Category: TPS

THESE ARE THE DECENT FOLKS THAT TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST NATION WANT YOU TO FEAR — “I constantly lived in fear and all I could do was pray to God to keep my kids safe. I think that that photo of me and my kids being gassed helped people see that we are humans too and we deserve to be treated with basic dignity. All of us are the same in the eyes of God.”

https://apple.news/AnODNXB12S1u3477b18BmjQ

Gina Martinez reports for Time:

She Was Tear-Gassed at the Border. But for This Migrant Mother, the Hardest Part Is the Children She Left Behind

Gina Martinez

In November 2018, the image of Maria Lidia Meza Castro desperately holding on to her twin daughters at the U.S.-Mexico border as a tear gas canister unleashed smoke behind them sparked national anger.

“Honestly, in that moment, I just thought, ‘I’m going to die with my kids right here and now,’” Castro tells TIME.

Six months later, Castro is living in a three-bedroom house in the Washington, D.C. suburbs with the five children she brought with her on the 2,000-mile journey from Honduras. And as millions of Americans prepare to celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday, she says she would do it all again. But, her thoughts are constantly on the four children she left behind.

“Trust me, in Honduras you really suffer. Thank God at the very least I’m not suffering, but my kids over there are, and that’s tough,” she says.

Castro says she left Honduras in October 2018 and reached Tijuana a month later. It was there that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers fired tear gas canisters at migrants rushing toward the U.S. border. Following the incident, Castro spent weeks in Tijuana camps until she and a group of fellow migrants were escorted to the Otay Mesa port of entry with the assistance of the nonprofit group Families Belong Together and two Democratic members of Congress. They also helped her apply for asylum. After making it through the border, she and her children were detained for five days before being released to live in the Washington area, close to where Castro has family.

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Photographer Federica Valabrega first met Castro and the five children she brought with her last November in Mexicali, Mexico, as they were making their way to Tijuana, days before the photograph of her being tear-gassed made headlines.

Valabrega lost contact with Castro after she entered the U.S. When she finally tracked her down, Valabrega spent three weeks with the Castro family, living with them and documenting their daily lives as they adjust to the United States.

“Ultimately, I felt compelled to follow up with Maria because I wanted to know how she was doing and because her determination to do anything in her power to raise her children in a better place as a single mother inspired me,” Valabrega says.

Castro and five of her kids share their new home with a fellow Honduran migrant mother and her two children. For now, the future is uncertain –– Castro’s attorney says there is a huge backlog and no set court date, leaving Castro and her children in limbo.

She is forced to wear an ankle bracelet, which some asylum seekers are issued to ensure they do not flee before their court date, and is not legally allowed to work. She spends her days tending to the children she was able to bring and worrying about the ones back in Honduras.

Castro crossed the border with her 4-year-old son James, 5-year-old twin girls Cheyli and Sayra, 13-year-old daughter Jeimy and 15-year-old son Victor. But she longs to be reunited with her 20-year-old son, Jayro, who was already in the U.S. but was deported in early February; her 18-year-old twins boys, Fernando and Yoni; and her 16-year-old son Jesus, who is paraplegic and cannot walk or travel. She fears they will fall prey to the violence she fought so hard to escape.

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“It’s hard because things are looking so bad in Honduras,” she says. “Over there they are killing people, they’re forcing young men to sell drugs and commit other crimes. My son feels terrible because he’s so far from me but also because I’m not able to help him financially because I still haven’t been able to get a job.”

Castro’s inability to have a job forces her to rely on a local church for food and other essentials while she awaits a court date that is likely still months away.

“I wish I could work. I want to fight for them and support them financially, but it’s not possible yet,” she says.

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Now, as Castro and her youngest children settle into life in the United States, she says her focus is solely on obtaining asylum so she can begin working and providing for all nine of her kids.

“I’m just happy for the opportunity to be here. Now that I’m here, I at least have some hope to give my kids a good life,” she says. “I like it here because there is not as much danger; here you can be in peace. It’s just so different from life in Honduras, where you can’t even be outside after a certain time without putting your life in danger.”

She says her children are getting more accustomed to life in the Washington suburbs with each passing day. They are beginning to learn English and enjoy playing in the park.

As Castro looks back on the difficult journey from Honduras, she says she would do it all over again if it meant ending up where she is now.

“It was very much worth the suffering we had to go through to end up here,” she says. “I constantly lived in fear and all I could do was pray to God to keep my kids safe. I think that that photo of me and my kids being gassed helped people see that we are humans too and we deserve to be treated with basic dignity. All of us are the same in the eyes of God.”

She adds: “My message to mothers everywhere, especially moms who are going through what I am, is just that God gave us a chance to change our lives and with patience and hope we can fight for our families and give them a better life.”

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Go to the complete article from Time at the link for some great photography from Federica Valabrega.

Whether or not Maria Lidia Meza Castro and her family qualify to stay in the U.S., they and others like them deserve to be treated humanely, respectfully, and to have their claims fully and fairly considered. That’s not happening now, particularly at EOIR which has intentionally tried to skew the law against applicants from Central America and fails over and over to either apply the asylum law correctly or to correctly and honestly assess the conditions in the Northern Triangle. Not to mention that EOIR management has turned the Immigration Courts into an intentionally hostile environment for the mostly pro bono attorneys trying to help asylum applicants. And, Trump would like to truncate the process even further. Totally disgraceful!

Even if Castro doesn’t ultimately qualify for relief under the immigration laws, she and her family would be in danger in Honduras and could make contributions to the United States. Therefore, a smart, humane, and brave country would carefully consider granting broader protections than asylum law might allow. Instead, the Trump Administration tries to contort and limit what should be generous, life-saving relief available under our asylum laws.

