"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Category: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”)
Julia Edwards Ainsley and Dan DeLuce report for NBC News:
WASHINGTON — Days before the Trump administration announced plans to slash the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. to its lowest level in 40 years, Trump senior adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller made his case for fewer refugees to a room of senior officials at the White House.
His sales job was made easier by the absence of top officials who disagree with his stance. They weren’t there because they weren’t invited, according to two people briefed on the discussions. Missing from the room last Friday were U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mark Green, both of whom have promoted a more generous policy toward refugees fleeing poverty, famine and persecution, the two sources said.
The planned cut in the refugee cap, now just 30,000 for the coming fiscal year, is the latest win for Miller, who has outmaneuvered opponents in and outside the administration to push through a crackdown on all forms of immigration.
Miller’s victories on the Muslim travel ban, limiting legal immigrationand separating migrant families at the border show his skill in pulling bureaucratic levers, blocking opponents from key meetings, restricting the flow of information and inserting his allies in key positions, said current and former officials.
In the administration’s internal discussions, Defense Secretary James Mattis — who was also absent from the Friday meeting — and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had consistently opposed reducing the ceiling for how many refugees could be allowed into the country next fiscal year, former officials, humanitarian experts and congressional staffers from both parties told NBC News.
But after the meeting of top officials at the White House, Pompeo unveiled plans Monday to scale back the cap for refugees in 2019 to its lowest level since 1980. The secretary gave no explanation as to why he had changed his position, or how that number was arrived at during the closed door “principals” meeting.
Lawmakers from both parties, and some Christian charities, had urged Pompeo to stand firm against yet another reduction in refugee admissions, arguing it would undermine relations with allies, fuel instability in volatile regions and damage America’s image.
In a joint statement Wednesday, Republican Rep. Randy Hultgren of Illinois and Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts expressed “extreme disappointment at the administration’s proposal,” and added, “We cannot turn our back on the international community in a time of historic need.”
Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday he was “very concerned to see Secretary Pompeo was either not willing or unable to be a voice of reason in the room when the president was told he should continue grinding the U.S refugee program to a halt.”
Former officials said it appeared the top diplomat bowed to Miller and others pressing for scaling back refugee resettlement.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo speaks in Washington on Oct. 19.Carolyn Kaster / AP
“Pompeo got rolled,” said one former official familiar with the deliberations who served under Republican and Democratic administrations. The secretary “got manhandled by a kid who knows nothing about foreign policy,” said the source, referring to the 33-year-old Miller.
The State Department did not respond directly to questions about why Pompeo apparently altered his stance. But a spokesperson said the recommendation, which still must be approved by the president, takes into account additional security vetting procedures for refugee applications as well as the need to manage nearly 300,000 asylum cases.
Over the past several months, former officials and humanitarian organizations say, Miller restricted who would take part in the deliberations, while ensuring like-minded associates were in key positions at the State Department.
Unlike last year’s deliberations on refugees, Haley and her office were excluded from the inter-agency discussions on the issue and did not attend last Friday’s meeting where the cap was set, even though her staff argued she should be included, current and former officials said.
Although Haley’s office was not invited into the discussions, the ambassador “provided our views during the process,” a spokesperson for the U.S. mission at the UN told NBC News.
Haley had previously opposed drastic reductions in refugee resettlement numbers.
Paving the way for Miller, an official at the National Security Council, Jennifer Arangio, a political appointee who worked on President Donald Trump’s campaign, was fired and escorted from her office in July after clashing with Miller over refugee-related issues. And two refugee skeptics aligned with Miller are now in senior positions at the State Department: Andrew Veprek at the Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration and John Zadrozny at the policy planning office.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The State Department declined to disclose which agencies or officials attended the final interagency discussions, but a spokesperson said the plan was arrived at “in consultation with all appropriate government agencies.”
It was not clear if the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services and provides cash payments and medical assistance to newly arrived refugees, was invited to the inter-agency process. A spokesperson said ORR took part in “the discussion” on the issue but did not say specifically if the office had a seat at the table in the inter-agency deliberations.
The White House meeting last Friday was classified and limited to only a small number of senior officials and cabinet members. Those restrictions are usually reserved for more sensitive issues involving military action or intelligence, former officials said. The limits played in Miller’s favor, as cabinet members and their deputies could not divulge details of the discussion.
Mattis did not attend the meeting in person and provided his opinion in writing, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said. She added that “as the information and discussion were classified, I cannot provide further comment.”
Based on the administration’s public statements on the issue, Miller also appeared to succeed in framing the refugee issue on his terms.
Senior adviser to President Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, watches as Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers remarks during the daily White House press briefing in Washington on March 27, 2017.Win McNamee / Getty Images file
When Pompeo announced the plan to reporters at the State Department this week, he echoed arguments that Miller and his supporters have often employed to defend drastic restrictions on refugees. Pompeo said that the government lacked the manpower to handle more refugees, that the U.S. was focused on providing aid abroad where refugees are located and that refugee numbers needed to be limited to safeguard the country’s national security.
“He was using Miller’s talking points,” another former official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations said.
