concluded that the policies—which were rolled out by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June—were “arbitrary” and “capricious,” violating federal immigration law as crafted by Congress.

In his June order, Sessions sought to reverse a 2014 decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals, which held that victims of domestic violence may qualify for asylum. The BIA found at the time that women who are persecuted by their husbands but unable to leave their marriages or obtain help from law enforcement constitute a “particular social group,” one of the factors that would give them a right to seek asylum in the United States. A quirk in immigration law, however, permits the attorney general to singlehandedly reverse BIA decisions—and that’s precisely what Sessions tried to do, asserting that victims of domestic violence are not a “particular social group” because they are defined by their “vulnerability to private criminal activity” rather than a specific protected trait. He held that these women do not suffer true persecution because persecution is “something a government does.”

Sessions’ logic extended to victims of gang violence, since they, too, face persecution from private individuals, not directly from the government. He claimed that affected applicants may only receive asylum status if they demonstrate that their home government “condoned” violence against them, or demonstrated “complete helplessness” to stop it. “The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes—such as domestic violence or gang violence—or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime cannot itself establish an asylum claim,” he wrote.

In response to Sessions’ ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in August on behalf of a dozen asylum seekers, mostly women from Central America, fleeing sexual and physical violence. Asylum officers found the asylum seekers’ stories credible—but they were still scheduled for “expedited removal” because asylum officers found they did not have a “credible fear of persecution” under Sessions’ new rules.

On Wednesday, Sullivan rejected Sessions’ interpretation of the law. He found that “there is no legal basis for an effective categorical ban on domestic violence and gang-related claims.” Like other asylum-seekers, would-be refugees who bring these claims have a right to a credible fear interview; the attorney general cannot carve out an exception with no basis in the text of the statute. Sullivan then repudiated Sessions’ cramped definition of “persecution.” Under federal statute, the judge wrote, a refugee faces persecution if her home government is “unable or unwilling to control” violence against her. She need not prove that the government refused to help her, an overly stringent standard that Sessions had no power to impose.

Finally, Sullivan found that victims of domestic abuse and gang violence may receive asylum as members of a “particular social group.” Not every victim will be permitted to remain in the U.S. But members of social groups—such as married women trapped in abusive relationships—may prove that their government was unable to protect them from violence, thus qualifying them for asylum. And the government must grant all such applicants credible fear interviews to determine who qualifies. Thanks to Sullivan’s order, asylum seekers denied an interview under Sessions’ policy will now be allowed to make their case.

Wednesday is not the first time a federal judge has found that the Trump administration has overstepped its ability to interpret immigration law, crossing over into unlawful policy-making in its campaign to curb immigration. This past summer, a District judge in San Diego ruled that family separation violated immigrants’ due process rights and ordered that the government reunite families that were separated under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. And just this month, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked the administration for its attempt to rewrite a federal statute by denying asylum to immigrants who enter the country without authorization. The court affirmed an earlier decision by U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar holding that the new policy was unlawful. “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority,” Tigar wrote, “he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden.”

The Trump administration would do well to heed Tigar’s warning. Over and over again, the president and his allies have tried to deport more asylum applicants by misreading or simply ignoring immigration statutes. These actions are unlawfully capricious, as Sullivan sternly reminded the country on Wednesday. His message is clear: The president and attorney general have no right to manipulate the law to accomplish their nativist agenda.

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

This Administration has total contempt for Federal Courts and the rule of law. Just look at the ways in which the usually disingenuous Sessions routinely abused that term, along with his many bogus narratives and “legal positions” that were thinly veneered White Nationalist restrictionist “talking points.”

And, the Solicitor General and career lawyers in the DOJ whose job is supposed to be to uphold legal and ethical standards as “officers of the court” have gone “belly up.” They are obviously afraid to “just say no” to some of the invidiously motivated and semi-frivolous legal positions put forth by this Administration, particularly by Sessions, that are tying up the Federal Courts.

As I have predicted, I think that this Administration will put an end to the de facto role of the Solicitor’s General’s Office as the “Tenth Justice” and has also destroyed the “extra credibility” that Federal Courts traditionally assumed from DOJ lawyers by virtue of their oaths of office and the idea that they “speak for justice” rather than presenting the often more parochial interests of an individual client. Perhaps it’s just as well as the much touted “independence” of the DOJ has steadily become more myth than reality over the past three Administrations.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t expect better from DOJ lawyers. But, that’s not likely to happen without some “regime change” and a Senate that takes their “advice and consent” role more seriously.

PWs

12-19-18

Related posts:

  1. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  2. NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. “KILLER ON THE ROAD” – EMBOLDENED BY THE COMPLICITY OF THE “ROBERTS’ COURT,” GOP ABDICATION OF LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT, & BREAKDOWN OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND VALUES, REGIME APPARENTLY PLANNING EXTRALEGAL MOVE TO KILL MORE OF THE MOST VULNERABLE REFUGEES – Refugee Women, Children, LGBTQ Community, Victims Of Government-Enabled Gangs Said To Among Targets of Miller/Trump White Nationalist “American Death Squads!”

SCOFFLAWS THWARTED: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE EMMET G. SULLIVAN EXPOSES SESSIONS’ S OUTRAGEOUSLY ILLEGAL WHITE NATIONALIST ATTACK ON U.S. ASYLUM LAW — MATTER OF A-B- EXCEEDED SCOFFLAW A.G.’S AUTHORITY — Grace v. Whitaker

Grace v. Sessions, U.S.D.C. D.D.C., 12-19-18, Hon. Emmet G. Sullivan, Published

Grace 106 12-19-18

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

MY STATEMENT ON GRACE V. WHITAKER:

 

As a former United States Immigration Judge, Chair of the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, and Acting General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel of the “Legacy INS” involved in developing the Refugee Act of 1980, I am deeply gratified by the decision of U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan today in Grace v. Whitaker. Judge Sullivan strongly supports the rule of law and the generous humanitarian protections and procedural rights afforded by Congress to vulnerable asylum seekers against a lawless and unjustified attack by former Attorney General Sessions in Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (AG 2018) and the largely erroneous Policy Memorandum incorporating that decision issued by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”).

