TRUMP LAUNCHES PREDICTABLE LARGELY FACT FREE TIRADE AGAINST DESPERATE MIGRANTS – They Aren’t A Threat To Our National Security – But, Trump & His White Nationalist Policies Of Hate & Xenophobia Are!

http://time.com/5430940/donald-trump-migrant-caravan-false-claims

Katie Reilly reports for Time:

For more than 15 years, nonprofit groups have helped hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants journey through Central America to the United States, traveling together in a caravan to make the journey safer and their plight more visible. Thousands of Central American migrants currently walking to the U.S. border are doing the same, fleeing deadly violence on a trek that has drawn international focus.

As many as 7,000 migrants, according to one local estimate, have now joined the caravan that started on Oct. 13 in Honduras, many wearing flip flops and carrying their children on a journey that will be at least 1,500 miles long, depending on which part of the U.S. border they reach.

President Donald Trump — who has long critiqued U.S. immigration policies and denigrated immigrants since the start of his presidential campaign — has made numerous baseless claims about the caravan in recent weeks, spreading alarm and touting it as a “Great Midterm issue for Republicans!” Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the group included “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” and falsely suggested that Democrats funded the caravan. He also blamed Democrats for the current immigration laws, though Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

“I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emerg[enc]y,” Trump tweeted early Monday, threatening to cut off foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for not “stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.”

But videos and reporting from journalists traveling with the caravan of migrants show weary families making an arduous journey because of violence or lack of opportunity in their home countries, and no evidence that there are “unknown Middle Easterners” among the group.

“The migrants are ordinary people from Central America. They’re joining the caravans because the migration routes through Mexico are perilous for them and highly expensive,” says Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate professor of Latin American studies at the University of Arizona, who has studied Central America and human rights issues. “The more that the border has become militarized between the U.S. and Mexico, the more perilous and the more expensive the journey has become for Central Americans. So that’s why we see people coming together in the caravans.”

She says the caravan, which is larger than many of its annual predecessors, has grown because of how word spread on social media and because of worsening conditions in Honduras, where the murder rate is among the highest in the world and where the government has cracked down on political protestersfollowing last year’s disputed presidential election.

Oglesby says just a fraction of migrants who begin the trek make it to a U.S. point of entry each year, as many turn back or peel off if they can find work or safety in Mexico instead.

While no specific group has said it’s responsible for organizing the current caravan, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, founded in 2010, has led asylum-seeking migrants through Central America for more than 15 years, most recently in April — another caravan that drew ire from Trump. The group aims to “provide shelter and safety to migrants and refugees in transit, accompany them in their journey, and together demand respect for our human rights.” Some Pueblo Sin Fronteras leaders and organizers are involved in the current caravan.

Trump has lashed out at the caravan as an example of illegal immigration, threatening to deploy U.S. military force to “close our Southern border” and stop what he has described as a crisis. But illegal border crossings have been declining overall for more than a decade, though the number of border apprehensions fluctuates month-to-month. And under U.S. law, it is legal to petition for asylum at the border, though the process may be lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful.

“These migrant caravans are not a border crisis,” Oglesby says. “People are doing this openly and visibly, and they plan to show up at the U.S. port of entry and petition for political asylum, and that is exactly how our laws are supposed to function. The crisis comes about when U.S. border officials discourage people from political asylum, leave them on the bridges or threaten them that if they go forward with a political asylum claim, they might lose their children.”

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Katie is hardly the only informed observer to note that Trump is even more full of BS, fabricated facts, and bogus scare techniques than usual on this one.

Here’s Maegan Vasquez over at CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/22/politics/donald-trump-migrant-caravan-fact-check/index.html

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump, in a series of tweets on Monday, claimed he would declare a “national emergency” over an issue that has frequently piqued his attention — migrant caravans moving toward the United States through Central America and Mexico.

His tweets come just weeks ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and he has emphasized immigration as a key issue, without evidence accusing Democrats of pushing for overrun borders in what appears to be a naked fear campaign aimed at turning out his supporters. Immigration was a key issue in the 2016 presidential race.

Crowds of migrants, estimated to be in the thousands on Monday, resumed their long journey north on Sunday into Mexico as part of a migrant caravan originating in Central America.

Bolton and Kelly get into heated shouting match sparking resignation fears

Currently migrants are at the Central Park Miguel Hidalgo in the center of Tapachula. Organizers plan for them to begin moving north, reaching the northern city of Huixtla, which is about 20 miles north, and resting there.

The President, in his tweets, also made several questionable claims concerning immigration and the caravan. Among them: that “unknown Middle Easterners” are “mixed” in with the caravan, that he would be cutting off foreign aid over the caravan, and that Mexican authorities failed to stop migrants from coming into Mexico.

Asked later Monday about his assertion about “unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan, Trump said: “Unfortunately, they have a lot of everybody in that group.”

“We’ve gotta stop them at the border and, unfortunately, you look at the countries, they have not done their job,” he said. “They have not done their job. Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador — they’re paid a lot of money, every year we give them foreign aid and they did nothing for us, nothing.”

Here’s what we know:

Are there “unknown Middle Easterners” “mixed” into the migrant caravan?

Trump tweeted “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed” into the migrant caravan moving toward the United States. He called this a “national emergy” (sic).

It’s unclear what “unknown Middle Easterners” Trump appears to be referring to in his tweet, since there have been no reports, in the press or publicly from intelligence agencies, to suggest there are “Middle Easterners” embedded in the caravan.

A senior counterterrorism official told CNN’s Jessica Schneider that “while we acknowledge there are vulnerabilities at both our northern and southern border, we do not see any evidence that ISIS or other Sunni terrorist groups are trying to infiltrate the southern US border.”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday afternoon that the administration “absolutely” has evidence of Middle Easterners in the caravan, “and we know this is a continuing problem.”

However, she did not provide the specific evidence supporting that claim.

During a White House conference call with surrogates regarding the caravan, a Homeland Security official said the administration is looking into a claim from Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales that his country has been able to capture around 100 terrorists. However, the official did not offer any evidence of the Middle Eastern people who Trump claims are hiding among migrants in the caravan.

“We are looking into that claim from the President Morales on the numbers,” Jonathan Hoffman, the DHS official, said. “It is not unusual to see people from Middle Eastern countries or other areas of the world pop up and attempt to cross our borders.”

Earlier this month, Morales claimed foreign individuals linked to terrorism were captured in the country during his administration, which began in January 2016.

“We have arrested almost 100 people highly linked to terrorist groups, specifically ISIS. We have not only detained them in our territory, they have also been deported to their countries of origin. All of you here have information to that effect,” Morales said during a Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America event attended by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

There’s no direct link or correlation between Morales’ statement and Trump’s assertion about the caravan on Twitter.

The Department of Homeland Security also did not provide any evidence to bolster the President’s claim about “unknown Middle Easterns” in the caravan when asked for it by CNN on Monday.

A department official told CNN that in fiscal year 2018, Customs and Border Protection “apprehended 17,256 criminals, 1,019 gang members, and 3,028 special interest aliens from countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria and Somalia. Additionally, (Customs and Border Protection) prevented 10 known or suspected terrorists from traveling to or entering the United States every day in fiscal year 2017.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not specify any Middle Eastern countries.

Pressed about the President’s assertion that there are “unknown Middle Easterners” mixed in with the caravan, a State Department spokesperson said they understand there are several nationalities in the caravan and referred us to Department of Homeland Security for more information.

Will the administration cut off foreign aid? Can they?

Trump is threatening foreign aid over the new migrant caravan. Here’s what’s at stake.

Trump tweeted that because “Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.,” the United States “will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.”

It’s unclear where the administration will propose to make the cuts the President appears to be talking about, and CNN has reached out to the White House and the DHS for further information.

However, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act prohibits the President from withholding — or impounding — money appropriated by Congress.

New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said Monday that his office has reached out to the Government Accountability Office to ensure that the President does not violated the act.

“Fortunately, Congress — not the President — has the power of the purse, and my colleagues and I will not stand idly by as this Administration ignores congressional intent,” Engel said in a statement.

Trump has made the threat of cuts to foreign aid going to Latin American countries over migrant caravans several times over the last year.

Under the Trump administration, and with the approval of the Republican-controlled Congress, there have already been significant cuts to foreign aid to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — the three countries he mentioned Monday — and the administration plans to continue making cuts in fiscal year 2019.

Were authorities from Mexico unable to stop the migrant caravan from heading into the US?

Migrant caravan resumes march north from Mexico-Guatemala border

Trump tweeted Monday that “Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States.”

There are some 7,500 people marching north as part of a migrant caravan through Mexico, caravan organizer Dennis Omar Contreras told CNN. He said the organizers did a count of participants Monday morning.

He said the migrants will leave Mexico’s Tapachula for the town of Huixtla, which is located more than 20 miles northwest of their Monday morning location.

While Mexican authorities said before the caravan’s arrival that anyone who entered the country “in an irregular manner” could be subject to apprehension and deportation, many migrants from the caravan appear to have circumvented authorities.

CNN crews witnessed migrants jumping off a bridge at the Mexico-Guatemala border and riding rafts to reach Mexican soil.

Mexican authorities say more than 1,000 Central American migrants officially applied for refugee status in Mexico over the past three days.

It’s unclear how authorities will respond to the thousands of other migrants who are marching north.

Will the President declare a national emergency over the caravan?

It’s unclear exactly what executive action, if any, the President will take following his tweet saying that he has “alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National (emergency).”

Previous administrations have ordered troops to the US southern border, and Trump issued a similar memorandum earlier this year ordering National Guard troops to be deployed to the US-Mexico border. The memo came around the same time another, smaller migrant caravan was moving toward the US through Central America.

Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Davis, a spokesman for the Defense Department, told CNN that “beyond the National Guard soldiers currently supporting the Department of Homeland Security on our southern border, in a Title 32, U.S. Code, section 502(f) duty status under the command and control of the respective State Governors, the Department of Defense has not been tasked to provide additional support at this time.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection, referred questions about the national emergency to the White House, which did not answer to several questions for comment.

Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and the former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, told CNN that the President’s use of the term national emergency, and his potential subsequent declaration, is “a subjective judgment.”

“It is certainly true that the numbers that have been reported in this group are larger than anything that we’ve seen before this from these countries concentrated in one group,” she said.

However, she added that the reaction is “disproportionate to what’s happening.”

“I’m not saying it’s not a genuine problem, but it’s not like this is organized insurrection, in the way that its been characterized,” she added.

CNN’s Catherine Shoichet, Sarah Westwood, Ryan Browne, Jennifer Hansler, Geneva Sands, Dakin Andone, Patrick Oppmann, Natalie Gallón, Kevin Liptak and Jessica Schneider contributed to this report.

This story has been updated.

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And, here’s the ever-wonderful Tal from her “new home” over at the SF Chronicle:

Here’s what happens when the migrant caravan arrives at U.S. border

By Tal Kopan

WASHINGTON — President Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric Monday about a caravan of thousands of Central Americans making its way toward the U.S., even as uncertainty grew over what will happen to the migrants if they reach the border.

Trump has seized on the caravan as a key talking point heading into the midterm elections. The president has been pointing to the growing group of migrants as justification for his aggressive immigration proposals.

“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!” Trump tweeted Monday.

A source familiar with the government’s information on the caravan said there was no evidence Middle Easterners were mixing into it. It’s unclear whether Mexico will allow the group to continue the remaining 1,000-plus miles to the U.S. border without interfering.

More:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Here-s-what-happens-when-migrant-caravan-13327887.php#photo-16376169

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Actually, contrary to the false narrative put out by Trump, Sessions, Nielsen, and others, our legal system is set up to handle this situation:

USCIS could move additional Asylum Officers to ports of entry along the Southern border, particularly given the substantial advance notice;
Arriving migrants could be promptly and fairly screened for “credible fear;”
Those who pass could be matched with available pro bono lawyers and released to those locations where their lawyers and community support are located, thus insuring a high rate or appearance for asylum hearings in Immigration Court;
Those who fail credible fear could be returned to their home countries in a humane manner, perhaps working with the UNHCR;
If the Administration wants these cases to be “prioritized” in a backlogged Immigration Court system, they could remove an equal number of “low priority” older cases from the docket, thus preventing growth in the backlog and largely avoiding “Aimless Docket Reshuffling;”
The Refugee Act of 1980 could be used to establish a robust program for screening and resettlement of refugees directly from the Northern Triangle, thus both reducing the incentive to make the land journey to apply for asylum and setting a leadership example for other countries in the hemisphere to take additional refugees from the Northern Triangle;
We could work cooperatively with the UNHCR and other countries to establish shared resettlement programs for those who flee the Northern Triangle and can’t return;
We could invest more foreign aid in infrastructure, and job creation programs in the Northern Triangle which would deal with the causes of the continuing outward migration.