With the world facing the worst refugee crisis since World War II, the recommendation to slash refugee numbers was widely condemned by humanitarian organizations and rights groups. Pompeo’s announcement is “appalling, and it continues this administration’s rapid flight from the proud U.S. tradition of providing refuge to those fleeing persecution around the world,” said Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International, who oversaw refugee policy at the State Department.
Those who share Miller’s views on immigration say he is portrayed unfairly by his critics. They maintain he is merely a successful advocate for Trump, who promised as a candidate to clamp down on immigration and temporarily halt Muslims from entering the country.
“As I understand it, Miller is zealously promoting his boss’s agenda within the administration, and running up against people who are less committed to that agenda,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which has backed the administration’s stance on immigration.
“He seems to be pretty effective at navigating bureaucratic politics, which is an essential skill if you want to get anything done.”
In a tumultuous White House, Miller is one of a handful of original Trump loyalists who has survived and thrived, exerting an outsize influence over immigration decisions and rhetoric.
One administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said it should not be surprising that so many of Miller’s ideas have come to fruition.
“Miller has survived and people who think like Miller have survived because the president agrees with these policies. He is not running a rogue operation,” the official told NBC News.
Miller was once part of a small group of outsiders working as staffers on Capitol Hill who backed an aggressive line on immigration but often found themselves out of favor with the Republican Party establishment.
Many of those former colleagues are now deployed throughout the administration and have helped design and carry out some of Miller’s most sweeping and contentious policies, including a ban on travel from certain countries, a higher bar for proving asylum, a reduction in refugee admissions and the separation of migrant parents from their children at the border.
Miller and his allies have even promoted the creation of a denaturalization task force, which is supposed to ferret out people who lied on their applications and to strip them of their citizenship.
Critics say Miller is overseeing a systematic attack on all forms of immigration, illegal and legal, by promoting an underlying idea that foreign-born citizens or immigrants represent a dangerous threat to the country.
“I think he’s going to go down in history having a lot of blood on his hands. He is driving the most nativist agenda we have seen in 100 years,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration reform advocacy group in Washington. “But he has had mixed results.”
Some of those mixed results include the legal blowback on the travel ban, which went through three versions before finally holding up in federal court. Miller also pushed for the end of DACA, the program designed to help children brought to the country illegally by their parents to remain in the U.S. But courts have stopped the administration from taking away those rights.
The most hard-line measures have also proved politically unpopular, according to opinion polls, with large majorities of American voters voicing opposition to ending DACA or detaining children separately from relatives entering the country illegally.
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Meanwhile, over at Jezebel.com, Esther Wang gives us the skinny on the guy who implements an anti-immigrant agenda with a smile and has taken the word “Services” out of “United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.”
It’s often the architects of our nation’s monstrous immigration policies (cough Stephen Miller cough) who are the subject of dramatic news headlines and the target of our much-deserved vitriol. But, as a new Politicoprofile of Lee Francis Cissna, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, reminds us, the bureaucrats who willingly and happily follow the dictates that come from above are equally as appalling (if not more so in their unthinking devotion to carrying out orders).
Politico describes how Cissna, the son of an immigrant from Peru and husband to the daughter of a Palestinian refugee who has steadily worked his way up the ranks of different federal agencies, has been dramatically—and quietly—reshaping immigration policy:
Much less visible than Miller or Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Cissna has quietly carried out Trump’s policies with a workmanlike dedication. From his perch atop USCIS, he’s issued a steady stream of policy changes and regulations that have transformed his agency into more of an enforcement body and less of a service provider. These changes have generated blowback from immigrant advocates, businesses and even some of his own employees. Leon Rodriguez, who served as USCIS director under President Barack Obama, said the agency is sending a message “that this is a less welcoming environment than it may have been before.”
While the travel ban and family separations grabbed headlines, Cissna has waged a quieter war,tightening and reworking regulations and guidance that make it harder to come to the U.S. as an immigrant or temporary worker.
In February, Cissna rewrote the mission statement of the agency which he heads, eliminating a passage that proclaims the U.S. is “a nation of immigrants,” a symbolic move that nonetheless signaled a worrisome shift.
A few months later, Cissna announced the creation of a new denaturalization task force, which would investigate naturalized Americans whom the agency suspected of lying on their citizenship applications. As Masha Gessen wrote in The New Yorker, “It’s the apparent underlying premise that makes this new effort so troublesome: the idea that America is under attack by malevolent immigrants who cause dangerous harm by finding ways to live here.” Gessen continued: “Indeed, the creation of the task force itself is undoing the naturalization of the more than twenty million naturalized citizens in the American population by taking away their assumption of permanence. All of them—all of us—are second-class citizens now.” One of the people Cissna wished to strip citizenship from? A 63-year-old Peruvian-American grandmother, over her minor role in a fraud scheme perpetrated by her boss.
He has also spearheaded other changes, many of which have largely flown under the radar and failed to generate widespread outrage outside of those whose lives will be impacted by them—from new rules that empower USCIS officials to initiate deportation proceedings for a wider number of immigrants to policies that allow USCIS officers to deny visa and green card applications over small errors, without giving applicants an opportunity, as the Obama administration did, to fix them.