 

Among the most important holdings, Judge Sullivan:

 

  • Reaffirmed the duty of the Executive Branch to comply with the rule of law as enacted by Congress to protect individuals fleeing persecution;
  • Reaffirmed the generous humanitarian intent of the asylum provisions of the Refugee Act of 1980;
  • Recognized the generous “well-founded fear” (10% chance) standard for asylum as enunciated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca;
  • Reaffirmed the “extraordinarily low” bar for applicants in “credible fear” interviews before DHS Asylum Officers: “to prevail at a credible fear interview, the alien need only show a ‘significant possibility’ of a one in ten chance of persecution, i.e., a fraction of ten percent;”
  • Found that Congress intended that the term “particular social group” must be interpreted generously in accordance with the United Nations’ guidance;
  • Rejected Sessions’s unlawful attempt to generally preclude domestic violence and gang-related claims from qualifying for asylum;
  • Reaffirmed the necessity of case-by-case determinations of credible fear and asylum;
  • Rejected Session’s unlawful attempt to engraft a “condoned or completely helpless” requirement on the interpretation of when a foreign government is “unwilling or unable” to protect an individual from persecution by a private party;
  • Reaffirmed Congress’s unambiguous understanding that persecution means “harm or suffering . . . inflicted either by the government of a country or by persons or an organization that the government was unable or unwilling to control;”
  • Rejected DHS’s misinterpretation of the “circularity requirement” in the Policy Memorandum;
  • Rejected the Department of Justice’s disingenuous argument that Article III Courts must “defer” to administrative interpretations of Article III Court decisions;
  • Rejected the Policy Memorandum’s illegal requirement that an asylum applicant (usually unrepresented) “delineate” the scope of a particular social group at the credible fear interview;
  • Emphatically rejected the Policy Memorandum’s attempt to elevate administrative precedents over the conflicting decisions of U.S. Courts of Appeals.

 

Judge Sullivan’s cogent decision dramatically highlights the problems with an U.S. Immigration Court system that is controlled by political officials, like former Attorney General Sessions, who are not fair and impartial judicial officials and whose actions may be (and in Sessions’s case definitely were) driven by political philosophies and enforcement objectives inconsistent with judicial responsibilities to insure that non-citizens are fairly considered for and when appropriate granted the important, often life-saving, protections conferred by law and guaranteed by due process. A clearly biased political official like Jeff Sessions should ethically never been permitted to act in a quasi-judicial capacity.

 

As a result of Sessions’s anti-immigrant bias, unlawful actions, and gross mismanagement of the Immigration Courts, innocent lives have been endangered and one of our largest American court systems has been driven to the precipice with an uncontrolled (yet unnecessary) backlog of over 1.1 million cases and crippling quality control issues. When it finally plunges over, it will take a large chunk of our American justice system and the Constitutional protections we all rely upon with it!

 

Congress must create an independent Article I United States Immigration Court to ensure that the immigration and refugee laws enacted by Congress are applied to individuals in a fair, efficient, and impartial manner.

 

Many, many thanks to the ACLU and all of the other wonderful pro bono lawyers who stood up for the rule of law and the rights of the most vulnerable among us against the intentionally illegal actions and unethical behavior of this Administration.

 

PWS

12-19-18

 

Related posts:

  1. NOTORIOUS CHILD ABUSER JEFF SESSIONS ALSO TARGETED REFUGEE WOMEN & GIRLS FOR DEATH, RAPE, TORTURE, & OTHER MAYHEM — HIS EVIL PLANS HIT A ROADBLOCK: THE LAW! — Read The Latest Commentary From Hon. Jeffrey S.Chase On Challenges To Sessions’s Effort To Pervert The Law — Matter of A-B- In Light Of Grace v. Whitaker!
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

UPI ANALYSIS OF LATEST EOIR ASYLUM STATS ACTUALLY SHOWS THAT MANY FROM NORTHERN TRIANGLE (PARTICULARLY EL SALVADOR) HAVE VALID CLAIMS FOR PROTECTION, BUT SESSIONS’S POLITICAL ACTIONS AND CONTROL OVER U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES ARTIFICIALLY FORCED THE GRANT RATE DOWN! – It’s Time For An Independent “Article I” U.S. Immigration Court & A Level, Apolitical Playing Field For Asylum Applicants!

https://apple.news/AHg-L3Cy-SEG6Gi9SR1rk_w

Patrick Timmons reports for UPI:

Asylum denials jump; immigration judges’ discretion attacked

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 10 (UPI) — New data about the number of asylum applications granted by the United States this year show how the Trump administration has dramatically narrowed asylum granted to people fleeing persecution in their home countries — though significantly more Central Americans have been admitted over the past decade.

“Asylum acceptance rates are at a 20-year low, and the recent TRAC data confirms that,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst for the non-partisan and independent Migration Policy Institute, referring to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

For fiscal 2018, TRAC’s statistics show immigration judges denied 65 percent of asylum claims — up from 42 percent in 2017. There were 42,224 asylum cases decided in 2018, an 89 percent increase over the total number of cases decided in 2016.