We do know from experience and observation what won’t work: incarceration, prosecutions, threats, family separation, child abuse, misconstruing asylum law against applicants, tirades directed against sending and transit countries, saying “we don’t want you,” etc.

PWS

10-22-18

THE HILL: MOCKING OUR HISTORY: Trump’s Racist White Nationalist Refugee & Asylum Policies Run Counter To Everything America Stands For!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/409132-bucking-history-trumps-asylum-policy-does-not-represent-america

Bucking history: Trump’s asylum policy does not represent America

BY BRUCE A. BEARDSLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/30/18 04:00 PM EDT 199

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

10

Do we know who we are as a nation?

Nursing infants separated from their mothers. Children warehoused in cages, then moved to tent cities without parents. Thousands of youngsters unaccounted for after separation at the border. Officials fumble and point fingers trying to lay the blame elsewhere. America’s human and humane dimensions seem lost. Is this who we are as a nation?

Even before American independence, settlers in the New World frequently saw themselves as morally superior: residents of the “city on the hill” serving as a beacon to others. While this beacon sometimes dimmed, we usually regained our moral compass with the passage of time — and a period of historical reflection.

Refugees and asylum seekers proliferate in the world as we close our doors to them. What has been our historical record?

The persecution of Jews in Germany was well known before Europe exploded in war in 1939, even though the death camps had not been established. Just before combat began, thousands of Jewish parents were able to send their children to safety in Great Britain and Canada. The Czech Kindertransport alone saved 669 children. These acts of hospitality by other countries are now almost universally praised — in contrast to the nearly insurmountable barriers erected then by the U.S.

After World War II, America did resettle some hundreds of thousands of refugees collected in Europe’s Displaced Persons camps. We did so while trying to avert our eyes from refugee surges in Asia. After the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Czech revolt, we helped resettle many of those who fled their native land via West Germany.

Closer to home, as Castro’s grip on Cuba tightened, thousands of Cuban youngsters came to the U.S on the “Peter Pan” flights (1960–1962). They came without their parents, and with no assurance of being reunited with them. Our country was (and remains today) at odds with Cuba politically, yet we welcomed these children and integrated them into our society.

In the two decades following the Vietnam War we resettled over a million refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. I know because I was in charge of elements of those programs, intermittently from 1975 to 1989.

The Vietnam programs had a separate category for unaccompanied minors. We worked closely with refugee camp administrators in countries of first asylum to afford these vulnerable children special protection in the refugee camps, and the potential for rapid resettlement in the U.S. and elsewhere. Yes, we were aware of, and dealt with, attempts at misrepresentation. And yes, we suspected that some refugee parents may have callously risked a child’s life to provide an “anchor” for the parent’s future migration. But the child was there.

When I was with the refugee programs in Malaysia and Thailand, my duties included urging the host countries to treat all asylum seekers humanely. In that we proudly led by example. U.S. policy then was dictated by the greater good of protecting minors who were at risk through no fault of their own. Now, decades later, many of those refugees who entered our country in poverty have become personally successful, greatly contributing to our country. They include doctors, teachers, senior military officers, scholars and job-creating entrepreneurs.

Today, on our southwest border, we are confronted by a similar challenge. Today our response is much different, and contrary to our basic values. Rather than offering asylum seekers a cloak of protection, our government seems to purposely make their lives as harsh as possible (and at great expense). Is separating families, caging children, and pressuring people to request removal who we are? Now the pretext of investigating the suitability of placing a minor in a relative’s home in the U.S. has become a vehicle for finding more deportees!

This is, alas, done to the cheers of a minority of people in America. Does it make our nation “great”?

Who are we as a nation anyway? Do we know?

Bruce A. Beardsley is a retired U.S. diplomat. During his 31 years in the Foreign Service, he oversaw what were then the U.S.’s largest refugee (in Thailand) and visa (in Mexico and the Philippines) operations.

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Do you want to leave an inspirational legacy to future generations of Americans? Then, rise up and vote the Kakistocracy, put in place by a minority of voters, out of office!

PWS

09-30-18

THE KILLERS AMONG US – The Lies, False Narratives, Cowardice, & White Nationalism Of The Trump Administration Will Kill Refugees We Should Be Saving & Make Us All Complicit In Evil!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/19/people-will-die-obama-official-warns-after-trump-slashes-refugee-numbers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

A former senior government official who oversaw refugee resettlement under Barack Obama warned that the Trump administration’s decision to slash the refugee admissions cap to a record low could have fatal consequences.

Bob Carey, the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under the Obama administration from 2015 to 2017, told the Guardian the new limit of 30,000 refugees per year and the Trump administration’s justification for the cap was “a new low in our history”.

“People will be harmed,” Carey said. “People will die.”

Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, announced on Monday that in the fiscal year that begins 1 October, the US will only allow up to 30,000 refugees – a sliver of 1% of the more than 68 million people forcibly displaced across the globe.

Carey and other refugee advocates said the new limit is part of a systematic effort by the US government to dismantle humanitarian protections for people fleeing violence, religious persecution and armed conflict. And they are concerned other countries will follow the US in dismantling refugee programs.

US government accused of ‘devastating damage’ to families separated at border

Read more

Pompeo’s announcement followed a six-month period where the US forcibly separated more than 2,600 migrant children from their parents, ended its commitment to funding the United Nations’ program for Palestinian refugees and was scrutinized by its own military officials for denying entry to Iraqis who assisted US troops.

Carey left his posting at ORR, an office in the health department, when Trump took office in January 2017. He said the refugee program – which is overseen by the health department, department of homeland security and state department – is being “managed to fail”.

“It’s really disturbing and tragic,” said Carey, who is now a fellow at the Open Society Foundations. “I think it will ultimately make the world less secure.”

Resettlement is what happens after people flee to one county and are then given a chance to start new lives in a third country. Resettlement is not what happens to most refugees: there were 19.9 million people who had fled their home country at the end of 2017, but less than 1% were resettled that year, according to the UN refugee agency.

An additional 40 million people are internally displaced and 3.1 million are seeking asylum, according to UNHCR.

With two weeks to go in the 2018 fiscal year, the US has admitted 20,918 refugees for resettlement – 46% of the current 45,000 refugee cap.

Palestinian anger over US decision to end funding for UN agency

Read more

To justify the lower cap, Pompeo cited a backlog of outstanding asylum cases for draining resources. In doing so, he linked two groups that are processed differently – refugees and asylum seekers – and overstated how many asylum cases are in the backlog.

“Some will characterize the refugee ceiling as the sole barometer of America’s commitment to vulnerable people around the world,” Pompeo said. “This would be wrong.”

But humanitarian groups allege that targeting a population that is vetted more than any other immigrant group is a key indicator of the US’s humanitarian priorities under Trump.

“There is no question that from the very beginning this administration had a goal to shut down or extremely limit the refugee program,” said Michelle Brané, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission.

Brané said low refugee admissions, coupled with the Trump administration’s slate of policies and directives that limit legal and illegal immigration, has created a “pressure cooker” in the most unstable regions in the world.

“You lock people in, you don’t let them out,” Brané said. “You don’t provide them an avenue to safety. What does that mean in the end? It feels like we’re leading to a bigger crisis.”

People in the refugee resettlement community are worried that the rapid, dramatic dismantling of the program means it will be difficult to rebuild if the cap is raised in the future.

The Syria paradox: America drops bombs but ‘turns its back’ on refugees

Read more

This is because with fewer refugees coming in, there is less need for refugee resettlement agencies who work as nonprofits contracted by the US government to manage the resettlement process by finding refugees housing, jobs and schools. This year, at least 20 were set to close and 40 others have cut operations, according to Reuters.

Paedia Mixon is CEO of New American Pathways, an Atlanta resettlement agency that provides assistance to all types of immigrants. “Our fears are in a short period of time you can destroy something that’s worked really well,” Mixon said.

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Yes, it took generations to build up the current NGO resettlement system. But, it has taken the Trump Administration less than two years to largely dismantle, and totally demoralize, it. Once destroyed, that system will not easily be rebuilt, if at all.

American is hurtling down a dark corridor. We must use our democratic processes to remove Trump, his White Nationalists, and their GOP enablers and supporters before it’s too late for America and the world, and most of all for the human beings whose lives depend on the international refugee protection system.

As Jake Sullivan, former senior national security adviser to Hillary Clinton told the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin: “It’s been a long time in this country since there was such a big moral gap between a big-hearted American people and their small-minded leaders.”

Once, those who picked on widows, orphans, women, and children were rightly considered to be immoral bullies and cowards, the butt of jokes. Now, we have somehow let them govern our country. That’s the very definition of a kakistocracy — government by the worst among us. Time for a change!

PWS

09-20-18

AMERICA THE MINUTE: AS WORLD REFUGEE CRISIS DEEPENS & IN THE FACE OF CLEAR EVIDENCE THAT REFUGEES ARE GOOD FOR AMERICA, OUR WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME TURNS ITS BACK ON REFUGEES – Fabricated Statistics & Bogus Attempt To Blame Asylum Seekers Highlight Disgraceful Actions – Sec. Mike Pompeo Joins White House “Racist Cult!” – Advice Of Experts Spurned!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/17/politics/pompeo-trump-refugee-asylum-levels/index.html

Refugee levels are surging worldwide. Trump is slashing the number the US will let in

By Zachery Cohen and Elise Labott, CNN:

White House slashes refugee cap to new low 02:16

Washington (CNN)As the number of people displaced by war and famine surges, the Trump administration is capping refugee admissions at the lowest level since 1980, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday. It’s the second year in a row the administration has set the cap at a record low.

The US will cap refugee admissions at 30,000 in 2019, a 33% drop from 2018’s record-low ceiling of 45,000.

Pompeo said the number should not be considered as “the sole barometer” of the United States’ commitment to humanitarian efforts around the world, adding that the US would “focus on the humanitarian protection cases of those already in the country.”

As evidence, Pompeo cited the number of asylum applications expected next year, saying the US will process up to 280,000 such applications in 2019.

The US is on track to admit the fewest number of refugees since the resettlement program began

“The ultimate goal is the best possible care and safety of these people in need, and our approach is designed to achieve this noble objective,” Pompeo said. “We are and continue to be the most generous nation in the world.”

Refugee resettlement agencies, immigrant rights groups and religious leaders had been pushing for the administration to increase the cap, noting that the number of refugees who need help around the world is larger than ever.

But Monday’s announcement isn’t a surprise. Administration officials have been moving to scale back refugee resettlement in the US since President Donald Trump took office.

Last year, officials lowered the cap to 45,000, a dramatic decrease from the ceiling of 110,000 that President Barack Obama’s administration had set for the 2017 fiscal year.

And the US isn’t even going to admit that many. CNN reported in June that the US is on track to admit the fewest number of refugees since its resettlement program began in 1980, tens of thousands below the cap amount.

Monday’s announcement was met with swift condemnation from refugee resettlement organizations.

“The United States is not only abdicating humanitarian leadership and responsibility-sharing in response to the worst global displacement and refugee crisis since World War II, but compromising critical strategic interests and reneging on commitments to allies and vulnerable populations,” the International Rescue Committee said.

Pompeo’s assertion that the US will process up to 310,000 refugees and asylum seekers also makes a false equivalence between the two issues.

Asylum and refugee protections are designed on similar grounds to protect immigrants who are being persecuted. Refugee protections are granted to immigrants who are still abroad, whereas asylum is reserved for immigrants who have already arrived on US soil.

There is no cap on asylum numbers, and in recent years, roughly 20,000 to 25,000 asylum seekers have been granted protections annually, according to the latest available government statistics.

BY THE NUMBERS: HOW BATULO AND HER FAMILY FIT IN

Total refugees:

22.5 million around the world

3 million living in the US

Refugees recently admitted to the US:

96,874 in 2016

33,368 in 2017

4,978 so far this year

Somali refugees recently admitted to the US:

10,786 in 2016

2,770 in 2017

73 so far this year

Sources: Pew Research Center, International Rescue Committee, US State Department, United Nations

There are two resource and funding streams each for refugees and asylum cases.

They also apply differently — with the State Department handling refugee admissions and the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice handling asylum claims. The interviewers who conduct screenings, however, can be deployed to handle either kind of interview.

But immigration hardliners and the administration have sought to curtail to the growing number of asylum claims each year, driven in large part by immigrants arriving at the southern border.

The number announced Monday reflects a compromise between hardliners in the Trump administration, such as Stephen Miller, who favored capping the ceiling at 20,000, and Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton and US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who argued to keep it at 45,000, according to several senior administration officials.

Senior NSC official out at White House

Miller personally has lobbied Cabinet officials to support the President’s desires to focus on border security, officials told CNN, and the issue was discussed at a secret Principals Committee meeting on Friday.