And as Politico and others have reported, Cissna plans on pushing through a new regulation—described as “the most controversial regulation to come out of his agency under Trump”—that would prevent people from immigrating to the United States if they’re expected to use public benefits. As Politico writes, “The proposed regulation, which is expected before the midterm elections, would effectively gentrify the legal immigration system, blocking poorer immigrants from obtaining green cards or even from entering the country in the first place.”
People who have known Cissna for years expressed surprise at the turn that he has taken as head of USCIS.
“We’re pretty stunned that a guy who is compassionate, funny, proud of his immigrant mother from Latin America, that he would now be one of the key architects of the seemingly heartless policy of separating families,” Dan Manatt, who attended Georgetown Law School with Cissna, told Politico.
Cissna himself disputes that he bears any animosity towards immigrants.
“I just feel a strong commitment to the law, and to the rule of law,” Cissna told Politico. “None of the things that we’re doing, as I’ve said on numerous public occasions, are guided by any kind of malevolent intent.”
Good to know—he doesn’t hate immigrants, he just loves laws that make their lives as difficult as possible. What a relief.
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No, the law doesn’t require that we bend the rules to harass and make it difficult for individuals who qualify for legal immigration and refugee status to actually get into the country. In addition to being complete jerks, Miller and Cissna are liars.
Get out the vote! Inspire your friends who oppose White Nationalism to get out and vote. These Dudes are pure evil, and America’s future is on the line! If decent people don’t stand up for humane values, evil can prevail! Time to restore the real “rule of law” which requires us to admit legal immigrants, refugees, and asylees without throwing up bogus White Nationalist roadblocks.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 low02:16
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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There are lots of helpful charts and graphs accompanying Val’s excellent article. Go to the link above to view them, along with the complete article.
Sessions’s claim that we have a “generous welfare system and open borders” is total BS. We don’t have open borders, and never have had. And SEssions and his GOP cronies have worked hard to make our welfare system not very generous at all, particularly when it comes to foreign nationals. It’s a total insult, as well as an arrogant rewriting of history to imply that the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama Administrations didn’t care about immigration or border enforcement. All of them took their best shot at it, under the circmstances. I should know, as I served in all of those Administrations except for Bush I. Indeed, if anything, for better or worse, and many would say the latter, enforcement during the Obama era was probably more effective than it has been under the “Trump/Sessions gonzo approach.”
Individuals fleeing from the Northern Triangle aren’t coming for welfare. They are coming to save their lives, something that Sessions’s mindless restrictionist philosophy apparently makes it impossible for him to acknowledge. Moreover, individuals have a statutory right to apply for asylum, regardless of the means of entry. Insuring that asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture are propoerly extended to inbdividuals seeking refuge in the US is just as much a part of “enforcing the rule of law” as are removals. Indeed, the consequencers of wrongfully removing an individual entitled to protection are potentially catestropohic.
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. 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.”
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.
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.
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.
President Trump’s bigoted hatred of Latino immigrants has been clear from the beginning. Now his administration is aggressively persecuting Latino citizens as well.
It is hard to be shocked anymore, given the daily outrages committed by Trump and his minions, but a report Thursday by The Post was jaw-dropping: In the borderlands of southern Texas, the State Department is denying passports to hundreds and perhaps thousands of men and women who have official birth certificates demonstrating they were born in the United States.
In some cases, valid passports have been confiscated and revoked, their holders stranded in Mexico, unable to come home. In other cases, people have been arrested, sent to detention centers and slated for deportation. Imagine how they and their American families must feel — and how their distress must make Trump and his fellow xenophobes feel warm inside.
Denial of passports effectively renders the victims stateless — meaning they cannot travel outside the country, because they would not be readmitted — and potentially vulnerable to being deported. Again, these are people who have government-issued birth certificates, long accepted as gold-standard proof of citizenship. The Trump administration simply doesn’t see Latinos as full-fledged Americans.
The Post quoted a 40-year-old man named Juan — he didn’t want his last name used for fear of being targeted — who has a birth certificate stating he was born in the Texas border city of Brownsville. He served his country for three years in the U.S. Army, then was a cadet in the Border Patrol, and now works as a Texas state prison guard. But when he applied to renew his passport this year, the State Department responded with a letter saying it didn’t believe he was a citizen.
It is important to understand that for Americans who live along the border, a passport is a necessity. People flow back and forth across the Rio Grande all the time to work, make business deals, see family or perhaps just try out a trendy new restaurant. The border is not like the Berlin Wall, though evidently Trump would like it to be.
There is a backstory: In the 1990s, some Texas midwives admitted accepting bribes to falsely claim that some Mexican infants were born in the United States. These same midwives, however, also delivered many more Latino babies, at least thousands, who were legitimately born in the United States. From official records, it is impossible to tell the difference.
The Trump administration appears to be denying passports simply because the applicant is Latino, was born in southern Texas and was delivered by a midwife — something the federal government explicitly promised not to do in a 2009 court settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union.
The administration claims there has been no change in policy. But The Post quoted immigration lawyers who say there has been a dramatic surge in passport denials.
In Juan’s case, the State Department demanded he produce documents including proof of his mother’s prenatal care in the United States, his baptismal certificate and rental agreements from when he was an infant. He managed to find some of this obscure material — and yet his passport application was denied a second time.