Due to a backlog in the immigration system, some asylum seekers have been able to live in the United States for three years to five years while their claims are adjudicated, a situation the administration has tried to address by changing some rules and practices.

“This administration is trying to address people who are trying to take advantage of the system. But unfortunately this administration’s approach tends to punish asylum seekers rather than just specifically looking at those individuals who are taking advantage of the system,” Pierce said.

The administration’s broad approach to all asylum seekers has had the effect of narrowing asylum by increasing immigration judges’ workloads by setting quotas, ending discretionary decision making and rewriting immigration rules to deny relief to asylum seekers fleeing domestic and gang violence.

Immigration experts told UPI the administration’s changes to how immigration judges work has spiked a general increase in asylum denials.

Northern Triangle

There has been an increased flow of asylum seekers from Central American countries, particularly those from the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

And the fact that more of them are getting approved shows they are “sincere humanitarian migrants,” Pierce said.

A new TRAC tool shows Central Americans now fare better than in previous years. Salvadorans receive asylum in rates higher than Guatemalans or Hondurans. In 2004, Salvadorans’ asylum approval rate was 6 percent. In 2018, it rose to 23 percent. Guatemala’s grant rate in 2018 was 18 percent, the lowest of three countries, with Honduras at 20 percent.

Pierce said that changes in immigration law under the Obama administration help account for significant changes in asylum approval rates for people fleeing the Northern Triangle. Immigration judges over the past decade were more accepting of domestic and gang violence as grounds for asylum, with successes helping to develop case law.

The rise in asylum for Salvadorans has to do with direct violent threats, rather than domestic violence, which is a common claim among Guatemalan asylum seekers, or gang violence, common among Hondurans.

“The circumstantial evidence suggests El Salvador tends to have the most direct violent threats,” said Everard Meade said, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

Data comparing the Northern Triangle countries’ asylum seekers’ claims is hard to come by. However, Meade said in 2014 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued its report, “Children on the Run,” about unaccompanied Central American minors highlighting direct violence in El Salvador as a reason for flight. UNHCR interviewed almost 400 children with 66 percent of El Salvadorans reporting flight for threat of direct violence Guatemalans reported 20 percent, Hondurans at 44 percent.

But Central Americans’ asylum approvals might be a blip. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions this year removed domestic violence and gang violence as grounds for asylum in immigration court proceedings.

“These private acts of violence claims are typically the ones we are seeing from the Northern Triangle,” Pierce said, “including El Salvador.”

Discretionary decision-making

The general picture, however, is that more people are failing to win asylum than ever before because the Trump administration has changed how judges work.

“The asylum decisions and denial data for fiscal year 2018 is really about discretionary relief that used to be available under [President Barack] Obama but is not available under [President Donald] Trump anymore,” Meade said.

Prior to Trump-Sessions, immigration judges used to employ a form of discretionary relief called administrative closure. This was a form of temporary protection against deportation that did not grant any permanent immigration status, unlike asylum, which is a pathway to citizenship.

“Immigration judges had people coming before them who had really compelling stories but those stories did not necessarily cleave close enough to the asylum standard to grant them asylum. But the judges really felt they did not want to return them to dangerous situations, either. They also felt they were people who were credible, who had told the truth, and so they were administratively closing their cases,” Meade said.

The practice of administrative closure ended this year with a Sessions memorandum.

“Administrative closure was a widespread practice and that is exactly what explains how the denial rate can go up so dramatically without the grant rate going down. Actually, the grant rate has gone up. In defense of the institutions, the modest increase in the grant rates suggest people have some really good asylum claims,” Meade said.

The situation in El Paso

Carlos Spector, a veteran El Paso immigration lawyer, said that although the asylum rate has increased nationwide, there is little evidence of successful asylum claims in El Paso’s immigration court.

“This year, I have lost some asylum cases that had really compelling claims,” Spector said, adding that 98 percent of his clients are Mexican.

Mexicans generally do not fare well in immigration court. In 2018, 14.5 percent of Mexican asylum seekers received asylum. Part of the reason is that immigration judges were administratively closing cases, protecting from deportation but stopping short of permanent relief.

For 2018, the latest TRAC data reveal El Paso’s immigration judges reviewed 297 cases, granting asylum 47 times. In 2017, they reviewed 148 cases and granted asylum 12 times. These low asylum rates, some of the lowest in the nation, mean El Paso’s immigration judges have a reputation for enforcing law and order, Spector said.

“I’ve been tracking asylum cases of Mexican nationals for the past few years and it is more or less the same rate along the border from San Diego to Brownsville,” Spector said.

“Because we are on the border and these judges are political appointees and these judges do understand the government’s mandate of holding or guarding the border and they take that law enforcement approach,” Spector said, “the denials are much, much higher on the U.S.-Mexico border, and they always have been.”

TRAC compiled asylum approval and denial statistics for fiscal year 2018, the first full year of Trump’s presidency, based on Freedom Of Information Act requests to the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, the agency charged with adjudicating defensive asylum claims in immigration court.

Photoby Ariana Drehsler/UPI : Jose Hernández, 17, styles his hair at El Barretal shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 9, 2018.

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

Just as I have been saying all along!  The Trump Administration’s claim that low asylum approval rates indicate the system is being “gamed” by applicants is a bogus cover up. Even taken at “face value,” a 20-25% chance of being granted asylum hardly shows a system being “gamed.” At most, it shows that Immigration Judges are applying a much more restrictive standard than Asylum Officers considering “credible fear” claims at the border. Far from being “gaming,” that would be consistent with (although not necessarily required by) an intentionally much more generous standard for getting a fair adjudication in a removal hearing (“passing credible fear”) than for actually achieving relief (“a favorable order from an Immigration Judge after a full merits hearing”).