Hundreds of thousands of asylum applications are pending between the immigration courts, run by the Department of Justice, and applications to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, run by the Department of Homeland Security.

Depending on how a person is applying for asylum, and where in the process the application is, the case could be pending before either body.

CNN’s Catherine Shoichet, Tal Kopan, Michelle Kosinski and Jennifer Hansler contributed reporting

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“A Horrible Day For The Future Of America” [You Betcha!]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/09/18/its-great-day-restricting-access-america-horrible-day-future-america/?utm_term=.3c8a5b9bce55

Here’s what Professor Daniel W. Drezner of Tufts University had to say about the latest racist scam from the White Nationalist Administration:

There was never much coherence to Donald Trump’s foreign policy statements as a candidate, but there was a theme: The rest of the world is dangerous, and the United States needs to be walled off from it. In some cases, that meant Trump preferred a literal wall. In other instances, the walls have been more figurative but with real consequences, in the form of visa restrictions and trade barriers and whatnot.

On Monday, the Trump administration raised those walls higher.

The first move came on trade. Trump made his beliefs on this subject well-known early in the morning, tweeting: “Tariffs have put the U.S. in a very strong bargaining position, with Billions of Dollars, and Jobs, flowing into our Country – and yet cost increases have thus far been almost unnoticeable. If countries will not make fair deals with us, they will be ‘Tariffed!’” In the real world, the effects of tariffs have hurt some American sectors very badly, there have been no appreciable concessions from other countries, and it is far from obvious that this administration knows what it is doing in this area.

. . . .

What is truly impressive, however, is that this was not the dumbest and most embarrassing move made by the Trump administration on Monday. No, that honor must go to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose announcement demonstrated exactly how little swagger he possessed within the administration:

The United States will admit no more than 30,000 refugees in the coming fiscal year, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday, the lowest number in decades and a steep cut from the 45,000 allowed in this year.

The new number is a small fraction of one percentage point of the almost 69 million displaced people in the world today. But Pompeo said the United States remains the most generous nation when other U.S. aid to refugees is taken into account, including funds to shelter and feed refugees in camps closer to their home countries.

Pompeo said the lower cap should not be the “sole barometer” of American humanitarian measures, but “must be considered in the context of the many other forms of protection and assistance offered by the United States.”

You know what’s a sign that you know you are announcing a dumb move? Explaining that it is not the “sole barometer” of something and then leaving the podium without taking any questions. There is no way in which the optics of reducing refugee acceptance (except if you’re European) makes the United States look like the leader of the free world.

This announcement accomplishes nothing beyond making Stephen Miller happy. The time to cut back on refugee admissions is not the moment when the number of refugees is hitting an all-time high. There is zero swagger in this play. All it will do is continue to eviscerate the last remaining tendrils of U.S. soft power.

Donald Trump is the president, and as currently constituted, neither Congress nor the courts are able or willing to constrain his moves in this area. Heck, Trump is so unconcerned about legislative constraints that Pompeo announced the refugee restrictions without consulting Congress at all, as he is obligated to do by law. It is worth pointing out, however, that these moves are unpopular with the American people, rest on bad economics, and will foster anger and backlash across the rest of the world.

So, in other words, yesterday was a normal day in the life of the Trump administration.

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Cruelty, stupidity, inhumanity, ignorance, bigotry, lies, false narratives, White Nationalism, overt racism — ah, it’s just another “day at the office” for the Trumpsters.

If you’re tired of these noxious fools ruining our country and destroying our position in the world, get out the vote to throw the GOP out this Fall. Otherwise, we might all be living in the “Third World” of a “Banana Republic” pretty soon!

PWS

09-18-18

THE HILL: NOLAN COMMENTS ON THE ADMINISTRATION’S FAMILY DETENTION PROPOSAL

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/406656-trump-moves-to-detain-immigrant-children-with-their-parents

Nolan writes:

. . . .

Proposed regulation

On Sept. 7, the Trump administration filed a proposed rule to establish final regulations that would replace the Settlement Agreement.

According to DHS, the proposed regulations would implement the relevant, substantive terms of the Settlement Agreement with minor revisions to accommodate changed circumstances, and to implement closely-related provisions in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

The main benefit would be the creation of a federal licensing scheme for additional Family Residential Centers that would provide care for alien minors and their parents.

According to the American Immigration Council, “shifting the licensing and oversight of facilities that hold children to DHS is profoundly problematic, given the lack of expertise the department has in child welfare and its poor track record on oversight of adult facilities.”

Maybe, but if a challenge to the regulation goes to court, the main issue is likely to be whether administration officials can bypass an explicit statutory provision requiring mandatory detention in expedited removal proceedings with a settlement agreement.

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Go on over to The Hill at the link to read the rest of Nolan’s article which contains summaries of the Flores settlement and the expedited removal process.

PWS

09-17-18

IMMIGRATION COURTS: MISSION FAILURE! – PROPOSED SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT GIVES A GLIMPSE OF HOW SOME U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES ABANDONED THEIR OATH TO UPHOLD CONSTITUTIONAL DUE PROCESS & “RUBBER STAMPED” DENIALS FOLLOWING SHOCKINGLY UNFAIR “REVIEW” PROCESS – “Exhibit A” In Why The Current Bogus Credible Fear Process As Manipulated By Sessions Needs Meaningful Review By Article III Judges! – A “Dependent Judiciary” Just Can’t Be Trusted To Do The Job In The “Age of Trump & Sessions!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/family-separation-asylum-settlement.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Caitlin Dickerson reports for the NY Times:

. . . .

Mr. Sandoval-Moshenberg, who represented the plaintiffs, said that many parents were evaluated for “credible fear” after having their children removed, but before they were told where the children had been taken. He said his team submitted evidence showing that, during the interviews, the parents were “out of their minds with trauma, focused solely on the well-being and the whereabouts of their kids.”

In one piece of evidence included in the case, a recording of an immigration judge questioning a mother about her asylum claim, the mother can be heard crying too hard to answer the judge’s questions and says that she feels sick, Mr. Sandoval-Moshenberg said. After a few minutes, he said, the judge affirms an asylum officer’s finding that the woman’s fear of returning to her home country is not credible and asks that she be taken to see a doctor.

. . . .

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Read Caitlin’s full article concerning the recent proposed settlement at the above link.

Obvious question: Why would somebody like Jeff Sessions be given authority over a “court system” that is supposed to insure Due Process for asylum applicants? That’s even worse than having the fox guard the henhouse! The results are as horrible and unlawful as they are predictable.

PWS

09-14-18

GONZO’S WORLD: INSIDE APOCALYPTO’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – AS “KIDDIE DETENTION” HITS NEW HEIGHTS, THE CRUELTY, DISDAIN FOR HUMAN DIGNITY, AND DAMAGE TO MIGRANTS AND OUR NATIONAL PSYCHE IS UNRELENTING – Yet, America’s Most Notorious & Unapologetic Human Rights Violator Walks Free!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/12/us-immigration-detention-facilities?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

From The Guardian:

After harrowing journeys to the US, new arrivals are held in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, dozens of interviews reveal

Andrew Gumbel in McAllen, Texas

A June photo released by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows undocumented people at the central processing center in McAllen, Texas. Photograph: Handout/US Customs and Border Protection/AFP/Getty Images

All day and night they listened to the wailing of hungry children.

Here, in a freezing immigration detention facility somewhere in the Rio Grande valley of south Texas, adults and children alike were fainting from dehydration and lack of food.

Sleep was almost impossible; the lights were left on, they had just a thin metallic sheet to protect against the cold and there was nothing to lie down on but the hard floor.

This is the account of Rafael and Kimberly Martinez, who, with their three-year-old daughter, had made the dangerous trek from their home on the Caribbean coast of Honduras to the US border to ask for political asylum.

“The conditions were horrible, everything was filthy and there was no air circulating,” Kimberly Martinez told the Guardian of the five days the family spent cooped up in one facility they – like tens of thousands before them – referred to as “la hielera”: the icebox. Her husband added: “It’s as though they wanted to drain every positive feeling out of us.”

Family separations: surviving danger only to suffer trauma at the US border

Read more

They knew, from following the news, that their ordeal of escaping gang violence back home and trekking across desert terrain at the height of summer would not end when they reached the United States.

What they did not expect, though, were days of hunger, separation and verbal abuse that they said they endured at the hands of federal immigration officials.

‘Caged up like animals’

All they were given to eat, they said, were half-frozen bologna sandwiches, served at 10 in the morning, five in the afternoon and two in the morning, and single sugar cookies for their daughter. What water they were given had a strong chlorine taste – a common complaint – and upset their stomachs.

The Martinezes (not their real name) were among dozens of asylum-seekers the Guardian interviewed in the border city of McAllen recently after they secured their provisional release from federal custody – with black electronic monitors fastened tightly around their ankles – and just before they continued their journeys by bus to the homes of US-based sponsors to await court hearings on their statuses.

The Guardian sat in with a team of volunteer doctors and nurses administering emergency medical care and listened as family after family gave jarringly consistent accounts of what they described as grim conditions in a variety of border detention facilities – conditions that have grown only grimmer since the advent of Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies.

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Activists in Los Angeles protest Donald Trump’s immigration policies, 30 June. Photograph: Mike Nelson/EPA

Officials said the allegations made by families about their experiences in detention did not equate with what they knew to be common practice and they insisted detainees were treated with dignity and respect.

The “hieleras”, or iceboxes, asylum-seekers said, were overcrowded, unhygienic, and prone to outbreaks of vomiting, diarrhea, respiratory infections and other communicable diseases. Many complained about the cruelty of guards, who they said would yell at children, taunt detainees with promises of food that never materialized and kick people who did not wake up when they were expected to.

At regular intervals, day and night, the Martinezes, and many others, said guards would come banging on the walls and doors and demand that they present themselves for roll call.

If they talked too loudly, or if children were crying, the guards would threaten to turn the air temperature down further. When the Martinezes gathered with fellow detainees to sing hymns and lift their spirits a little, the guards would taunt them, or ask aggressively: “Why did you bother coming here? Why didn’t you stay in your country?”

“Many of these agents were Latinos, like us, but they were people without morals,” Rafael Martinez said, his voice choking with tears. “There we were, caged up like animals, and they were laughing at us.”

. . . .

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Read the rest of Gumbel’s shocking, disturbing, and downright infuriating report at the above link. If any other country treated vulnerable individuals seeking to exercise their legal rights to claim refuge under the Geneva Convention in this way we would call it just what it is — extreme cruel and inhuman treatment amounting to torture. Yet, somehow, the architects of this abhorrent, racist, wasteful, and dehumanizing system — Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, and others — remain free and largely unaccountable.

They even have the absolute audacity to whine and complain when Federal Courts occasionally call them out for their gross contempt for the law and Constitution and force them to take corrective action — which they do grudgingly, disrespectfully, without apology, and ineffectively.

Just today, “Gonzo Apocalypto” was sputtering about Federal Courts issuing nationwide injunctions against some of his corrupt, illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral practices. What a totally disingenuous jerk! I don’t remember Ol’ Gonzo complaining when a single Federal Judge in Texas, Judge Hanen, tanked Obama’s “DAPA” program that would have helped hundreds of thousands of deserving parents of US citizens and green card holders (and also helped reduce the Immigration Court backlog). Heck, Gonzo even tried to use that decision as the bogus justification for terminating DACA, a step that even Judge Hanen is not very anxious to take. Unlike Gonzo, Judge Hanen at least understands that DACA individuals have substantial equities in the United States that Congress would be wise to recognize through legislation.

Undoubtedly, there is a need for some detention of dangerous individuals or some so-called “flight risks” pending the completion of immigration proceedings. But, it is only a minuscule fraction of the number now being unnecessarily and wastefully detained.

And, there is seldom any reason whatsoever for detaining women and children who have passed the credible fear process and seek asylum. Work with the private bar to get them represented, help them understand the system, including their obligations to appear at court and when summoned by DHS, and work with the U.S. Immigration Judges, the private bar, and the DHS Offices of Chief Counsel to get these cases scheduled in a reasonable manner.

For every case that DHS seeks “priority processing,” they should be required to offer prosecutorial discretion or “PD” to a “lower priority” case. That would eliminate the current Government practice of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), keep the court backlogs from growing out of control, and insure timely and fair processing of recent arrivals. The DHS would also be “incentivized” to agree or stipulate to well-documented, clearly grantable asylum cases, as they are supposed to do. That’s how the system could and should work pending enactment of more comprehensive immigration reform.

Additionally, individuals who satisfy “credible fear” should be offered an opportunity to apply first to the USCIS Asylum Office, before the case is sent to Immigration Court, since that office would already have a “preliminary workup” of the case.