A military veteran who served his country was told that it isn’t his country after all.
Think how you would feel if this nightmare were happening to you. Like everyone else, you have no memory of the details of your birth. You know only what your parents have told you and what the official records say, all of which is almost surely true. Suddenly, because of your Latino heritage, your core identity is challenged and your right to live in the United States is threatened.
If the government had specific evidence that an individual’s birth certificate was falsified, then we could have a debate about the right thing to do. But this administration is assuming that a person of a certain ethnicity, recorded as being born in a certain part of the country and meeting other unspecified criteria, is de facto not a citizen — and has the burden of proving otherwise.
At this point, the Trump administration has the burden of proving this is anything other than vile, unadulterated racism.
Trump launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers. His administration cruelly separated nearly 3,000 migrant children from their families and seeks to make their parents ineligible for asylum. His clear message to would-be Latino immigrants is: No admission.
And now, an equally blunt message for lifelong Latino citizens: Go away.
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We have a racist, White Nationalist regime. What does that say about those who continue to support its toxic policies and the Liar-in-Chief?
GET OUT THE VOTE IN NOVEMBER! TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK FROM THE WHITE NATIONALISTS AND THEIR ENABLERS! START HOLDING TRUMP, SESSIONS, AND THE OTHER REGIME AUTOCRATS RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR UNLAWFUL, IMMORAL, AND DIVISIVE POLICIES!
‘Suicide,’ ‘catastrophe’: Nicaraguans in US terrified of looming end of protections
By Tal Kopan, CNN
Cassandra has lived and worked in the US over 20 years. Threats to her life have been made to her family and friends back in Nicaragua. It would be “suicide” to move back, she says.
But the Trump administration says she and thousands of other immigrants like her must do so by January.
On Jan. 5, roughly 5,300 Nicaraguans who have lived in the US since at least that date in 1999 will lose their protected status. If they have no other immigration status in the US, they will be forced to either return to the country or risk living in the US illegally.
The decision to end temporary protected status for Nicaraguans last November was overshadowed by similar Trump administration decisions to end such protections for hundreds of thousands more immigrants from neighbors Honduras and El Salvador. Nationals of Nicaragua received the shortest time frame of any of those TPS recipients to get their affairs together: 12 months.
But since that decision was made, Nicaragua has plunged into violence and political unrest, with at least 322 people dying there since mid-April, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States. By the White House’s own count, the toll is more than 350. The UN Refugee Agency has put out guidance to its member countries asking them to allow Nicaraguans to enter and to apply for asylum once there.
The situation is bad enough that the Trump administration sanctioned three Nicaraguan officials in July for human rights abuses, saying President Daniel Ortega and his vice president “are ultimately responsible for the pro-government parapolice that have brutalized their own people.”
In light of the violence, a bipartisan group of seven bipartisan lawmakers wrote to President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in late July asking the President to either reconsider ending temporary protected status for Nicaraguans or to designate a new status for them.
“It would be, frankly, I think, unacceptable to then send folks back to that same place that we’re sanctioning,” Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, one of those who signed the letter, told CNN. “It’s a barbaric regime that’s literally murdering people in the streets. … It would be a catastrophe, and it’s one that can be avoided.”
Diaz-Balart said he has not gotten a response from the administration to the letter, though he remains hopeful it will reverse course.
The Department of Homeland Security ignored repeated requests for comment from CNN about whether it’s considering extending further protections to Nicaraguans.
Hundreds of immigrant kids remain separated from parents
By Tal Kopan, CNN
Hundreds of children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border remain separated from their parents, including 497 in government custody, according to a new court filing Thursday.
The figure includes 22 children under the age of five still in government care. Six of those are 4 years old or younger whose parents were deported without them.
A total of 1,937 children have been reunified with parents, up only 14 from last week.
The numbers have changed only slightly from last week, as the court filing from the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union case describes a slow and laborious process to try to connect the families that have been separated.
It remains unclear exactly how many parents were deported without their children, though it’s in the hundreds. By the government’s latest count, there are 322 deported parents who have children still in custody.
But the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of separated parents, says the administration has previously given it a list of deported parents that includes 70 additional cases. The administration said, according to the ACLU, that some of the discrepancy is due to kids being released from care. It’s not clear what will happen to those families.
US District Judge Dana Sabraw will hold a status hearing on the case Friday.
So, we send good folks who have been contributing to our economy and society back to likely harm at the hands of the repressive leftist Government of Nicaragua basically because they are Latinos. Of course, almost all of them have very plausible asylum, withholding, CAT, or cancellation of removal claims. So, more than 5,000 cases will needlessly be thrown back into our already overwhelmed Immigration Court system. No wonder the backlog continues to mushroom under Sessions’s White Nationalist policies! Racist-driven policies always come at a high cost!
In the meantime, Sessions continues publicly to thumb his nose at Federal Judges, while making less than impressive efforts to comply with their lawful orders. And, families and children continue to suffer from Sessions’s White Nationalist agenda.
‘It IS bad there’: Emails reveal Trump officials pushing for TPS terminations
Washington (CNN)There was a simple explanation in October 2017 when a Department of Homeland Security official was asked why a memo justifying ending immigrant protections for Central Americans made conditions in those countries sound so bad.