But, what really appears to be going on here are artificially restrictive, politically inspired “tweaks” to asylum law and procedures specifically intended to disadvantage those in danger from the Northern Triangle. Additionally, inappropriate detention policies are intended to force many more applicants to proceed without lawyers or to abandon appeals — making it like “shooting fish in a barrel” for those Immigration Judges with a predilection to deny relief who are under great pressure to “produce” more final orders of removal. It also appears that a disturbing number of Immigration Judges along the Southern Border view themselves as agents of DHS and Administration enforcement policies, rather than as fair and impartial decision makers committed to giving asylum seekers the “benefit of the doubt” under the law.

This all adds up to what appears to me to be a significant “cover up” of politicized wrong-doing and a mass denial of Due Process orchestrated by the Administration through the Department of Justice.

Why are the Administration, DHS, and DOJ so afraid of giving asylum applicants fair access to lawyers, time to prepare and document their cases, and timely fair hearings before impartial quasi-judicial adjudicators whose  sole focus is getting the right substantive result, rather than achieving some type of assembly line enforcement-related “production quotas?”

Why waste time on “gimmicks” — most of which eventually prove to be illegal, ineffective, or both — rather than  concentrating on getting to the merits of these cases in a timely manner and “letting the chips fall where they may.”

Surely, among a largely artificially created 1.1 million case “backlog” there are hundreds of thousands of cases that could be “administratively closed” as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion to allow more recently arrived cases to be timely heard without increasing backlogs or creating further wasteful “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”

Eventually, the “mask will be ripped off” what’s really happening in  our U.S. Immigration Court system. When that happens, the results could be ugly and damaging to the reputations of those orchestrating and enabling what certainly appears to be a disgraceful and intentional miscarriage of justice!

PWS

12011-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

TRUMP THROWS TEMPER TANTRUM – THREATENS PARTIAL SHUTDOWN OF USG & ILLEGAL ACTIONS IF CONGRESS WON’T WASTE $5BILLION ON USELESS “WALL STUNT” – WILL ANOTHER OVAL OFFICE MELTDOWN FORESHADOW A “TRUMP SHUTDOWN?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/us/politics/trump-border-wall-government-shutdown.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

 

Julie Hirshfield Davis and Michael Tackett report for the NY Times:

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday vowed to block full funding for the government if Democrats refuse to embrace his demand for a border wall, saying he was “proud to shut down the government for border security” in an extraordinarily public altercation with Democratic congressional leaders at the White House.

“If we don’t have border security, we’ll shut down the government — this country needs border security,” Mr. Trump declared in the Oval Office, engaging in a testy back-and-forth with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, even as they repeatedly asked him to keep their negotiating disputes private.

“It’s not bad, Nancy; it’s called transparency,” Mr. Trump snapped after one such interjection by Ms. Pelosi, who appeared to trigger the president’s temper when she raised the prospect of a “Trump shutdown” over what she characterized as an ineffective and wasteful wall.

“The American people recognize that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything, and that we should not have a Trump shutdown,” Ms. Pelosi said.

. . . .

Mr. Trump had begun the day appearing to soften his stance somewhat on the wall. In a series of morning tweets, he falsely stated that substantial sections of the “Great Wall” on the southwestern border that he has long championed have already been completed, and he suggested that his administration could continue construction whether Democrats fund it or not.

That would be illegal, but it suggested that he was looking for a way to keep the government funded past Dec. 21, even if Democrats balk at wall funding.

. . . .

“People do not yet realize how much of the Wall, including really effective renovation, has already been built,” Mr. Trump wrote in one of the messages. “If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important it is!”

. . . .

It was not clear what Mr. Trump was referring to. American troops he dispatched to the border on the eve of midterm congressional elections as part of what the president called an effort to head off a migrant “invasion” have put up concertina wire along existing fences and barriers, but the administration has yet to spend much of the $1.3 billion Congress approved for border security last year. Under restrictions put in place by Congress, none of that money could be used to construct a new, concrete wall of the sort the president has said is vital.

The president does not have the legal authority to spend money appropriated for one purpose on another task, such as wall-building.

In a joint statement on Monday night, Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi warned that the country could not afford a “Trump Shutdown.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Julie’s and Mike’s report at the above link.

“Duh,” walls as an effective means of national security went out of vogue about the beginning of the fifth century CE. But, of course, you would have to understand something about history to know how useless walls currently are as a defensive mechanism (as opposed to one for keeping subjugated people “in” like the Berlin Wall). Ironically, some of the same folks who cheered the destruction of the Berlin Wall idiotically cheer for “Trump’s Folly.”

While a wall might kill some more migrants and force smugglers to change routes and raise fees accordingly, in terms of border security it’s a classic case of “good money after bad.” Indeed, the Government would do well to stop treating refugees and other would be migrants as “criminals” to instead concentrate on stopping drug smugglers, human traffickers, terrorists, and fraudsters who actually mean to do our country harm, rather than coming in to pick our crops, make our food, build our houses, care for our sick, elderly, and children etc.

Totally contrary to Trump’s false narrative, most of those arriving at our Southern Border by “caravan” these days are not threats to the U.S. At worst, some are desperate individuals who probably face some real dangers in their home countries but don’t fit our rather arcane, restrictive, and unduly legalistic applications of refugee and asylum laws. The ones who belong should be screened, let in, and assimilated. The ones who don’t, after having a fair opportunity to present their claims for refuge, should be returned in a humane and respectful manner.