There are lots of ways of improving this system and making it work better for the asylum applicants, their lawyers, and the DHS. But, they aren’t going to happen as long as irresponsible, biased, ethically and morally challenged “White Nationalist” officials such as Trump, Sessions, & Nielsen are in charge.

PWS

09-13-18

BREAKING: WHAT DID I TELL YOU? – HASTE MAKES WASTE! – TRUMP SCOFFLAWS FORCED TO AGREE TO REHEAR ASYLUM CASES OF THOSE DENIED DUE PROCCESS THROUGH FAMILY SEPARATION!!!!

https://www.vox.com/2018/9/13/17853770/children-separated-news-update-parents-trump

Dara Lind reports for Vox News:

As many as 1,000 parents separated from their children are getting a second chance to stay in the US

In a huge reversal, the Trump administration is giving families another chance to claim asylum — and even some parents who’ve already been deported might be eligible.

By Dara Lind dara@vox.com Sep 13, 2018, 12:41am EDT

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A Honduran father and his 6-year-old son worship during Sunday mass on September 9, 2018, in Oakland, California. They fled their country seeking asylum in the US.
Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Trump administration has just agreed to give parents who were separated from their children at the US-Mexico border earlier this year a second chance to make asylum claims in the US.

The Department of Justice has negotiated an agreement that covers three lawsuits filed against the government over the family-separation policy. Parents in the US who’d been ordered deported would get another chance to pass an interview demonstrating a “credible fear” of persecution — the first step in the asylum process.

If either the parent or the child passes the screening interview, families will be allowed to apply for asylum together. Some parents who don’t pass will be allowed to remain with their children in the US while the children’s cases are adjudicated.

And in some cases, the government is even willing to consider reopening cases for parents who were already deported from the US.

The agreement covers three lawsuits: Ms. L v. ICE, which forced the government to reunite separated families this summer; M- M- M- v. ICE, brought on behalf of children separated from parents; and Dora v. Sessions, a lawsuit from parents who had failed their initial asylum screenings because they were distraught after weeks of separation from their children.

If the agreement is approved by the federal judges overseeing the three lawsuits, it will result in a second chance for hundreds of parents. Muslim Advocates and the Legal Aid Justice Center, who represented the plaintiffs in Dora v. Sessions, believe it could give “well over 1,000” parents another chance at an asylum claim. And for many families, it will eliminate (or at least defer) the impossible choice between giving up a child’s legal case, and separating the family again by keeping the child in the US while the parent is deported.

Separating families made it much harder for parents to seek asylum

Under the Trump administration’s family separation policy, a parent who wanted to seek asylum in the US had one chance: to pass a “credible fear” screening interview with an asylum office.

If a parent passed the credible fear screening, he or she was given a chance to seek asylum before an immigration judge; if the parent failed, he or she could appeal the decision to an immigration judge, with much worse odds. Losing the appeal, or agreeing to drop the case, led to an order of deportation.

Generally, most asylum seekers pass their credible fear screenings. But evidence suggests that parents who were separated from their children often failed their interviews. Parents were often so consumed by grief over their separation from their children that they weren’t able to answer asylum officers’ questions fully and effectively, according to the lawsuit filed in Dora v. Sessions.

“Explaining the basis for an asylum claim is very difficult under the best of circumstances,” said one source familiar with the interview process but not professionally authorized to speak on the record. “When someone is a) detained, b) almost certainly unrepresented, and c) beside herself with fear and desperation because of having had her child taken from her,” the source continued, “it is almost impossible.”

By the time nearly 2,000 parents and children were reunited in July (thanks to Judge Dana Sabraw’s rulings in the Ms. L case ordering family reunification), the overwhelming majority of parents had already lost their cases and been ordered deported. But their children — who’d been placed on a separate legal track as “unaccompanied alien children” after being separated from their parents — often still had ongoing cases and a real chance of winning some form of legal status in the US.

So upon being reunited, hundreds of families were faced with the choice between returning to their home country together (and facing possible peril or persecution), and keeping the child in the US in hopes of winning asylum or another form of legal status — and separating the family anew. (Some parents alleged they weren’t even given this chance, and were coerced into withdrawing their children’s legal claims — and forcibly reseparated without warning if they refused to comply.)

None of this would have happened if families hadn’t been separated to begin with. Under normal circumstances, if either a parent or a child passed an asylum interview, the government would allow them both to file asylum claims. And obviously, parents who weren’t traumatized by family separation might have had a better chance with their interviews. But simply reuniting the family didn’t solve the problem.

The government is agreeing to give reunited families the same chance they’d had if they’d never been separated

Here is what the agreement proposed by the government would actually do, if approved:

Parents who passed their initial “credible fear” interviews for asylum will be allowed to continue; this agreement doesn’t change those cases.

Parents who had lost their cases and been ordered deported will be given a full review to reassess whether or not they have a credible fear of persecution. This review will include a second interview for “additional fact-gathering” — during which a lawyer can be present (or can dial in by phone). Parents will be allowed to do this even if they didn’t ask for a credible fear interview when they were first arrested.

Parents who fail their credible fear screenings will be allowed to remain in the US and apply for asylum if their child passes his or her credible fear screening. The reverse is also true: If a child fails her asylum screening but the parent passes his, both parent and child will be allowed to apply for asylum. This is the way things normally work when families are apprehended together; by instituting it now, the government is essentially wiping away the legal side effects of family separation.

Parents who aren’t eligible for a credible fear interview because they had been deported before and were returning will still be allowed to avoid deportation if they meet a higher standard (“reasonable fear”) and qualify for something called “withholding of removal.” Even if they fail that standard, they will be allowed to stay in the US while their children are going through their asylum cases.

Parents who have already been deported will not have their cases automatically reviewed by the government. However, the plaintiffs in these lawsuits will have 30 days to present evidence to the government that particular parents should be allowed to return, and the government will consider those requests. (The agreement doesn’t make it clear whether deported parents will have their own cases reopened, or whether they will solely be allowed to return to stay with their children while the children’s legal cases are ongoing.)

If the agreement is approved, it will officially send the legal fight over family separation into its endgame phase. While hundreds of parents and children remain separated, the legal fight over reunification is largely about who’s responsible for carrying out various parts of the government’s reunification plan; the new agreement would set a similar plan up for the legal due process of parents and children making claims to stay in the US.

It would almost certainly run into similar implementation obstacles to the reunification plan, but it would set expectations that the government would provide this process by default, rather than moving forward with deportation.

The Trump administration is never going to wholly be able to erase the consequences of its decision to separate families as a matter of course. But it is now agreeing to give up the legal advantages that it accrued by separating parents’ and children’s cases — and forcing parents to go through interviews with life-or-death stakes without knowing when or whether they’d ever see their children again.

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I’ve been saying it over and over again. Why not just do it right, provide full Due Process, and follow the law?

Not only are the policies being promoted by Sessions, Trump, and the rest of the GOP White Nationalists unconstitutional, illegal, vile, and immoral, they are totally wasteful of limited Government resources (particularly in a time of GOP-fueled budget deficits) and unnecessarily tie up the Federal Courts. Contrary to Jeff Sessions’s false narratives, no court system anywhere has unlimited time for all the nonsense that the Government could potentially pursue. When common sense and sane prosecutorial discretion lose out, they whole system suffers.

Think what might have happened if, instead of wasting time and money on illegal family separation, unnecessary criminal prosecutions, and bending protection law out of shape, the Government had done the right thing and spent the money:

Working with NGOs and legal aid groups to release folks in locations where they could get legal assistance, virtually guaranteeing their appearance in Immigration Court;
Agreeing to grant the many domestic violence and other types of gang-related cases that could have been granted after proper preparation and documentation under a proper application of the law (before Sessions messed it up);
Taking all of the cases of long-term law-abiding residents off overloaded Immigration Court dockets so that the real contested asylum cases could be given priority without denying anyone Due Process or moving everything else back through “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”).
Any “bad guys,” or “true economic migrants” could have been given full hearings, denied, and removed. But, totally contrary to Sessions’s racist blather, most of the folks arriving are actually legitimate refugees. They could have been granted status and allowed to go out and work and study to make America better. I’ve found few individuals (including many native-born US citizens) more grateful and willing to work hard and contribute than those granted asylum.
The money spent on wasteful litigation and needless, cruel and inhuman, detention could instead have been used;
- to establish a viable overseas refugee screening program in the Northern Triangle;
- working with other countries to share resettlement responsibilities;
- and trying to correct the situations in the Northern Triangle which gave rise to the refugee flows in the first place.

Sadly, this is hardly the first, and probably by no means the last, time that the US Government has been forced to reprocess large numbers of asylum seekers because of a failure to follow Due Process and do the right thing in the first place. Just check out the history of the ABC v. Thornburgh litigation and settlement (a case I was involved in during my time in the “Legacy INS” General Counsel’s Office).

Indeed, the Trump scofflaws are “doubling down” on every failed policy fo the past. They actually are at it again with their bone-headed proposal to thumb their collective noses at Judge Dolly Gee and withdraw from the Flores settlement and set up a “Kiddie Gulag” by regulation. Good luck with that. The Trump Scofflaws are already wasting your taxpayer money on more “tent cities in the Kiddie Gulag” that they almost certainly will be enjoined from using at some point. Then, cooler heads will prevail and we’ll undoubtedly have a “Flores II” settlement.

Also, compare the real role of immigration lawyers in enforcing the law and holding Goverment scofflaws like Sessions and Nielsen accountable with the totally bogus picture painted by Sessions in his false, unethical, and highly inappropriate speech to US Immigration Judges this week. Truth is exactly the opposite of nearly everything that Jeff Sessions says.

Our country can’t afford the scofflaw conduct, inhumanity, immorality, and wastefulness of Trump, Sessions, Miller and their racist White Nationalist cabal. Vote for regime change this Fall!

Haste Makes Waste! Told ya so!

PWS

09-13-18

GONZO’S WORLD: RECENT ARTICLES SHOW HOW SESSIONS’S SHOCKINGLY INAPPROPRIATE REMARKS TO NEW IMMIGRATION JUDGES VIOLATED EOIR CODE OF JUDICIAL ETHICS, SHOWED DISRESPECT FOR THE LAW, AND VIOLATED THE FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF GOOD IMMIGRATION JUDGING BY DIRECTING JUDGES NOT TO BE SYMPATHETIC TO REFUGEES! – TURNING REFUGEE LAW AND HISTORY ON ITS HEAD!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/sessions-new-immigration-judges-sympathy

Hamed Aleaziz reports for BuzzFeed News:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday warned incoming immigration judges that lawyers representing immigrants are trying to get around the law like “water seeping through an earthen dam” and that their responsibility is to not let them and instead deliver a “secure” border and a “lawful system” that “actually works.”

He also cautioned the judges against allowing sympathy for the people appearing before them, which might cause them to make decisions contrary to what the law requires.

“When we depart from the law and create nebulous legal standards out of a sense of sympathy for the personal circumstances of a respondent in our immigration courts, we do violence to the rule of law and constitutional fabric that bind this great nation. Your job is to apply the law — even in tough cases,” he said.

The comments immediately drew criticism from the union that represents the judges and from former judges.

“The reality is that it is a political statement which does not articulate a legal concept that judges are required to be aware of and follow,” said Dana Marks, a spokesperson for the National Association of Immigration Judges and an immigration judge in San Francisco. “It did appear to be a one-sided argument made by a prosecutor.”

Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and now an immigration attorney, said the comments overlooked the fact that asylum laws were designed to be flexible.

“We possess brains and hearts, not just one or the other,” he said. It is sympathy, Chase said, that often spurs legal theories that advance the law in asylum law, civil rights, and criminal law.

“Sessions is characterizing decisions he personally disagrees with as being based on sympathy alone,” he said, “when in fact, those decisions were driven by sympathy but based on solid legal reasoning.”

Unlike other US courts, immigration judges are employees of the Justice Department whose evaluations are based on guidelines Sessions lays out. In that role, Sessions already has instituted case quotas, restricted the types of cases for which asylum can be granted, and limited when judges can indefinitely suspend certain cases. Advocates believe the Trump administration has made these decisions in order to speed up deportations. His comments on sympathy to immigrants appeared intended to bolster a decision he made recently to limit when asylum can be granted out of fear of domestic or gang violence.

Sessions also told the judges that they should focus on maximum production and urged them to get “imaginative and inventive” with their high caseload. The courts currently have a backlog of hundreds of thousands of deportation cases.

Ashley Tabaddor, an immigration judge in Los Angeles and the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, which represents the nation’s 350 immigration judges, said Sessions’ speech was notable for its lack of any mention of fairness or due process. “We cannot possibly be put in this bind of being accountable to someone who is so clearly committed to the prosecutorial role,” said Tabaddor.