“The basic problem is that it IS bad there,” the official wrote.
Nevertheless, he agreed to go back and see what he could do to better bolster the administration’s decision to end the protections regardless.
The revelation comes in a collection of internal emails and documents made public Friday as part of an ongoing lawsuit over the decision to end temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who live in the US, most of whom have been here for well over a decade.
Friday’s document dump come as backup for the attorneys’ request that the judge immediately block the government’s decision to end these protections as the case is fully heard. A hearing is scheduled for late September.
In the emails, Trump administration political officials repeatedly pushed for the termination of TPS for vulnerable countries, even as they faced pushback from internal assessments by career staffers and other parts of the administration.
In one exchange, the now-director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Francis Cissna, remarks that a document recommending that TPS for Sudan be terminated reads like it was going to recommend the opposite until someone was “clubbed … over the head.”
“The memo reads like one person who strongly supports extending TPS for Sudan wrote everything up to the recommendation section and then someone who opposes extension snuck up behind the first guy, clubbed him over the head, pushed his senseless body of out of the way, and finished the memo. Am I missing something?” he wrote to key DHS staffers. Another high-ranking official then asks for the memo to be “revised.”
In a similar exchange, policy adviser Kathy Nuebel Kovarik asks her staff to address what she perceives as inconsistencies in the justification documents for ending TPS for El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
“The problem is that it reads as though we’d recommend an extension b/c we talk so much about how bad it is, but there’s not enough in there about positive steps that have been taken since its designation,” she wrote.
Staffer Brandon Prelogar responded that “it IS bad there.”
“We can comb through the country conditions to try to see what else there might be, but the basic problem is that it IS bad there (with regards to) all of the standard metrics,” Prelogar wrote. “Our strongest argument for termination, we thought, is just that it is not bad in a way clearly linked to the initial disasters prompting the designations. We can work with RU to try to get more, and/or comb through the country conditions we have again looking for positive gems, but the conditions are what they are.”
DHS did end protections for all three countries, despite dire predictions previously reported by CNN from career analysts about the consequences including potentially strengthening the vicious gang MS-13.
Immigrants are suing over the ending of TPS for these countries, alleging the protections were terminated due to a prebaked agenda that violated the law, as well as a racist agenda. The judge has previously allowed the lawsuit to proceed and forced the production of these internal documents, over the objection of the government.
The program covers migrants in the US from countries that have been hit by dire conditions, such as epidemics, civil war or natural disasters. Previous administrations, spanning both parties, had opted to extend the protections for most of the countries involved every few years when they came up for review.
The Trump administration says the conditions in each country have improved from the original disasters to the point that the protected status had to end. DHS has maintained that under its reading of the law, decisions to extend may be based only on conditions from the original disaster — not any that have arisen since. That breaks with the reading of the law from all prior administrations, attorneys argue — citing a deposition of a former USCIS director also submitted Friday.
The documents show a gradual process of the front offices of DHS taking more control of the TPS decision making. Early in the administration, career staffers drafted a document that would have justified extending TPS for Haiti. Officials asked that it be changed, and it was initially extended just six months ahead of being terminated completely.
For later decisions, the documents show the State Department complaining that it was marginalized from the process. In fact, a Federal Register Notice for the termination for Sudan had to be pulled back and edited after the State Department complained that it had been changed from a version it had approved at the last minute to something inconsistent with current US policy toward the country.
The emails show that Gene Hamilton, a close ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions who was a senior counselor at DHS before moving to the Justice Department, made some of those last-minute revisions, attempting to remove references to human rights violations, among other changes.
When presented with Hamilton’s changes to some language already agreed to with the State Department, Prelogar wrote that “we’d just say that this could be read as taking another step toward providing an incomplete and lopsided country conditions presentation to support termination, which may increase the likelihood of criticism from external stakeholders to that effect.”
The trail also shows the State Department had recommended TPS for Sudan be extended, although it did so late in the game, and that it was caught off-guard by the changes.
In a last-minute email, the State Department’s Christopher Ashe wrote to the acting director of USCIS that there were problems.
“The Department has identified some significant mischaracterizations that are at odds with the Department’s understanding of circumstances on the ground. We believe that lacking correction, the (Federal Register Notice) could be out of step with the Administration’s broader engagement on Sudan — much of which DHS is not engaged on and is likely unaware of the nuances that USCIS’s changes in the language could have,” Ashe wrote.
He continued that State was “caught off guard” by a decision to make the announcement.
“We literally were forced to dispatch our Foreign Affairs Officers by taxi to the Embassies with virtually no notice to inform the host governments of the imminent announcements. We had thought we had obtained a commitment for sufficient notice to make such notifications,” Ashe wrote.
Nuebel Kovarik responds on the email chain that DHS would reject the suggested change by State that would imply not “all” nationals of Sudan could return, saying it would contradict the decision to terminate. She agrees to change the notice to acknowledge that some regions of Sudan may remain too dangerous for return.