Yes, there appears to be a very small number of “bad guys” who have “infiltrated” the caravans, probably as much to prey on the vulnerable migrants as to reach the U.S. The current system appears more than adequate to identify these individuals and block their entry or promptly remove them. And, the system could and would work even better if the Administration separated border security functions from asylum adjudication functions. But, that might not provide “red meat” to a political base.

So, perhaps we can look forward to a “Trump Shutdown” over “Trump’s Folly!”

PWS

 

Related posts:

  1. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  2. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  3. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  4. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!

MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE ON WHY JUDGE BYBEE’S 65-PAGE EVISCERATION OF TRUMP’S LAWLESS ASYLUM ORDER IS SO IMPORTANT: “The next time Trump floats a flagrantly lawless idea, then, it’s worth remembering that nativist bluster cannot transmogrify an illegitimate command into a permissible executive order. Just because the president considers ending citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants, for instance, does not mean he can actually get away with it. Like the INA, the Constitution grants certain rights that the president cannot unilaterally rescind—including birthright citizenship. Bybee felt no compunction to pretend that Trump’s illicit scheme has any legitimacy. Neither should the rest of us.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/bush-judge-rejects-trump-asylum-plan.html

Stern writes:

If there were any lingering doubt that Donald Trump’s latest plan to curb asylum is flatly unlawful, Judge Jay Bybee quashed it on Friday.

In a meticulous 65-page opinion, Bybee—a conservative George W. Bush appointee—explained that the president cannot rewrite a federal statute to deny asylum to immigrants who enter the country without authorization. His decision for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a twofold rebuke to Trump, halting the president’s legal assault on asylum-seekers and undermining his claim that any judge who blocked the order is a Democratic hack. The reality is that anyone who understands the English language should recognize that Trump’s new rule is illegal. Like so many of Trump’s attention-grabbing proposals, this doomed policy should never have been treated as legitimate in the first place.

Friday’s ruling involves a proclamation that Trump signed on Nov. 9, ostensibly to address the “continuing and threatened mass migration of aliens with no basis for admission into the United States through our southern border.” The order alluded darkly to the caravan of asylum-seekers then approaching the border, which Trump tried and failed to exploit as a campaign issue. To remedy this “crisis” and protect “the integrity of our borders,” he directed the federal government to deny asylum to any immigrant who enters the United States unlawfully.

Ten days later, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar halted the new rule, holding that it likely exceeded the president’s authority. Trump responded by dismissing Tigar, a Barack Obama appointee, as an “Obama judge.” The comment led to a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who told the AP: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

As Trump escalated his feud with Roberts, his Department of Justice appealed Tigar’s ruling to the 9th Circuit. It faced a seemingly propitious panel: Bybee, Judge Edward Leavy, and Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz. Bybee is a very conservative jurist who authored the original “torture memo,” justifying the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation of detainees. Leavy is a staunchly conservative Reagan appointee; only Hurwitz, an Obama appointee, leans to the left. Under Trump’s partisan vision of the judiciary, the DOJ would seem to have a good shot at reviving the asylum rule.

But Bybee didn’t bite. In a crisp and rigorous opinion for the court, he wrote that Tigar was correct to conclude that the policy almost certainly violates the law. The problem, Bybee explained, is that Congress expressly provided asylum-seekers with the right that Trump now seeks to revoke: an ability to apply for asylum regardless of how they came into the country. The Immigration and Nationality Act states that “[a]ny alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival …), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section.” This provision implements the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which the United States has ratified. It directs signatories not to “impose penalties [on refugees] on account of their illegal entry or presence.”

The plain text of the law couldn’t be clearer: Immigrants in the U.S. are eligible for asylum whether they arrived legally (through a “designated port of arrival”) or illegally. If the president wants to change that fact, he’ll have to convince Congress to break its treaty obligations and alter the law.

In light of the proclamation’s fundamental illegality, Bybee, joined by Hurwitz, affirmed Tigar’s nationwide restraining order. Leavy dissented in a curious five-page opinion insisting that the INA grants the executive branch power “to bring safety and fairness to the conditions at the southern border.” His anemic analysis is no match for Bybee’s thorough demolition of the DOJ’s illogical position. It seems quite likely that a lopsided majority of the Supreme Court will eventually agree with Bybee’s majority opinion.

It is satisfying to see a “Bush judge” (in Trumpian parlance) hand the president such a stinging legal defeat. Roberts overstated the case in totally dismissing the role of partisanship in the judiciary; of course some judges are political. But for now, a majority of the federal judiciary remains willing to stand up to the president, at least when he issues blatantly illegal orders. Judges like Roberts and Bybee may let Trump manipulate ambiguous laws to do some very bad things to immigrants. But they are not willing to let the president ignore a clear and constitutional directive from Congress.

The next time Trump floats a flagrantly lawless idea, then, it’s worth remembering that nativist bluster cannot transmogrify an illegitimate command into a permissible executive order. Just because the president considers ending citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants, for instance, does not mean he can actually get away with it. Like the INA, the Constitution grants certain rights that the president cannot unilaterally rescind—including birthright citizenship. Bybee felt no compunction to pretend that Trump’s illicit scheme has any legitimacy. Neither should the rest of us.

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

Stern points out that contrary to Trump’s belief that he can bully, co-opt, and control the judicial system, in the way that other authoritarian fascists have done in the past, even so-called “conservative” judges have lines beyond which they won’t be pushed.   And, lifetime tenure protects them from retaliation by Trump and his corrupt White Nationalist cronies.

Few things can be more important than having judges across the board, regardless of judicial philosophy, stand up to Trump and his lawless abuses of Executive Power as well as “pushing back” on a Department of Justice that has, with a few exceptions, lost its professionalism, moral compass, and courage, along with any semblance of independence.