The union has long called for its separation from the Department of Justice in order to be truly independent of political decision-making.

“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 [Immigration and Nationality Act] to advance their clients’ interests. Theirs is not the duty to uphold the integrity of the act. That is our most serious duty,” Sessions said in a speech to 44 newly hired judges who were being trained in Falls Church, Virginia.

He ended his speech by telling the incoming judges that the American people had spoken in laws and “in our elections.”

“They want a safe, secure border and a lawful system of immigration that actually works. Let’s deliver it for them,” Sessions said.

From the beginning of October through the end of June, immigration judges had granted around 22% of asylum cases and denied around 41% of cases. The rest of the cases were closed. The rate is similar to previous fiscal years. Sessions’ decision to limit the types of cases in which asylum should be granted was made in mid-June.

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6152755/The-U-S-increase-number-immigration-judges-50-percent-BALLOONING-backlog.html

Valerie Bauman reports for The Daily Mail:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday that he plans to increase the number of immigration judges in the U.S. by 50 percent by the end of Fiscal Year 2018 – part of the administration’s effort to take on a case backlog that has ballooned under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy.

The number of immigration cases on hold in the U.S. has risen 38 percent since Trump took office, with 746,049 pending immigration cases as of July 31, up from 542,411 at the end of January 2017, according to an analysis of government data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Sessions asserted his authority on Monday during remarks welcoming 44 newly hired immigration judges – the largest class in U.S. history – noting that they must operate under his supervision and perform the duties that he prescribes.

As you take on this critically important role, I hope that you will be imaginative and inventive in order to manage a high-volume caseload,’ he said. ‘I do not apologize for expecting you to perform, at a high level, efficiently and effectively.’

The attorney general said the system for seeking asylum in the U.S. has been ‘abused for years’ and while the judges must respect immigrants’ rights, they should also ‘reject unjustified and sometimes blatantly fake claims.’

Sessions also had harsh words for the attorneys who represent immigrants, describing them as ‘water seeping through an earthen dam,’ who attempt to ‘get around’ immigration laws.

The message follows a series of policy changes that have put increasing pressure on immigration judges to close cases quickly while taking away their authority to prioritize cases based on their own judgment.

‘We’re clearly moving toward a point where there isn’t going to be judicial independence in the immigration courts anymore,’ former immigration Judge Jeffrey S. Chase told DailyMail.com.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers remarks to the incoming class of immigration judges in Falls Church, Virginia

For example, the Justice Department earlier this year announced a quota system requiring judges to clear at least 700 cases annually in order to be rated as ‘satisfactory’ on their performance evaluations.

Quotas ‘would threaten the integrity and independence of the court and potentially increase the court’s backlog,’ according to the National Association of Immigration Judges, the union representing the judges.

Sessions also issued a decision earlier this year that takes away the authority of immigration judges to administratively close cases, a process that allowed a judge to indefinitely close low-priority cases to make room on the docket for more serious offenses – such as those involving violent criminals and gang members.

From Oct. 1, 2011 through Sept. 30, 2017, 215,285 cases were administratively closed, according to Sessions. Now experts say those cases will be added back to the dockets, further compounding the backlog.

In addition, Sessions issued a legal opinion earlier this year designed to make it impossible for victims of domestic violence and gangs to seek asylum in the U.S. – which some critics say will limit judicial independence.

Legal experts said Monday that Session’s speech was designed to assert his authority over the judges and impress upon them the importance of issuing rulings consistent with his own philosophy.

‘That was an enforcement speech,’ former immigration Judge Paul Wickham Schmidt told DailyMail.com. ‘The whole implication that somehow (people seeking asylum) are bending the law and that there are attorneys trying to go through loopholes is the opposite of the truth … The losers in these asylum cases aren’t simply migrants trying to game the system. They are people facing real dangers when they go home.’

Sessions did not shy away from calling on the new judges to rise to the challenges before them.

‘Let me say this clearly: it is perfectly legitimate, moral, and decent for a nation to have a legal system of immigration and to enforce the system it adopts,’ Sessions said in his prepared remarks. ‘No great and prosperous nation can have both a generous welfare system and open borders. Such a policy is both radical and dangerous.’

Sessions has said that he has introduced a ‘streamlined’ approach for hiring judges – a historically lengthy process – to bring the average hiring time down to 266 days, compared from 742 days in 2017, according to Department of Justice data.

Immigration judges are appointed by the U.S. attorney general. The new additions bring the total number of immigration judges in the U.S. to 397.

OK. Now let’s get beyond Sessions’s White Nationalist screed and get some truth about:

The ethical standards for Immigration Judges;
The real intent of the Refugee Act of 19809; and
What being a fair and impartial immigration judge is really about.

Sessions’s Statement Favoring A Party To Immigration Court Proceedings And Showing Disrespect For The Opposing Party & Their Representatives Violates The EOIR Ethical Code By Showing An “Appearance of Bias.”

Let’s remember that under the strange rules governing EOIR and the Immigration Courts within the USDOJ, Attorney General Jeff Sessions can and has taken on the role as a judicial adjudicator in an individual cases, changing results and setting precedent for the BIA and the Immigration Judges.

So, what does the EOIR Code of Judicial Ethics say about judicial conduct?

V. Impartiality (5 C.F.R. § 2635.101(b)(8))

An Immigration Judge shall act impartially and shall not give preferential treatment to any organization or individual when adjudicating the merits of aparticular case. An Immigration Judge should encourage and facilitate pro bono representation. An Immigration Judge may grant procedural priorities to lawyers providing pro bono legal services in accordance with Operating Procedures and Policies Memorandum (OPPM) 08-01.

VI. Appearance of Impropriety (5 C.F.R. § 2635.101(b)(14))

An Immigration Judge shall endeavor to avoid any actions that, in thejudgment of a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts, wouldcreate the appearance that he or she is violating the law or applicable ethical standards.

. . . .

IX. Acting with judicial Temperament and Professionalism

An Immigration Judge should be patient, dignified, and courteous, and should act in a professional manner towards all litigants, witnesses, lawyers and others with whom the Immigration Judge deals in his or her official capacity, and should not, in the performance of official duties, by words or conduct, manifest improper bias or prejudice.

Note: An Immigration Judge should be alert to avoid behavior, including inappropriate demeanor, which may be perceived as biased. The test forappearance of impropriety is whether the conduct would create in the mind of a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts the belief that the Immigration Judge’s ability to carry out his or her responsibilities with integrity, impartiality, and competence is impaired.

Note: An Immigration Judge who manifests bias or prejudice in a proceeding impairs the fairness of the proceeding and brings the immigration process into disrepute. Examples of manifestations of bias or prejudice include but are not limited to epithets; slurs; demeaning nicknames; negative stereotyping; attempted humor based upon stereotypes; threatening, intimidating, or hostile acts; suggestions of connections between race, ethnicity, or nationality and crime; and irrelevant reference to personal characteristics. Moreover, an Immigration Judge must avoid conduct that may reasonably be perceived as prejudiced or biased. Immigration Judges are not precluded from making legitimate reference to any of the above listed factors, or similar factors, when they are relevant to an issue in a proceeding.

Note: An Immigration Judge has the authority to regulate the course ofthe hearing. See 8 C.F.R. §§ 1240.1(c), 1240.9. Nothing herein prohibits theJudge from doing so. It is recognized that at times an Immigration Judgemust be firm and decisive to maintain courtroom control.

Wow. Sure sounds to me like Sessions is in clear violation of each of these!

Let’s get down to “brass tacks” here. Imagine that you are a represented asylum applicant from the Northern Triangle with an upcoming hearing. The morning of your hearing, you read the statement that Jeff Sessions made to the new Immigration Judges.

That afternoon, when you appear at the hearing you find that none other than Jeff Sessions is yo\ur U.S. Immigration Judge. So, do you think that you and your attorney are going to get a “fair and impartial” hearing, including a possible favorable exercise of discretion” on your asylum application, as our Constitution and laws require? Of course not!

But remember, all asylum applicants are appearing before “judges” who are actually employees of Jeff Sessions. Each judge knows that he or she owes career longevity to pleasing Sessions and his minions. Each judge also knows that at any time Sessions can arbitrarily reach down into the system, without explanation or notice, and “certify” any case or decision to himself.

Clearly, after having publicly taken a pro-DHS, pro-enforcement, anti-asylum applicant, anti-private attorney position, Sessions should not ethically have any role whatsoever in the outcome of cases in the Immigration Court System. But, clearly, he does have such a role. A big one!

If any sitting Immigration Judge conducted himself or herself the way Sessions just did, they would be suspended immediately. How does Sessions get away with disregarding judicial ethics in his own system?

The Refugee Act of 1980 Implements Our International Treaty Obligations Under the UN Convention & Protocol Relating To The Status Of Refugees and Is Actually About “Protecting” Those In Danger, Not Finding Ways Of “Rejecting” Their Claims.

Let’s hear from a former legislator who played a key role in developing and enacting the Refugee Act or 1980, former Representative Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) who at that time was the Chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee. This is from the letter that Holtzman recently wrote to Secretary Nielsen resigning from the DHS Detention Advisory Committee because of its perversion of the law, particularly the illegal family separation policy engineered by Sessions.

What is so astonishing to me is how much this country has changed since 1980, when I was privileged as chair of the House Immigration Subcommittee to co-author with Senator Ted Kennedy the Refugee Act of 1980. The Act — which was adopted without serious controversy — created a framework for the regular admission of refugees to the U.S. The immediate stimulus for the bill was the huge exodus of boat people leaving Vietnam. Though the memory of the Holocaust played a role, too, particularly the knowledge that the U.S. could have rescued so many people from the hands of the Nazis but did not. The Refugee Act marked our commitment as a nation to welcoming persons fleeing persecution anywhere.

In those days, the U.S. accepted large numbers of refugees — about 750,000 arrived from Vietnam; 600,000 entered from Cuba; and hundreds of thousands of Jews and their relatives came from the Soviet Union. The thought that the U.S. is frightened today by the presence of an additional 2,000 or so children and parents from Central America is laughable and appalling.

In those days, the U.S. also showed world leadership on refugee resettlement. For example, America understood that it bore a special responsibility for the refugees fleeing Vietnam because of its long involvement in the Vietnam War. Obviously, we could not absorb all the refugees, but our government worked hard to get resettlement solutions for all. First, it persuaded the countries neighboring Vietnam to which people fled in small boats not to push those refugees back out to sea, where they would confront pirates, drowning and other terrible dangers. (I know because I participated in speaking to those countries.) Then, the U.S. organized a world conference in Geneva, where countries agreed to accept specific numbers of refugees. The U.S. was able to induce other countries to act because it took the largest share. Our country’s leadership turned the boat people crisis into one of the most successful refugee resettlement programs ever.

Now, in response to the influx of (mostly) women and their children fleeing horrific violence in Central America, the U.S. government can think only of building a wall and unlawfully separating children from their parents — something I call child kidnapping, plain and simple — as a deterrent to keep others from coming to the US. How far we have we fallen.

And how easy it would be to do the right thing. The U.S. needs to start with recognizing that it once again has a special responsibility for a dire situation, this time in the Northern Triangle. We overthrew the democratically elected government in Guatemala, which was replaced by one right-wing government after another, including one that committed genocide against the indigenous population. In Honduras and El Salvador, we similarly propped up right-wing governments that did nothing for their people, leaving them without effective governance in place. The fact that gangs have been able to terrorize the population with impunity is a result.

More must be done as well. We should reinstate the Central American Minors Refugee/Parole Program, established under President Obama and cancelled by the Trump Administration, whereby people could apply in their home countries for admission as refugees to the U.S. without facing the perils of the overland trip. Second, we should try to get Canada and other countries in South America to accept refugees from the Northern Triangle countries, reducing the burden on us. To do this, we would have to agree to take a substantial number of refugees from the Northern Triangle countries as well. And then we should work to improve the governance in these countries, perhaps by involving the United Nations and nearby countries, such as Costa Rica.

Unfortunately, the chance of any such enlightened response toward refugees from the Northern Triangle seems remote. These countries probably fall into Trump’s stated “shithole” category. Plainly, the hostile attitude toward the refugees persists. For example, 463 parents may have been deported without their children. Apparently DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen feels no responsibility for reuniting those with their parents, instead making the flimsy excuse that the parents wanted to leave them behind. While possibly true in a small number of instances, given the fact that many of the parents do not speak English, or even Spanish, but their indigenous language, it is more likely that a significant number of the parents had no idea of what was happening or how to get their children back. They may even have been coerced into leaving. In any case, Nielsen has a very poor record of truth-telling. On June 17, she insisted that “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”

And the racist, contemptuous attitude of the Administration keeps showing. Just recently, before a conservative audience, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a joke — a joke! — about separating children from their parents. (He also briefly joined in a chant of “Lock her up!”)