State had asked for that, noting that otherwise it could “encourage the Government of Sudan to believe they have the greenlight from US (government) to force the return of displaced persons … to return to deadly conflict-affected areas. These areas are places where even well-armed UN peacekeeping forces decline to engage for fear of violence and recent killings of peacekeepers.”
But Nuebel Kovarik declines to hold off publishing the official announcement to accommodate the change, saying it’s “minor” enough to be done later on as a revision.
“We don’t say the country is perfect,” she concluded.
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Great to have Tal back and “telling it like it is.” Just like at the DOJ, racist hacks like Cissna and his unholy cabal are distorting and downright suppressing facts to implement a predetermined White Nationalist agenda. Every decent American should be appalled! These folks are blatantly dishonest in maters that affect human lives. They probably belong in jail; if not, they should never hold public office now or in the future
It’s time for all Americans of conscience who believe in our Constitution and the rule of law to rise up at the ballot box in November and take our country back from the White Nationalists!
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.
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.
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.”
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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!)
Associate professor at Morgan State University and politics editor for the Root
August 15
Omarosa Manigault Newman — who once declared that “every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump” — evolved from mentee to frenemy to antagonist before her nonstop media blitz promoting her new post-White House tell-all, during which she’s touted the existence of a recording of Trump using the n-word. It’s all sent the White House scrambling, with the president tweetingMonday that “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have.” Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Tuesday she “can’t guarantee” Americans will never hear audio of Trump using the slur.
It doesn’t matter.
Trump is a racist. That doesn’t hinge on whether he uttered one particular epithet, no matter how ugly it is. It’s about the totality of his presidency, and after 18 months you can see his racial animus throughout his policy initiatives whether you hear it on tape or not.
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Over the course of his career, well before he took office, Trump’s antipathy toward people of color has been plainly evident. In the ’70s, his real estate company was the subject of a federal investigation that found his employees had secretly marked the paperwork of minority apartment rental applicants with codes such as “C” for “colored.” After black and Latino teenagers were charged with sexually assaulting a white woman in Central Park, he took out full-page ads in New York City newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty. He never backtracked or apologized when the teenagers’ convictions were overturned. He championed birtherism, and wouldn’t disavow the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya until the end of his 2016 presidential campaign. As president, he’s targeted African American athletes for criticism, whether it’s ranting, “Get that son of a bitch off the field,” in reference to professional football players silently protesting police brutality or tweeting that:
Calling African American Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) a “low IQ person” is now a routine bit at his political rallies. He was quoted referring to Haiti, El Salvador and various African nations as “shithole” countries. He announced his campaign in 2015 by referring to Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” Later that year, he called for the United States to implement a “total and complete” Muslim ban.
After taking office, he hired xenophobes such as Stephen Miller — an architect of the ban, whose hostility toward immigrants is so stark, and hypocritical, that his uncle excoriated him this week in an essay for Politico Magazine, writing of Miller and Trump that “they repeat the insults and false accusations of earlier generations against these refugees to make them seem less than human.”
I could go on. The point is that Trump’s view of nonwhites is out in the open. As Slate’s Christina Cauterucci notes, there’s every reason “to believe that an n-word tape wouldn’t torpedo Trump’s presidency”; there’s no indication his supporters “will turn against him because he used a racial slur.” Trump’s words and deeds over time have demonstrated his racism — it doesn’t hinge on being outed, Paula Deen-style, by a tape of him using the word. Racism hardly ever does.
I’m not saying it would be okay for Trump to use any variation of the n-word — in jest, in anger, singing along to the lyrics of a song, with or without the hard “R.” But the feverish speculation about whether he ever deployed the term wrongly implies that a verdict on his racist character turns on its use. What matters more about Trump are the positions he’s taken and the policy choices he’s made that harm communities of color. In his first year as president, Trump evolved from mere interpersonal racist to racist enabler when he proclaimed there were “very fine people, on both sides” when white supremacists and anti-racist protesters converged in Charlottesville last year. Jeff Sessions, a senator from Alabama who, three decades ago, was denieda federal judgeship by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee over concerns that he was a racist, was installed by Trump as attorney general.
Since assuming that role, Sessions has worked to undermine consent decrees meant to restrain racially abusive police departments and explicitly articulated the administration’s intent to use family separation to deter immigration. The Department of Education, under Secretary Betsy DeVos, is dismissing hundreds of civil rights complaints, supposedly in the name of efficiency. Trump hired Manigault Newman as a liaison to black constituent groups based on their reality TV relationship and, according to him, her willingness to say “GREAT things” about him, despite almost universal criticism of her appointment and subsequent work by African American Republicans and Democrats.
Being a racist — which entails belief in a fixed racial hierarchy and the power to act upon that belief in commerce, government or social spaces — is not now, and never has been, about one word or one slip of the tongue. It is about the ability of those in power to use public and private resources to enforce a racial hierarchy, whether that means having black people arrested for sitting in Starbucks, refusing to hire or promote qualified black job applicants or staffing a presidential administration with people who tolerate or encourage white nationalists. Trump’s statements and his approach to governance suggest he believes in a set racial hierarchy, and the possible existence of a hyped tape doesn’t change that. So far, and as far as I know, no one’s produced audio of white nationalist participants in last Sunday’s Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington using the n-word. Presumably, by the logic of some Trump defenders, that would mean there’s no proof they’re racist, either.