PWS

12-10-18

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

WINNING ASYLUM & SAVING LIVES IN THE “ERA OF A-B-“ – Seven Steps To Success

WINNING ASYLUM

WINNING ASYLUM & SAVING LIVES IN THE “ERA OF A-B-“ – Seven Steps To Success*

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

NEW YORK CITY BAR

DECEMBER 4, 2018

 

Good evening, and thanks so much for inviting me.  In the “old days,” I would have started with my comprehensive disclaimer. But, now that I’m retired, I’m just going to hold the Bar Association, my fellow panelists, and anyone else of any importance whatsoever “harmless” for my remarks tonight.  They are solely my views, for which I take full responsibility. No sugar-coating, no bureaucratic doublespeak, no “party line,” no BS – just the unvarnished truth, as I see it!

“We’ve had situations in which a person comes to the United States and says they are a victim of domestic violence; therefore, they are entitled to enter the United States. Well, that’s obviously false but some judges have gone along with that.” “Good lawyers, using all of their talents and skill, work every day—like water seeping through an earthen dam—to get around the plain words of the INA to advance their clients’ interests. Theirs is not the duty to uphold the integrity of the act. That is our most serious duty.”

 

Those, my friends, are obviously not my words. They are the words of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Incredibly, this totally biased, xenophobic, misinformed, and glaringly unqualified individual was in charge of our U.S. Immigration Court system which helps explains why it is such a total mess today. And Acting Attorney General Whitaker’s certification of two cases yesterday promises a continuation of improper political interference with the Immigration Courts in derogation of Due Process.

 

One of Sessions’s most cowardly and reprehensible actions was his atrocious distortion of asylum law, the reality of life in the Northern Triangle, and Due Process for migrants in Matter of A-B-. There, he overruled the BIA’s important precedent in Matter of A-R-C-G-, a decision actually endorsed by the DHSat the time, and which gave much need protection to women fleeing persecution in the form of domestic violence. Take it from me, Matter of A-R-C-G-was one of the few parts of our dysfunctional Immigration Court system that actually worked and provided a way of consistently granting much needed protection to some of the most vulnerable and most deserving refugees in the world.

 

Sessions is gone. But, his ugly legacy of bias and unfairness remains. Fortunately, because he was a lousy lawyer on top of everything else, he failed to actually accomplish what he thought he was doing: wiping out protection for refugee women, largely from Central America. That’s why it’s critically important for you, as members of the “New Due Process Army” to fight every inch of the way, for as long as it takes, to restore justice and to force our U.S Immigration Courts to live up to their unfulfilled, and now mocked, promise of “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all!”

 

I’m going to give you seven very basic tips for overcoming Matter of A-B-.  I’m sure that my colleagues, who are much more involved in the day to day litigation going on in the courts than I am, can give you lots of additional information about addressing specific issues.

 

First, recognize that Matter of A-B- really doesn’t change the fundamental meaning of asylum.It just rejected the way in which the BIA reached its precedent in A-R-C-G-— by stipulation without specific fact-findings based on the administrative record. Most of it is mere dicta. On a case by case basis, domestic violence can still be a proper basis for granting asylum in many cases. Indeed, such cases still are being granted by those Immigration Judges committed to following the rule of law and upholding their oaths of office, rather than accepting Sessions’s invitation to “take a dive.”

 

Just make sure you properly and succinctly state your basis, establish nexus, and paper the record with the overwhelming amount of reliable country condition information and expert opinion that directly contradicts the bogus picture painted by Sessions.

 

Second, resist with all your might those lawless judges in some Immigration Courts who are using, or threatening to use, Sessions’s dictum in Matter of A-B- to deny fair hearings or truncate the hearing process for those claiming asylum through domestic violence.If anything, following the overruling of A-R-C-G-,leaving no definitive precedent on the subject, full, fair case-by-case hearings are more important than ever. Under Due Process, asylum applicants are entitled to a full and fair opportunity to present their claims in Immigration Court. Don’t let wayward, biased, or misinformed Immigration Judges deny your clients’ constitutional and statutory rights.  

 

Third, keep it simple. Even before A-B-, I always said that any proposed “particular social group” (“PSG”) longer than 25 words or containing “circular” elements is D.O.A. I think that it’s time to get down to the basics; the real PSG here is gender! “Women in X country” is clearly a cognizable PSG.  It’s undoubtedly immutable or fundamental to identity; particularized, and socially distinct. So, it meets the BIA’s three-part test.

 

And, “gender” clearly is one of the biggest drivers of persecution in the world. There is no doubt that it is “at least one central reason” for the persecution of women and LGBT individuals throughout the world.

 

Fourth, think political. There is plenty of recent information available on the internet showing the close relationship between gangs and the governments of the Northern Triangle. In some cases, gangs are the “de facto government” in significant areas of the country. In others, gangs and local authorities cooperate in extorting money and inflicting torture and other serious harm on honest individuals who resist them and threaten to expose their activities. In many cases, claiming political or religious persecution will be a stronger alternative ground than PSG.

 

Fifth, develop your record.  The idea that domestic violence and gang-based violence is just “common crime” advanced by Sessions in A-B-is simply preposterous with regard to the Northern Triangle. Establish records that no reasonable factfinder can refute or overlook! Use expert testimony or expert affidavits to show the real country conditions and to discredit the watered down and sometimes downright false scenarios set forth in Department of State Country Reports, particularly under this Administration where integrity, expertise, and independence have been thrown out the window.