Most Americans, fortunately, have found the separation policy abhorrent. Those of us who do, need to press the Administration to find a more humane and more comprehensive solution, like our country has done in the past. But if the Administration continues the enforced separation policy, I hope that the courts will enforce their decisions, which have required reunification, by holding the Secretary and others in contempt if necessary. Congress should be called on to act by holding hearings and adopting censure resolutions. None of us can sit idly by when our government stoops to such racist, malign behavior.

Yes, with responsible leadership, it would be relatively easy to do the right thing here. But, it’s not going to happen with the “wrong people” like Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, and Kristjen Nielsen in charge.

The real intent of the Refugee Act of 1980 was to give America the tools to take a leadership role in protecting individuals, particularly those flowing from situations we helped cause like the mess in the Northern Triangle. I’m sure that most of those involved in the bipartisan effort would be shocked by the overtly racist, restrictionist views being pawned off by Sessions as “following the law.” “I call BS” on Session’s perversion of protection laws.

Undoubtedly, cases like Matter of A-R-C-G-, incorrectly overruled by Sessions, actually substantially understated the case for protecting domestic violence victims. There is little doubt in my mind that under a proper interpretation “women in El Salvador” (or Guatemala or Honduras, or many other countries) satisfy the stated criteria for a “particular social group.”

Being a “woman in El Salvador” clearly is :

Immutable or fundamental to identity;
Particularized; and
Socially distinct.

Moreover, there is no legitimate doubt that the status of being a “woman in El Salvador” is often “at least one central reason” for the persecution. Nor is there any doubt that the Governments in the Northern Triangle are unwilling and unable to offer a reasonable level of protection to women abused because of class membership, Sessions’s largely fictional account of country conditions notwithstanding.

At some point, whether or not in my lifetime, some integrity will be re-injected into the legal definition by recognizing the obvious. It might come from Congress, a more qualified Executive, or the Courts. But, it will eventually come. The lack of recognition for women refugees, who perhaps make up a majority of the world’s refugees, is a symptom of the “old white guys” like Sessions who have controlled the system. But, that’s also likely to change in the future.

My esteemed colleague, retired U.S. Immigraton Judge Jeffrey S. Chase said it best:

“Sessions is characterizing decisions he personally disagrees with as being based on sympathy alone,” he said, “when in fact, those decisions were driven by sympathy but based on solid legal reasoning.”

The Proper Role Of a Good Immigration Judge Involves Sympathetic Understanding Of The Plight Of Refugees, What They Have Suffered, & The Systemic Burdens They Face in Presenting Claims.

Let’s see what some real judges who have had a role in the actually fairly adjudicating asylum claims have to say about the qualities of judging.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the late Seventh Circuit Judge Terence T. Evans in Guchshenkov v. Ashcroft, 366 F.3d 554 (7th Cir. 2004) (Evans, J., concurring) that sums up the essence of being a good Immigration Judge:

Because 100 percent of asylum petitioners want to stay in this country, but less than 100 percent are entitled to asylum, an immigration judge must be alert to the fact that some petitioners will embellish their claims to increase their chances of success. On the other hand, an immigration judge must be sensitive to the suffering and fears of petitioners who are genuinely entitled to asylum in this country. A healthy balance of sympathy and skepticism is a job requirement for a good immigration judge. Attaining that balance is what makes the job of an immigration judge, in my view, excruciatingly difficult.

Or, check out this heartfelt statement from my former colleague Judge Thomas Snow, one of “Arlington’s Finest,” (who also, not incidentally, had served as the Acting Chief Immigration Judge and Acting Director of EOIR, as well as being a long-time Senior Executive in the USDOJ) in USA Today:

Immigration judges make these decisions alone. Many are made following distraught or shame-filled testimony covering almost unimaginable acts of inhumanity. And we make them several times a day, day after day, year after year.

We take every decision we make very seriously. We do our best to be fair to every person who comes before us. We judge each case on its own merits, no matter how many times we’ve seen similar fact patterns before.

We are not policymakers. We are not legislators. We are judges. Although we are employees of the U.S. Department of Justice who act under the delegated authority of the attorney general, no one tells us how to decide a case. I have been an immigration judge for more than 11 years, and nobody has ever tried to influence a single one of my thousands of decisions

And finally, because we are judges, we do our best to follow the law and apply it impartially to the people who appear before us. I know I do so, even when it breaks my heart.

Here’s a “pithier” one from my friend and colleague Judge Dana Leigh Marks, former President of the National Association of Immigration Judges (who also was the “winning attorney” representing the plaintiff in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987)) — I was on the “losing” INS side that day):

[I]mmigration judges often feel asylum hearings are “like holding death penalty cases in traffic court.”

Finally, here’s my take on being an Immigration Judge after 45 years in the field, including stints at the BIA, the “Legacy INS,” private practice, and academics:

From my perspective, as an Immigration Judge I was half scholar, half performing artist. An Immigration Judge is alwayson public display, particularly in this “age of the Internet.” His or her words, actions, attitudes, and even body language, send powerful messages, positive or negative, about our court system and our national values. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of those who fail at the job do so because they do not recognize and master the “performing artist” aspect, rather than from a lack of pertinent legal knowledge.

Compare Sessions’s one-sided, biased outlook with the statements of those of us who have “walked the walk and talked the talk” — who have had to listen to the horrible stories, judge credibility, look at whether protection can legally be extended, and, on some occasions, look folks in the eye and tell them we have no choice but to send them back into situations where they clearly face death or danger.

Sympathetic understanding of refugees and the protection purposes of refugee, asylum, and CAT laws are absolutely essential to fair adjudication of asylum and other claims for relief under the Immigration Laws. And, clearly, under the UNHCR guidance, if one is going to err, it must be on the side of protection rather than rejection.

That’s why Jeff Sessions, a cruel, biased, and ignorant individual, lacking human understanding, sympathy, a sense of fundamental fairness, a commitment to Due Process, and genuine knowledge of the history and purposes of asylum laws has no business whatsoever being involved in immigration adjudication, let alone “heading” what is supposed to be a fair and impartial court system dedicated to “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren tried to tell her colleagues and the rest of America the truth about Jeff Sessions and the horrible mistake they were making in putting such a famously unqualified man in charge of our Department of Justice. But, they wouldn’t listen. Now, refugees, families, and children, among his many victims, are paying the price.

Sessions closes with a final lie: that the American people spoke in the election in favor his White Nationalist policies. Whether Sessions acknowledges it or not, Donald Trump is a minority President. Millions more voted for Hillary Clinton and other candidates than they did for Trump.

Almost every legitimate poll shows that most Americans favor a more moderate immigration policy, one that admits refugees, promotes an orderly but generous legal immigration system, takes care of Dreamers, and controls the borders in a humane fashion as opposed to the extreme xenophobic restrictionist measures pimped by Sessions, Trump, Steven Miller, and the GOP far right. In particular, the separation of children, Sessions’s unlawful “brainchild,” has been immensely (and rightfully) unpopular.

Jeff Sessions has never spoken for the majority of Americans on immigration or almost anything else. Don’t let him get away with his noxious plans to destroy our justice system! Whether you are an Immigration Judge, a Government employee, or a private citizen, we all have an obligation to stand up to his disingenuous bullying and intentionally false, xenophobic, racially-motivated, unethical, scofflaw narrative.

PWS

09-11-18

GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”

Sessions to immigration judges: Immigrants’ attorneys like ‘water seeping’ around law

By Tal Kopan, CNN

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a new group of immigration judges Monday that it is their job to “restore the rule of law” to the immigration system over the contrary efforts of the lawyers who represent immigrants.

The remarks at the training of the largest-ever class of new immigration judges implied that the judges were on the same team as the Trump administration, and that immigrants and their attorneys were trying to undermine their efforts.

“Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests,” Sessions said, adding the same happens in criminal courts. “And we understand that. Their duty, however, is not uphold the integrity of the act. That’s our duty.”

Sessions noted that “of course” the system “must always respect the rights of aliens” in the courts. But he also warned the judges of “fake claims.”

“Just as we defend immigrant legal rights, we reject unjustified and sometimes fake claims,” Sessions said. “The law is never serviced when deceit is rewarded so that the fundamental principles of the law are defeated.”

The comments came in the context of Sessions’ repeated moves to exert his unique authority over the immigration courts, a separate legal system for immigrants that is entirely run by the Justice Department.

Sessions approves every judge hired and can instruct them on how to interpret law, and thus decide cases, as well as how to manage cases. He has used that authority multiple times in the past year, including issuing a sweeping ruling that will substantially narrow the types of cases that qualify for asylum protections in the US. Those decisions overrode the evolution of years of immigration judges’ and the immigration appellate board’s decisions.

Sessions reminded the new judges of that authority and those decisions in his remarks, saying he believes they are “correct” and “prudent” interpretations of the law that “restores” them to the original intent.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/09/10/politics/sessions-immigration-judges/index.html

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

Another totally inappropriate and unethical effort by Sessions to insure that migrants, particularly asylum seekers, receive neither fair consideration nor Due Process from U.S. Immigration Judges in connection with their, in many instances, very compelling cases for protection.

Let’s shine a little light of truth on the Sessions’s dark myth-spinning:

As recently as 2012, the majority of asylum applicants who received decisions on the merits of their claims in Immigration Court were granted protection;
Conditions in most “sending countries” — particularly those in the Northern Triangle — have gotten worse rather than better;
There is no reasonable explanation for the large drop in approvals in recent years other than bias against asylum seekers;
Even after Sessions took over, 30% of those who get merits determinations won their cases;
The success rate is higher for those released from detention and given fair access to counsel;
Most detained migrants, particularly those intentionally detained in substandard conditions in obscure locations, do not have reasonable access to counsel;
Most attorneys representing detained asylum seekers serve pro bono or for minimal compensation (particularly in relation to the amount of time and effort required to prepare and present an asylum case in detention);
Detention of asylum seekers simply to deter them from coming is illegal;
Separation of families is a deterrent is also illegal;
Neither detention nor “zero tolerance” prosecutions have been shown to have a material impact on the flow of refugees to our Southern Border;
Sessions has provided no evidence of any widespread fraud in asylum applications by refugees from the Northern Triangle;
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”), the leading interpreter of refugee and asylum protections, has consistently criticized the US’s overly restrictive approach to asylum adjudication;
Article III U.S. Courts continue to be critical of both the unlawful policies being promoted by Sessions and the fundamental errors still being made by the BIA and some Immigration Judges in analyzing asylum cases and claims under the Convention Against Torture;
According to the US Supreme Court, a chance of harm as low as 10% can satisfy the generous legal standard for asylum;
According to the UNHCR, asylum applicants should be given the “benefit of the doubt;”
Most of those who fail to get asylum, like the abused woman denied protection by Sessions in Matter of A-B-, face life threatening situations in their home countries — we have merely made a conscious choice not to offer them asylum or some alternative form of life-saving protection.

As Sessions sees that his time as Attorney General will likely come to an end before the end of this year, he is doubling down on his White Nationalist, xenophobic, racist, restrictionist, lawless agenda. He wants to inflict as much damage on migrants, refugees, women, and people of color as he can before being relegated to his former role as a rightist wing-nut. He also seeks to convince the Immigration Judges that they are not independent juridical officials but mere highly paid enforcement agents with an obligation to deport as many folks as possible in support of the President’s agenda.

I do agree with Sessions, however, that the newly-minted Immigration Judges have a tremendously difficult job. If they adopt his philosophy, they are likely to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution and laws of the US and to wrongly return individuals to death-threatening situations. On the other hand, if they carefully and fairly follow the law and give full consideration to the facts, they will be compelled to grant protection in many cases, thus potentially putting them on EOIR’s “hit list.” (Basically, new US Immigration Judges, even those with many years of civil service, can be “fired at will” by EOIR during their first two years of “probation” as judges.)

The only solution is an independent Article I Immigration Court that will guarantee that someone as totally unqualified as Sessions can never again impose his personal will and bigoted, anti-Due-Process views on what is supposed to be a fair and impartial court system.

PWS

09-10-18

EXPOSING SESSIONS’S DEADLY DUE PROCESS SCAM: JUDGE SULLIVAN BLOCKS ANOTHER POTENTIAL DEPORTATION TO DEATH AS SESSIONS-LED DOJ ARGUES THAT THE KILLING LINE NOT SUBJECT TO REVIEW — Pro Bono Counsel Jones Day Saves The Day, At Least For Now — “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”

https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2018/08/23/judge-who-forced-feds-to-turn-that-plane-around-blocks-another-deportation/?kw=Judge%20Who%20Forced%20Feds%20to%20%27Turn%20That%20Plane%20Around%27%20Blocks%20Another%20Deportation&et=editorial&bu=NationalLawJournal&cn=20180823&src=EMC-Email&pt=NewsroomUpdates&utm_source=newsletter

C. Ryan Barber reports for the National Law Journal:

Judge Who Forced Feds to ‘Turn That Plane Around’ Blocks Another Deportation

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan this month lambasted federal officials for the unauthorized removal of a woman and her daughter while their emergency court challenge was unfolding in Washington, D.C.