If American public discourse on race continues to revolve around a game of “gotcha,” with sentiments and smoking guns, divorced from an acknowledgment of how racists use their power, we won’t make any progress, during this administration or any other.
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Johnson states a simple truth that some don’t want to acknowledge. But, racist anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, anti-Mexican American, xenophobic “dog whistles” were at the heart of Trump’s campaign and remain at the heart of his policies, particularly on immigration, refugees, and law enforcement.
Does that mean that the majority of Americans who don’t endorse racism don’t need to deal with the fact that Trump is President and that Sessions and Miller are exercising outsized control over our justice system? Or that today’s Trumpist GOP isn’t your grandparents’ GOP (in my case, my parents’ GOP) and, although they might occasionally mutter a few insincere “tisk, tisk’s,” are firmly committed to enabling Trump and his racist policies including, of course, voter disenfranchisement. Of course not. Just think of how African-Americans, Hispanics, and liberals had to deal in practical terms with Southern political power in the age of Jim Crow (which is basically the “Age of Jeff Sessions”).
But, it is essential for us to know and acknowledge who and what we are dealing with and not to let political expediency totally obscure the harsh truth. Trump is a racist. And, that sad but true fact will continue to influence all of his policies for as long as he remains in office. Indeed, “Exhibit 1,” is the failure of the GOP to achieve “no-brainer” Dreamer protection over the last two years and the stubborn insistence of Sessions and others in the GOP to keep tying up our courts with bogus attempts to terminate already limited protections for those who aren’t going anywhere in the first place.
The Atlantic: The early trump era has witnessed wave after wave of seismic policy making related to immigration—the Muslim ban initially undertaken in his very first week in office, the rescission of DACA, the separation of families at the border. Amid the frantic attention these shifts have generated, it’s easy to lose track of the smaller changes that have been taking place. But with them, the administration has devised a scheme intended to unnerve undocumented immigrants by creating an overall tone of inhospitality and menace.
TRAC: The push to prioritize prosecuting illegal border crossers has begun to impact the capacity of federal prosecutors to enforce other federal laws. In March 2018, immigration prosecutions dominated so that in the five federal districts along the southwest border only one in seven prosecutions (14%) were for any non-immigration crimes.
HuffPo: The National Association of Immigration Judges alleges that Trump administration officials transferred the case of an undocumented immigrant away from a Philadelphia-based immigration judge because the judge didn’t give them the outcome they wanted: a swift order of deportation when the immigrant didn’t show up in court for a hastily scheduled hearing.
Vanity Fair: For the past year, Miller has been quietly gutting the U.S. refugee program, slashing the number of people allowed into the country to the lowest level in decades. “His name hasn’t been on anything,” says a former U.S. official who worked on refugee issues. “He is working behind the scenes, he has planted all of his people in all of these positions, he is on the phone with them all of the time, and he is creating a side operation that will circumvent the normal, transparent policy process.” And he is succeeding.
Daily Show: Despite the Trump administration’s campaign promise to focus on illegal immigration, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller is crafting a plan to limit legal immigrants’ access to citizenship and green cards, especially for those who have used public assistance.
NPR: The wait time for migrants seeking asylum at legal ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border has recently increased from hours to weeks, causing some families to camp out for days. We go to the border to meet some of the people waiting there and explain the asylum process in the United States.
The Hill: The Becerras legally adopted Angela through Peruvian court, and sought to bring her back to the U.S. after the adoption was finalized in 2017…The tourist visa that Angela was eventually granted is set to expire at the end of this month, but her immigration case was denied without explanation, according to the couple.
TX Observer: On July 18, a cargo van transporting eight Central American mothers separated from their children under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy crashed into a pickup truck in San Marcos. An ICE contractor was taking the women from a detention center near Austin to the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall to be reunited with their kids. Even though police said the van was too damaged to continue driving and the women reported injuries, ICE repeatedly denied the crash ever took place.
NBC: The surge has been caused by a new ICE tactic of arresting — without warrants — people who are driving or walking down the street and using large-scale “sweeps” of likely immigrants, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in June by immigration rights advocates in Chicago.
NPR: In the last 18 years, more than 2,800 migrant bodies have been found along the Arizona border with Mexico. About 1,000 of the bodies are unidentified. We speak with a woman trying to identify them.
Brooklyn DA: The District Attorney identified the defendant as Vadim Alekseev, 42, of Coney Island, Brooklyn. He was arraigned today before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun on a 21-count indictment in which he is charged with first-degree scheme to defraud, first-degree immigrant assistance services fraud, fourth-degree grand larceny, tampering with physical evidence and practicing or appearing as attorney-at-law without being admitted and registered. He was ordered held on $15,000 bail and to return to court on October 3, 2018. The defendant faces up to four years in prison if convicted on the top count.