 

Sixth, raise the bias issue. As set forth in a number of the Amicus Briefs filed in Matter of A-B-, Sessions clearly was a biased decision maker. Not only had he publicly dismissed the claims of female refugees suffering from domestic violence, but his outlandish comments spreading false narratives about immigrants, dissing asylum seekers and their “dirty lawyers,” and supporting DHS enforcement clearly aligned with him with one party to litigation before the Immigration Courts. By the rules governing judicial conduct there was more than an “appearance of bias” here – there was actual bias. We should keep making the record on the gross violation of Due Process caused by giving a biased enforcement official like Sessions a quasi-judicial role.

 

Seventh, and finally, appeal to the “real” Article III Courts. What’s happening in Immigration Court today is a parody of justice and a mockery of legitimate court proceedings. It’s important to “open the eyes” of the Article III Judges to this travesty which is threatening the lives of legitimate refugees and other migrants.

 

Either the Article III’s do their jobs, step in, and put an end to this travesty, or they become complicitin it. There’s only one “right side of the law and history” in this fight. Those who are complicit must know that their actions are being placed in the historical record – for all time and for their descendants to know – just like the historical reckoning that finally is happening for so- called “Confederate heroes” and those public officials who supported racism and “Jim Crow.”

 

Now is the time to take a stand for fundamental fairness and decency! Join the New Due Process Army and fight to vindicate the rights of asylum seekers under our laws against the forces of darkness and xenophobic bias! Due process forever!

 

 

*This is not a “verbatim transcript” of what I said. Rather it is a compendium and extension of the “talking notes” that I used as a member of the panel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. HON. JEFFREY CHASE: Speaking Out Against The “Notable Minority” Of U.S. Immigration Judges Who Demonstrated Bias Against Women & Asylum Seekers – “Think about that: some federally appointed immigration judges cheered the fact that women who had been violently raped and beaten in their country can no longer find refuge here, and will be sent back to face more violence, and possibly death. Will there be any consequences for their actions? Were the many outstanding immigration judges who have been proud to grant such cases in the past, who were saddened and sickened by this decision, able to openly jeer or weep or curse this decision? Or would that have been viewed as dangerous?”
  4. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”

THE GIBSON REPORT – 12-03-18 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group – Learn About Trump’s Self-Created “Bogus Border Crisis!”

THE GIBSON REPORT – 12-03-18 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group – Learn About Trump’s Self-Created “Bogus Border Crisis!”

 

TOP UPDATES

Trump designates Dec. 5 as National Day of Mourning for President George H.W. Bush, federal offices to close

It’s unclear what this means for EOIR and USCIS at this time with mixed reports.

The US has made migrants at the border wait months to apply for asylum. Now the dam is breaking.

Vox: Before 2016, and in some cases as recently as six months ago, they would have had no problem and no delay. But for the last several months, the Trump administration has made a practice of limiting the number of asylum seekers allowed to enter the US each day — a policy it calls “metering.”

 

Incoming Mexican president faces immediate border test

Politico: The new Mexican government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador will press the United States to invest least $20 billion in Central America and, reportedly, faster asylum processing in exchange for allowing migrants to remain in Mexico while they seek refugee status in the U.S.

Caravan women launch hunger strike, putting pressure on U.S. and Mexico

Politico: A group of migrant women in the caravan announced Thursday that it would begin a hunger strike to protest the slow pace at which the women are being allowed to apply for asylum, as officials from the United States and Mexico are set to meet this weekend to negotiate a plan to process their claims.

 

U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Total Dips to Lowest Level in a Decade

Pew: The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on 2016 government data. The decline is due almost entirely to a sharp decrease in the number of Mexicans entering the country without authorization.

 

The key reason why Central Americans don’t want asylum in Mexico

Quartz: Mexican immigration authorities are even less prepared than the US to process them. The Mexican agency charged with helping refugees, COMAR by its Spanish acronym, only has four offices, and none near the border. Earlier this year, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission warned of the “possible collapse” of the country’s refugee protection system as COMAR’s backlog grew to 60% of applications. It also identified “situations of risk of torture and abuse” in immigrant detention centers, which it found had no adequate living conditions or access to medical attention.

 

ICE Threatens ‘Likely Increase’ of Immigration Raids in New Jersey

NBC: The federal agency’s threat came a day after the New Jersey attorney general announced new restrictions on local law enforcement cooperation with ICE.

Successes at One Year and Expanding the Movement for Universal Representation

Vera: The Vera Institute of Justice is excited to announce that we are expanding our Safety and Fairness for Everyone (SAFE) Network –  currently a diverse group of a dozen cities and counties across America dedicated to providing publicly funded universal representation for people facing deportation.

 

Senate panel delays vote on Trump pick to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement

WaPo: A key Senate committee postponed a vote Wednesday on President Trump’s pick to lead the main agency handling immigration enforcement as a coalition of unions raised “serious concern” about Ronald D. Vitiello’s ability to effectively oversee the agency.

 

Immigrant rights groups find Trump is their best fundraiser

CBS: The American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed more than 50 immigrants’ rights lawsuits against the Trump administration, recorded its most successful #GivingTuesday in years. That wasn’t just the case just for the ACLU. This year’s day for charitable giving was the biggest ever, raking in nearly $400 million in donations online in the U.S. alone, according to the 92nd Street Y.

 

Campaign is under way to close Alabama facility routinely identified by advocates and detainees as one of the worst in US

Guardian: Housed in the Gadsden county jail since the late 1990s, the gray slab of concrete that is the Etowah Detention Center, is routinely identified by lawyers, advocates and detainees as one of the worst Ice facilities in the United States. It has one of the longest detention times of all Ice facilities.