By C. Ryan Barber August 23, 2018 at 03:08 PM

Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for D.C. May 27, 2009. Photo by Diego M. Radzinschi/NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration not to depart a pregnant Honduran woman as she seeks asylum in the United States, two weeks after demanding that the government turn around a plane that had taken a mother and daughter to El Salvador amid their emergency court appeal challenging removal.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, granted a temporary stay preventing the Honduran woman’s deportation following a hearing on her challenge to the administration’s decision to make it all but impossible for asylum seekers to gain entry into the United States by citing fears of domestic abuse or gang violence.

In court papers filed earlier this week, the Honduran woman’s lawyers—a team from Jones Day—said she fled her home country “after her partner beat her, raped her, and threatened to kill her and their unborn child.” The woman, suing under the pseudonym “Zelda,” is currently being held at a Texas detention center.

“Zelda is challenging a new policy that unlawfully deprives her of her right to seek humanitarian protection from this escalating pattern of persecution,” the woman’s lawyers wrote in a complaint filed Wednesday. The immigrant is represented pro bono by Jones Day partner Julie McEvoy, associate Courtney Burks and of counsel Erin McGinley.

At Thursday’s court hearing, McGinley said her client’s deportation was imminent absent an order from the judge blocking such a move. “Our concern today,” McGinley said, “is that our client may be deported in a matter of hours.”

U.S. Justice Department lawyers on Wednesday filed papers opposing any temporary stay from deportation. A Justice Department lawyer, Erez Reuveni, argued Thursday that the Honduran woman lacked standing to challenge the Justice Department’s new immigration policy, which makes it harder for immigrants seeking asylum to argue fears of domestic violence and gang violence.

After granting the stay preventing the Honduran woman’s deportation, Sullivan made clear he had not forgotten the events of two weeks ago, when he learned in court that the government had deported a mother and daughter while their emergency challenge to deportation was unfolding.

“Somebody … seeking justice in a United States court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her? It’s outrageous,” Sullivan said at the Aug. 9 hearing. “Turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States.”

Sullivan on Thursday urged Reuveni to alert immigration authorities to his order. Reuveni said he would inform those authorities, adding that he hoped there would not be a recurrence of the issue that arose two weeks earlier.

“It’s got to be more than hopeful,” Sullivan told Reuveni in court Thursday. Reuveni said he could, in the moment, speak for himself and the Justice Department, but not the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I cannot speak for ICE until I get on the phone with them and say this is what you need to do immediately,” Reuveni said.

Sullivan said he appreciated Reuveni’s “professionalism” and his efforts to “undo the wrong” that had been done to the Salvadoran mother and daughter earlier this month.

The government, after the fact, said it was reviewing removal proceduresin the San Antonio immigration office “to identify gaps in oversight.”

Stressing the need for a stay against Zelda’s deportation, McGinley said at Thursday’s hearing: “To be blunt, if she’s killed, there’s no remedy, your honor.” She added: “No remedy at all.”

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

When individuals have access to high quality counsel like Jones Day, the courts pay more attention. That’s why Sessions & co. are working overtime to insure that individuals are hustled though the system without any meaningful access to counsel and, perhaps most outrageously, by excluding counsel from participation in the largely rigged “credible fear review process” before the Immigration Court. This isn’t justice; it isn’t even a parody of justice. It’s something out of a Kafka novel.

No wonder the Sessions-infused DOJ attorneys don’t want any real court to take a look at this abusive and indefensible removal of individuals with serious claims to relief without consideration by a fair and impartial adjudicator operating under the Constitution and our Refugee Act rather than “Sessions’s law.”

Judge Sullivan actually has an opportunity to put an end to this mockery of American justice by halting all removals of asylum seekers until at least a semblance of Due Process is restored to the system. The only question is whether he will do it! The odds are against it; but, with folks like Jones Day arguing in behalf of the unfairly condemned, the chances of halting the “Sessions Death Train” have never been better!

(Full Disclosure: I am a former partner at Jones Day. I’ve never been prouder of my former firm’s efforts to protect the American justice system and vindicate the rights of the most vulnerable among us. Congrats and appreciation to Jones Day Managing Partner Steve Brogan, Global Pro Bono Coordinator Laura Tuell, Partner Julie McEvoy, Of Counsel Erin McGinley, and everyone else involved in this amazing and much needed effort!)

PWS

08-24-18

LA TIMES: SESSIONS PERSECUTES BROWN SKINNED FEMALE REFUGEES — THERE IS NOTHING “EASY” ABOUT BEING AN ABUSED WOMAN OR AN ASYLUM APPLICANT!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7d04de4c-1e76-4711-9b90-dac191234d79

Jazmine Ulloa reports for the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Xiomara started dating him when she was 17. He was different then, not yet the man who pushed drugs and ran with a gang. Not the man who she says berated and raped her, who roused her out of bed some mornings only to beat her.

Not the man who choked her with an electrical cord, or put a gun to her head while she screamed, then begged, “Please, please don’t kill me — I love you.”

Fleeing El Salvador with their daughter, then 4, the 23-year-old mother pleaded for help at a port of entry in El Paso on a chilly day in December 2016.

After nearly two years, her petition for asylum remains caught in a backlog of more than 310,000 other claims. But while she has waited for a ruling, her chance of success has plunged.

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in June issued a decision meant to block most victims of domestic abuse and gang violence from winning asylum, saying that “private criminal acts” generally are not grounds to seek refuge in the U.S. Already, that ruling has narrowed the path for legal refuge for tens of thousands of people attempting to flee strife and poverty in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

“You can tell there is something happening,” said longtime immigration attorney Carlos A. Garcia, who in mid-July spoke to more than 70 women in one cell block at a family detention center in Texas. Most had received denials of their claims that they have what the law deems a “credible fear of persecution.”

“More than I’ve ever seen before,” he said.

In North Carolina, where federal immigration agents sparked criticism last month when they arrested two domestic-violence survivors at a courthouse, some immigration judges are refusing to hear any asylum claims based on allegations of domestic abuse. Other immigration judges are asking for more detailed evidence of abuse at the outset of a case, a problem for victims who often leave their homes with few written records.

Under the Refugee Act of 1980, judges can grant asylum, which allows a person to stay in the U.S. legally, only to people escaping persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in “a particular social group.”

As drug war violence escalated over the last two decades in Mexico and Central America, fueled by a U.S. demand for drugs and waged by gangs partly grown on American streets, human rights lawyers pushed to have victims of domestic violence or gang crime considered part of such a social group when their governments don’t protect them.

After years of argument, they won a major victory in 2014 when the highest U.S. immigration court, the Board of Immigration Appeals, ruled in favor of a woman from Guatemala who fled a husband who had beaten and raped her with impunity.

Sessions, in June, used his legal authority over the immigration system to reverse that decision, deciding a case brought by a woman identified in court as A.B.

“Asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems — even all serious problems — that people face every day all over the world,” he said, ruling that in most cases asylum should be limited to those who can show they were directly persecuted by the government, not victims of “private violence.”

Immigration advocates reacted with outrage.

Karen Musalo, a co-counsel for A.B. and a professor at the UC Hastings College of Law, called the decision “a return to the dark ages of refugee law,” a move inconsistent with a steadily evolving principle “that women’s rights are human rights.”

Neither the government, nor the police, could help Xiomara in her rural town, where gangs were deeply embedded.

“Are you kidding?” she said, asking to be identified by only her first name out of concern about possible retaliation. “I would go to the police department and wouldn’t come back alive — if I came back at all.”

Within a year of when they started dating, she said, her boyfriend began drinking and doing drugs, making friends with the wrong crowd. He grew meaner, more violent.

One day he put a gun to her head, her asylum claim says. On another evening, on the roof of his home after another fight, she had been weeping in the dark, when she felt a cord tighten around her neck.

“He would have killed me if his family hadn’t appeared,” she said.

Other women offer similar stories.

Candelaria, 49, who also asked that her last name not be used, said she left an abusive husband of 20 years in Honduras after his drinking became more severe. And always the criminal bands of men roamed.

“My children sent me a photo of me in those days, and I look so old, so sad,” said Candelaria, whose asylum case has been pending for four years.

For more than two decades, United Nations officials and human rights lawyers have argued that women victimized by domestic violence in societies where police refuse to help are being persecuted because of their gender and should be treated as refugees entitled to asylum.

But Sessions and other administration officials have a different view, and they have made a broad effort to curb the path to asylum. The number of people entering the U.S. by claiming asylum has risen sharply in recent years, and administration officials have portrayed the process as a “loophole” in the nation’s immigration laws.

In October, Sessions labeled asylum an “easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States” and called on immigration judges to elevate “the threshold standard of proof in credible fear interviews.” In March, he restricted who could be entitled to full hearings. From May to June, federal officials limited asylum seekers from gaining access through ports of entry, with people waiting for weeks at some of the busiest crossings in Southern California.

The government does not keep precise data on how many domestic-violence survivors claim asylum, but figures released last month give a glimpse of the effect that Sessions’ decision has begun to have at one of the earliest stages of the asylum process.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday filed a lawsuit on behalf of 12 parents and children it says were wrongly found not to have a credible fear of return. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Thursday stopped the deportation of a mother and her daughter in the case, threatening to hold Sessions in contempt.

For domestic-abuse survivors waiting for hearings, the uncertainty has been excruciating.

Candelaria wants to go home, but her older children back in Honduras tell her to have hope.

“ ‘You’ve endured enough,’ they tell me,” she said.

Xiomara, now 25, won’t have her asylum hearing for another year.

For months, she scraped by on meager wages, baby-sitting and waiting on tables. She was relieved to find a job at a factory that pays $10 an hour.

The American dream is “one big lie,” she now says.

But at least here, she said, she and her daughter are alive.

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

People like Xiomara are wonderful folks, genuine refugees, deserving of protection, who will contribute to our country. As my friend and legal scholar Professor Karen Musalo cogently said, Sessions is leading “a return to the dark ages of refugee law,” a move inconsistent with a steadily evolving principle “that women’s rights are human rights.” But, the “New Due Process Army” (Karen is one of the “Commanding Generals”) isn’t going to let him get away with this outrageous attack on human rights, women’s rights, and human decency.

Due Process Forever, Jeff Sessions Never!

PWS

08-13-18

VAL BAUMAN @ DAILY MAIL — NOW THERE IS PROOF! — Sessions’s “Zero Tolerance” Prosecutions Of Asylum Seekers Displace Real Criminal Prosecutions & Investigations, Actually Making America Less Safe! — When Will The Waste, Fraud, & Abuse Of Our Justice System By The Sessions DOJ End? — “‘Unless crimes are suddenly less prevalent in the districts along the southwest border, the odds of being prosecuted for many federal offenses have declined,’ the report found.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6036081/Prosecution-non-immigration-crimes-57-Southern-U-S-border-immigration-cases-balloon.html

Val writes:

The rate of non-immigration prosecutions at the southern U.S. border was down 57 percent in June compared to March as federal officials changed focus under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, according to a new report.

In March 2018, non-immigration prosecutions accounted for one in seven (14 percent) of all total prosecutions at the southern border’s five federal districts.

That rate fell steadily over the next several months, and by June the ratio had fallen to one in seventeen (or six percent) of all prosecutions, according to an analysis of government data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

+2

In March 2018, non-immigration prosecutions accounted for one in seven (14 percent) of all total prosecutions at the southern border’s five federal districts. By June the ratio had fallen to one in seventeen (or six percent) of all prosecutions

‘Unless crimes are suddenly less prevalent in the districts along the southwest border, the odds of being prosecuted for many federal offenses have declined,’ the report found.

The timing of the change coincides with the Trump administration’s April 6 announcement that the government was taking a zero-tolerance approach to immigration at the southern U.S. border.

Statisticians at TRAC concluded that the push to prioritize prosecuting illegal border crossers had taken focus away from other crimes that federal prosecutors are charged with enforcing – including narcotics trafficking, weapons offenses and pollution crimes, among other things.

‘There are these capacity issues; everything can’t be your top priority,’ said Susan Long, a statistician for TRAC. ‘I think it’s difficult to believe that the stepped-up immigration prosecutions were just happenstance and didn’t have anything to do with policy.’

Former immigration judge Paul Wickham Schmidt agreed, saying most illegal immigration cases are misdemeanors that result in time served – typically 2-3 days.