A federal judge ordered a woman and her daughter to be returned to the U.S. and threatened to hold AG Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that they were in the process of being removed while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway. (Grace, et al., v. Sessions, 8/9/18) AILA Doc. No. 18081004
Politico: A woman whose son was killed on Mexican soil by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona can sue for damages, a federal court ruled Tuesday. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz is not entitled to qualified immunity, saying that the Fourth Amendment — which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures — applies in this case.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a statement in response to the court order in the D.C. District Court, ordering the restoration of the DACA program, stating, “The Department of Justice will take every lawful measure to vindicate the Department of Homeland Security’s lawful rescission of DACA.” AILA Doc. No. 18080635
A District Court judge certified a class of current and former civil immigration detainees who performed work for The Geo Group, Inc. at its Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA and were paid a $1 daily rate. (Nwauzor et al. v. The GEO Group Inc., 8/6/18) AILA Doc. No. 18080770
Following summary judgment briefing by both parties, the court ruled in Plaintiffs’ favor on July 26, 2018. The court ordered USCIS to follow the law and timely adjudicate initial EAD asylum applications. (Gonzalez Rosario v. USCIS, 7/26/18) AILA Doc. No. 15052630
In a lawsuit filed on behalf of minor migrant children who were forcible separated from their parents and have been, or will be, reunified with them pursuant to Ms. L. v. ICE, the judge transferred three claims to be considered by the judge in the Ms. L. v. ICElawsuit. AILA Doc. No. 18080730
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must fully restore the DACA program but delayed the order until 8/23/18 to allow the government to respond and appeal. (NAACP v. Trump, 8/3/18) AILA Doc. No. 17091933
BIA reaffirmed its prior decision denying the respondent’s application for cancellation of removal and dismissed his appeal, finding that exhibiting or sponsoring an animal in an animal fighting venture is a crime involving moral turpitude. Matter of Ortega-Lopez, 27 I&N Dec. 382 (BIA 2018) AILA Doc. No. 18080637
Unpublished BIA decision reverses finding that respondent was present without being admitted or paroled in light of his credible testimony that he last entered the country with a border crossing card. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of I-M-G-, 7/28/17) AILA Doc. No. 18080731
BIA found that the IJ properly determined that the respondent is ineligible for cancellation of removal following his violation of a protection order, because he has been convicted of an offense under INA §237(a)(2)(E)(ii). Matter of Medina-Jimenez, 27 I&N Dec. 399 (BIA 2018) AILA Doc. No. 18080736
Unpublished BIA decision holds that larceny from a person under Okla. Stat. tit. 21 § 1701 is not an aggravated felony theft offense because it encompasses takings that were fraudulently obtained with the consent of the owner. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Lopez-Hernandez, 7/14/17) AILA Doc. No. 18080937
Unpublished BIA decision rescinds in absentia order against respondent who arrived at 10:45 am for a 9:00 am hearing after his vehicle experienced a mechanical failure, finding that he did not fail to appear for his hearing. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Rivas-Diaz, 7/18/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081044
Unpublished BIA decision holds that grand larceny from the person under Va. Code Ann. 18.2-95 is not a particularly serious crime on its face, making it unnecessary to examine the underlying circumstances of the offense. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of J-J-V-, 7/18/17) AILA Doc. No. 18081300
Unpublished BIA decision holds that respondent was not subject to the aggravated felony bar in INA 212(h) because his reentry following a trip abroad did not qualify as an “admission” as an LPR. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Reza, 7/18/16) AILA Doc. No. 18081303
ICE provides background information into the document and benefit fraud task forces, including the 28 locations around the United States. HSI has partnered with federal, state, and local counterparts to create these task forces. AILA Doc. No. 18080802
A 6/22/18 letter from DOS to Senator Van Hollen on the impact of Presidential Proclamation 9645 (Travel Ban 3.0) on the processing of U.S. visas. Letter includes information about the number of applicants from impacted countries who have applied for visas and those who have been cleared for waivers. AILA Doc. No. 18080900
The GAO reviewed DHS’s efforts to deploy barriers along the southwest border, and issued a report finding that CBP is evaluating designs and locations for border barriers but is proceeding without key information, such as an analysis of the costs based on location or segment, which can vary widely. AILA Doc. No. 18080903
Check out Elizabeth’s first item, Franklin Foer’s outstanding article in The Atlantic on how Trump, Sessions, & Miller have turned ICE into a modern “Mini-Gestapo” deporting individuals who actually are contributing mightily to the United States and its economy while sowing terror in the ethnic communities. Sure sounds familiar to those of us who recently toured the Holocaust Museum.
That’s why 19 of the real “pros’ at ICE, the agents of Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), petitioned recently to escape from the toxic unproductive atmosphere of ICE and distance themselves from the tarnished “ICE brand” which actually greatly diminishes real law enforcement efforts.
Foer makes a compelling case for abolishing ICE and reconstituting its real law enforcement functions into a new agency with more professional and unbiased leadership. Not going to happen now. But, eventually there will be “regime change” in America (or America as we know it will cease to exist). When that happens, a meltdown of the current ICE and recasting it should be a top priority for Congress and the Executive.
Until then, the “New Due Process Army”(of which Elizabeth Gibson is a charter member) will be fighting ICE’s overkill (and, I might add, gross waste of taxpayer funds on counterproductive “enforcement”) every step of the way!
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Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for D.C. May 27, 2009. Photo by Diego M. Radzinschi/NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL. 