 

USCIS FY 2019 budget

In what appears to be a new development, Page 71 of the USCIS FY 2019 budget indicates that USCIS wants to transfer “$207.6 million in Immigration Examinations Fee Account (IEFA) fees to ICE to support immigration investigation and enforcement.”

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Deportation may be worse than jail, a court just ruled. Why that’s a big deal.

WaPo: New York’s highest court boldly ruled Tuesday that deportation may be a more severe consequence than even a few months behind bars. The divided decision created a situation in which two individuals charged with the same low-level offense have vastly different trial rights — a noncitizen is entitled to a jury trial, while a U.S. citizen is not. [Note: This is obviously being appealed.]

Baltimore sues Trump administration over legal immigrants’ access to public benefits

WaPo: The lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration’s expanded definition of “public charges” has had a chilling effect on the city’s immigrant community, which Baltimore officials see as key to its revival. Legal immigrants have stopped using school programs, food subsidies, housing vouchers and health clinics for which they are eligible, the lawsuit says, hurting the city’s mission to welcome immigrants and creating long-term expenses as Baltimore deals with a sicker and less-educated community.

 

US sued for $60 million after infant in detention later died

AP: Juarez’s lawyers said Mariee developed a respiratory illness while she and her mother were detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. They accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of releasing the pair while Mariee was still sick.

The National Vetting Center Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Working Group Releases Its Charter

Approved National Vetting Center Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Working Group Charter, established pursuant to National Security Presidential Memorandum-9, “Optimizing the Use of Federal Government Information in Support of the National Vetting Enterprise,” dated February 6, 2018. AILA Doc. No. 18112870

CBP Commissioner Issues Statement on Closing of San Ysidro Port Due to Caravan

CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan conducted a call with media and released his opening remarks, “We will continue to monitor the situation closely. And while we seek to maintain lawful trade and travel to the maximum extent, we will be prepared to close San Ysidro again if….”AILA Doc. No. 18112762

 

DHS Issues Statement on San Ysidro Port of Entry Closure

DHS Secretary Nielsen issued a statement after CBP closed the San Ysidro port of entry on 11/25/18, stating “As I have continually stated, DHS will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public safety reasons.” AILA Doc. No. 18112734

 

Deaths at Adult Detention Centers

Continually updated list of press releases issued by ICE announcing deaths in adult immigration detention. AILA Doc. No. 16050900

 

CBP Describes Logistics of Operation Secure Line

CBP released information on the role that the American military troops plays with CBP along the United States/Mexico border. AILA Doc. No. 18112831

 

USCIS Provides Q&As from Teleconference on Continued Expansion of NTA Policy Guidance

USCIS provided Q&As from a 11/15/18 teleconference on the continued expansion of the implementation process of the 6/28/18 NTA memorandum. AILA Doc. No. 18110836

 

RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

ImmProf

 

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Friday, November 30, 2018

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Monday, November 26, 2018

 

AILA NEWS UPDATE

http://www.aila.org/advo-media/news/clips

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

I draw your attention to Elizabeth’s “Item 2” which is a lengthy, outstanding article by Dara Lind of Vox News on the fake, self-created “Trump Border Crisis.”

The only quibble I have with Dara’s article is the suggestion that there might be a need for more detention space. I say BS! Unquestionably, by working together with the UNHCR, the Mexican Government, and NGOs such as the ACLU, KIND, and the ABA, the DHS could find suitable placements for individuals waiting for credible fear interviews once they had passed a basic screening and background check.

Indeed, one of the key findings of a recent TRAC Report on Immigration Court Asylum Decisions is that 98.6% of asylum seekers appear in court for their decisions, win or lose! http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/539/ This stands in sharp contrast to the false claims by the Administration and its “bureaucratic mouthpieces” that asylum seekers “bolt” once they get into the country.

When given access to competent legal assistance and a chance to understand both the system and their obligations, almost all appear. Clearly, the Administration should be working with the private sector to get asylum seekers represented rather than undertaking cruel and overall futile and wasteful efforts to detain, deter, and punish them.

And how about some truthful narratives, rather than the bogus ones taken right out of the right-wing restrictionist playbook? Again, it’s past time for some Congressional oversight and accountability for the many falsehoods about immigration purveyed not only by the Trump politicos (like Sessions, Nielsen, Miller, et al.) but also by career officials who should know better. Indeed, in many cases, such as TPS and the Travel Ban, the Administration’s bogus narratives directly and demonstrably contradict the Government’s own information and recommendations by career officials with expertise in the areas. This shameful abuse of our civil service system and its expertise by biased, prejudiced, and unqualified politicos must stop.

And, as always, thanks Elizabeth for all you do for the New Due Process Army!

PWS

12-03-18

 

Related posts:

  1. THE GIBSON REPORT — 04-09-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Project — Why Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan Should End Up In Jail If He Follows Trump’s Unlawful & Unconstitutional Plans!
  2. HERE’S WHY NIELSEN’S LATEST ATTACK ON REFUGEES AND THE RULE OF LAW COULD BACKFIRE! – ALSO, AN ADDENDUM: “MY MESSAGE TO THE NDPA”
  3. THE GIBSON REPORT — 05-13-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group
  4. BIA SEEKS TO REPEAL CAT BY MISINTERPRETATION; MUSALO’S FACT FINDING MISSION TO EL SALVADOR SHOWS MALICIOUS ABSURDITY OF REGIME’S BOGUS “SAFE THIRD COUNTRY” ASSAULT ON HUMAN RIGHTS; 9th & 11th CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO TANK ON THE RULE OF LAW; & OTHER LEGAL NEWS ABOUT THE WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME & THE RESISTANCE — The Gibson Report — 12-10-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group