‘Courts have limited capacity, prosecutors have limited capacity and when you prioritize one thing that means deprioritizing something else,’ he said. ‘In this case, what they’ve deprioritized is absolutely insane. There are real crimes out there.’

The TRAC report also bolsters assertions by San Diego-based Justice Department prosecutor Fred Sheppard that the zero-tolerance policy would be ‘diverting staff, both support and attorneys, accordingly’ from non-immigration cases, according to a June report by USA Today.

Sheppard warned border authorities that prioritizing immigration cases would ‘occupy substantially more of our resources,’ according to an email obtained by the paper.

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

Clearly, Sessions’s obscene, irrational, xenophobic fixation on brown skinned asylum seekers (who, in most cases should just be taken to the nearest port of entry and processed civilly through the credible fear/removal system) is destroying the U.S. Justice system. His insane program ignores the fundamental truth of law enforcement in any system: putting minor first offenders of regulatory laws in court displaces the cases of major offenders.

That’s why no well functioning justice system does it! What would you think if your local courts and prosecutors were so busy processing jaywalking cases that they couldn’t investigate and prosecute burglaries and bank robberies? But, that’s essentially what Sessions is doing here.

Moreover, the Federal Prosecutors, Federal Judges, and Federal, Magistrates who have failed to use their independent authority to put an end to these abuses are also complicit.

While much has been written about the supposed “resilience” of our democratic institutions and their ability to stand up to Executive abuses and tyranny, in this case it’s not happening. The system is essentially letting Sessions “get away with murder.” As Americans we should all be both outraged and appalled by this failure!

Stop the abuses! Stand up for Due Process, humanity, and rationality!

PWS

08-08-18

MIRIAM JORDAN @ NYT – CREDIBLE FEAR APPROVALS FOR REFUGEES AT BORDER PLUNGE AS A RESULT OF SESSIONS’S ASSAULT ON DUE PROCESS, WOMEN, HISPANICS, & THE US ASYLUM SYSTEM – ACLU Sues To Thwart White Nationalist AG’s Efforts To Make Border A Killing Field For The Most Vulnerable Among Us!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/us/migrants-asylum-credible-fear.html

Miriam writes for the NY Times:

Nine years ago, a Guatemalan woman named Irene said, she watched as gangs murdered her husband in front of her when he refused to pay them a “tax,” or extortion fee, to keep the family musical-instruments business open. Some of the assailants were imprisoned, and she continued to run the shop on her own.

Recently, though, the menace resumed, she said. The perpetrators, fresh out of prison, threatened to kill Irene if she did not pay. Fearing for her life, she fled to the United States with her 17-year-old daughter. They arrived at the southwest border seeking asylum on June 13.

Under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance border enforcement policy, the 47-year-old woman was detained and her daughter was sent to a shelter. A few weeks later, Irene had her initial interview with an asylum officer, the first hurdle applicants must clear in the asylum process.

The officer, who conducted the interview over the phone, determined that Irene had not proved a “credible fear” of persecution if she returned home. Irene was dumbstruck. What was their definition of fear?

“I can’t go back to my country,” Irene, who asked that only her first name be used because she feared reprisals, said this week in a phone interview. “They’ll kill me if I go back.”

Immigration attorneys and advocates report that asylum applicants in recent months are failing their crucial initial screenings with asylum officers at the border in record numbers, the first sign that the Trump administration is carrying out promises to reduce the number of people granted asylum in the United States and limit the conditions under which it is granted.

New reports that people are being rejected at the border with only a cursory review of their claims has raised an alarm among immigrant advocates, who warn that many of those with legitimate claims are being sent home to face danger, or even death, despite international laws that guarantee the right of the persecuted to seek sanctuary in other countries.

Behind the new practices are recent changes to asylum adjudication unveiled by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June. Critics have said those changes render it all but impossible for those fleeing domestic abuse, gang brutality and other violence to win protection in the United States.

Mr. Sessions’s decision was codified in a memo issued in July to the officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who conduct credible-fear interviews at the border.

. . . .

Data suggests that the number of people succeeding in making a case for credible fear began to decline sharply earlier this year, even before Mr. Sessions announced his new legal guidance.

According to figures collected and released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which tracks immigration statistics, findings of credible fear in immigration court began to “plummet” in what appeared to be a “dramatic change” during 2018. During the six months ending in June, only 14.7 percent of the case reviews in immigration court found the asylum seeker had a credible fear. Approval levels were twice that level during the last six months of 2017, the researchers found.

Eileen Blessinger, the attorney representing Irene, the Guatemalan woman, tweeted a photograph on July 12 of a stack of papers. “This is what 29 blanket credible-fear interview denials looks like,” she wrote, noting that among her clients who had been detained apart from their children, “every single separated parent” who was interviewed had received a negative determination.

She said that the trend has persisted since last month’s tweet.

“I haven’t met a single person in the last few weeks who passed their credible-fear interview,” said Allegra Love, executive director of the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, who leads a team of lawyers assisting migrants in detention in New Mexico. She added, “We have never seen such a high volume of denials.”

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the new policies, which it argues violate due process “in numerous respects” and effectively close the door to asylum to people fleeing domestic abuse and gang brutality.

The lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the judge to declare the new credible-fear policies illegal and to enjoin the government from applying the new standards.

“This is a naked attempt by the Trump administration to eviscerate our country’s asylum protections,” Jennifer Chang Newell, the managing attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “It’s clear the administration’s goal is to deny and deport as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.”

. . . .

Paul W. Schmidt, who retired as an immigration judge in 2016, said it appears that the attorney general’s move to reinterpret judicial precedent was “very intentional — to undermine claimants from Central America.”

“Sessions has made it much, much more difficult to fit your case into a category for relief, even if you have suffered very serious harm,” said Mr. Schmidt, who served as chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals from 1995 to 2001.

One case decided before Mr. Session’s decision provides an example of how such cases were often handled in the past. In 2015, a Guatemalan woman named Ana decided that she and her then 11-year-old daughter could no longer endure the relentless psychological and physical aggression inflicted on them by her former partner. They had reported the abuse to local police, to no avail, and finally journeyed north to seek refuge in the United States.

Ana passed the credible-fear interview and moved with her daughter to Kentucky, where a lawyer helped them make their case before an immigration judge.

In early June, a week before Mr. Sessions’s new legal guidance, Ana was granted asylum and the right to remain legally in the United States. “I thank God we can be where we are safe, instead of returning to danger,” she said.

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

Read Miriam’s entire story at the link.

I’ve heard USCIS officials claim that “nothing has changed” in the credible fear interview process or results as the result of Sessions’s rewrite of asylum law in Matter of A-B-, and his overtly anti-asylum, anti-Hispanic, anti-female message which has certainly been echoed by the actions of USCIS Director Cissna. Cissna has removed “customer service” (read “human service”) from the agency’s mission. I have been and remain highly skeptical of those claims of “business as usual.”

Perhaps those officials need to go down to the border and watch while the “Irenes of the world” are improperly blocked by their officers from even having a chance to put on a full asylum case before an Immigration Judge. This is neither Due Process nor is it compliance with the Refugee Act of 1980, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the Convention Against Torture. It’s disgusting, plain and simple! A low point in U.S. history for which even career Civil Servants who are “going along to get along” with Sessions’s vile and lawless message have to bear some responsibility. And that definitely includes some U.S. Immigration Judges “rubber stamping” these parodies of justice. History is recording who you are and what you have done and continue to do.

Indeed, what is “their definition of fear?” Obviously, nothing suffered or to be suffered by those with brown skins under the Sessions regime.

For years, even before Trump, the law has been intentionally manipulated and unfairly tilted against asylum seekers from Central America by “captive” judges working for the DOJ and responding to political pressure to reduce the flow of refugees across the Southern Border. But, Sessions has removed all vestiges of Due Process and legality — he overtly seeks to send vulnerable asylum seekers back to danger zones without fair hearings.

If these folks could get lawyers, gather evidence, and have a fair hearing before an impartial judge, and an interpretation of protection law consistent with the generous aims of the Refugee Act of 1980 and the international Convention that it implements, and a right to seek corrective review before “real courts” (those not working for Sessions) they would have a decent chance of qualifying for protection. Beyond that, even those who don’t satisfy all of the arcane technical requirements for asylum often face life-threatening danger in countries where the government protection system has broken down or joined forces with gangs and abusers. They should also be offered some type of at least temporary refuge.That’s exactly what the 1959 Convention and Protocol contemplated and some other countries have implemented.

Some day, we as a nation will be held accountable, if only by history, for what Trump, Sessions, and the White Nationalists are doing to refugees and migrants of color under the cover of, but actually in contravention of, the law (and human decency). But those who are “going along to get along” by not standing up to these abuses of Executive Power, Due Process, and human rights will also be complicit!

PWS

08-08-18

PROFESSOR PHIL SCHRAG IN THE SEATTLE TIMES: FAMILY SEPARATION IS JUST PRELIMINARY TORTURE IN SESSIONS’S GULAG – THE NEXT STEP: DEPORTATION OF BROWN-SKINNED REFUGEE FAMILIES TO DEATH ZONES — “And so they will be deported back to the situations of rape, beating and slashing they fled.”

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/a-fate-worse-than-separation-awaits-central-american-families/

Professor Phil Schrag writes in theSeattle Times:

Under two court orders, the government is now reuniting migrant children with their mothers. Although the California court that ordered the reunification may permit continued detention of the families until their asylum claims can be decided, something worse than separation or detention awaits those mothers who are deported: rape and death.

Many of the mothers and children who previously could have won asylum will now be sent back to Central America, where they face horrific violence at the hands of the brutal gangs from which they fled.

That risk is now very great because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently changed policy that had allowed immigration judges to grant asylum to victims of domestic violence.

In 2016, I volunteered as a lawyer at the family detention center in Dilley, Texas. Every mother I met had fled to the United States to escape brutal domestic violence, threats of rape or death from gangs. Nearly all were found by asylum officers to have “credible fear of persecution,” enabling them to claim asylum in hearings before federal immigration judges.

Immigration advocates who work on the cases of mothers in the family detention centers in Texas estimate that more than 85 percent of them are at risk of serious bodily harm or death at the hands of violent men in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Federal statistics for family cases are unavailable, but until recently, many of the families fleeing from those countries eventually did win asylum from immigration judges. In the clinic that I codirect at Georgetown Law, and at other law-school clinics, students have won asylum for several of them. We also know from data collected by the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings that hundreds of other Central American families have obtained protection in immigration courts around the country. It had become well established that victims of domestic violence could win asylum. In some cases, asylum was also granted to families fleeing threats of violence in countries where the police are unable to prevent such violence.

But the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the Attorney General unilaterally to tell immigration judges how to interpret the law. Attorney General Sessions recently overruled the appellate case that supported asylum for domestic-violence victims.

Reversing that woman’s asylum grant, he wrote that her ex-husband “attacked her because of his pre-existing relationship with the victim” rather than because she was a member of a “group” of women who were violently attacked by husbands or gang members.

Our attorney general’s view of the law, apparently, is that domestic violence is a purely private affair, unrelated to social norms or patterns in countries in which such violence is endemic. By characterizing domestic violence as “private criminal activity,” even when the police can’t prevent or stop it, he also apparently intends to bar the victims from winning asylum.

Immigration judges don’t enjoy deporting genuine victims of violence. Perhaps some will find creative ways to grant relief to these families, rather than becoming cogs in the giant femicide machines of northern Central America. But many will feel bound to follow Sessions’ official guidance.

If the women fleeing for their lives have to prove that those who want to rape and kill them bear animus toward all women similarly situated, and not just their actual victims, they will be hard pressed to win asylum. And so they will be deported back to the situations of rape, beating and slashing they fled.

The public should not be distracted by the government’s reunification of families. The families now being released may stay together for a few months. But they remain in terrible peril because of the Trump administration’s lack of empathy and humanitarian concern for the parents and children who quite reasonably fear for their lives.

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

Phil is a good friend, and a practicing scholar who has actually been to the border. He knows that these most vulnerable individuals qualify as refugees under a correct application of legal standards and that they merit and deserve protection as human beings. He can also see how the system has been “gamed” by Sessions and how USCIS and EOIR are both complicit.

What’s being done by Sessions and his White Nationalist cabal is both illegal and immoral. Our shame as a nation will be enduring for 1) giving such a totally unqualified, corrupt, and evil individual a chance to take control of American immigration policy; and 2) not acting more quickly to stop him from implementing his racist agenda.

Meanwhile, his victims are likely to pay the price with their lives.

PWS

08-06-18

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Will the administration cut off foreign aid? Can they?

Were authorities from Mexico unable to stop the migrant caravan from heading into the US?

Will the President declare a national emergency over the caravan?

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