PWS

05-12-19

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  2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. GREAT KATE: Morrissey’s Moving Journalism Shows Human Side Of Why We Have Asylum Laws & How Trump Regime’s White Nationalist Abuses Are Diminishing All of Us!

TAL @ SF CHRON: The New American Gulag Is Overflowing With Children

Immigrant children in US custody soaring back toward record levels

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Immigrant-children-in-US-custody-soaring-back-13834123.php

WASHINGTON — The number of undocumented immigrant children in U.S. custody is reaching breaking-point levels again, months after the Trump administration had reduced the total in shelters in response to anger over policies that kept children there.

The recent increase is largely due to a surge in the number of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border rather than an administration policy. Overall crossings this year have skyrocketed to decade-high levels.

As of Thursday, the number of undocumented immigrant children in U.S. custody had increased to more than 13,000, according to figures obtained by The Chronicle. The number is a near-record high, and puts the shelter network that the Department of Health and Human Services runs to keep such children in custody near maximum capacity.

Trump administration officials have asked Congress for nearly $3 billion more to increase shelter capacity. Without it, they say, Health and Human Services could run out of money for the system by June.

While the shelter network has come under increased attention in the aftermath of President Trump’s separation of families at the border last summer in order to prosecute the parents, the vast majority of children in the system come to the U.S. by themselves.

The 13,000 figure has been exceeded only once before. Last fall, the total surpassed 14,000 children in custody for the first time in history, topping out close to 15,000.

That was due mainly to an administration policy under which Immigration and Customs Enforcement rigorously screened adults who were applying to take the children out of custody. The change slowed the process and often deterred such sponsors, usually family members, from coming forward. ICE also arrested some for being undocumented immigrants.

The practice so infuriated members of Congress that in a government funding bill in February, they barred ICE from using the information it collected as part of the screenings to arrest immigrants.

The Trump administration instituted a policy in December to try to release undocumented children from its custody more quickly, rescinding its requirement to fingerprint every adult in the home where the child would be living. Only the adult sponsoring the child is fingerprinted now.

By January, that had brought the number of children in custody below 11,000, according to Health and Human Services, with thousands of beds available.

More here : https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Immigrant-children-in-US-custody-soaring-back-13834123.php

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Always great to get Tal’s timely and highly readable reporting!

What’s the solution?  Well, it’s not the Trump Administration’s “preferred solution” of allowing the Border Patrol to mindlessly rocket vulnerable kids back to the Northern Triangle to be killed, tortured, exploited, abused, or forced to join gangs. It’s actually part of a worldwide trend that has seen more and more of the total refugee population comprised of children. So, this phenomenon shouldn’t have come as a surprise to a competent Administration focused on dealing with refugee situations humanely under the laws.

A rational solution would be to work closely and cooperatively with NGOs with expertise in child refugees (like, for example, Kids In Need Of Defense (“KIND”) or the Safe Passage Project), pro bono lawyers, and communities to figure out what is in the best interests of these children.

Then, pursue the right options: Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (”SIJS”) for some; expedited grants of asylum through the Asylum Office under the Wilberforce Act for others; TPS for others, recognizing the reality that there is an “ongoing state of armed conflict” in the Northern Triangle; an exercise of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) for others; and humane and organized repatriation for others, where that is actually in the child’s best interests.

There are plenty of tools available under existing laws to deal with this issue. We just have an Administration that refuses to use them and prefers to create a “crisis” to justify “throwing children under the bus.” Mistreating children is cowardly and bodes ill for the future of any country that permits it to happen. What goes around comes around!

PWS

05-10-19

 

 

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PROFESSOR FITZ BRUNDAGE @ WASHPOST: Can We Regain Our Humanitarian Values In The Age Of Trump? — “We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/03/can-united-states-retain-its-humanity-even-crisis

Brundage writes in WashPost:

By Fitz Brundage
Fitz Brundage is the William B. Umstead professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill and the author of “Civilizing Torture,” which was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History.

May 3

Does it violate human rights to hold children in fenced enclosures in grim facilities that are bone-chillingly cold for weeks on end? Is separating children from their parents a form of cruel and unusual punishment? When does a crisis justify the kind of treatment normally seen as inhumane?

The furious debate over migrant detention along the nation’s southwest border with Mexico has put these questions front and center in American politics. But they’re not new. The treatment of people on the margins of American life — criminals, immigrants, civilians in overseas war zones — has always proven a challenge to our democratic ideals.

Yet beginning in the 1920s, activists waged a half-century-long struggle to persuade the Supreme Court to stop abusive practices by authorities. After World War II, the United States also committed itself to the promotion of international human rights. These two signal developments have been seriously eroded, first by the excesses of the war on terrorism and now by the Trump administration’s targeting of the unwelcome and powerless, whether they are undocumented immigrants in the United States or asylum seekers. We have returned to a pattern of willful ignorance, one that allows us to avoid grappling with deeply immoral policies.

Threats to our safety, perceived or real, have long justified the kind of “tougher policies” that President Trump has demanded for the southern border. He may not be well versed in history, but the president is joining a long line of elected officials who found that rights and basic norms are easily jettisoned when they collide with demands for greater security. Across our history, from the Indian wars to the war on terrorism, officials were quick to call for “tougher policies” and slow to fill in the details. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered military commanders in the Philippines to adopt “the most stern measures” to punish Filipino guerrillas; in a subsequent campaign the Marines followed orders and left a trail of devastation and death across the island of Samar. But such methods were justified as a “military necessity.”

Roosevelt rationalized the brutal treatment of alleged guerrillas by citing the need to stanch the threat to security. This kind of evasive language has repeatedly prevented us from coming to terms with acts of cruelty carried out in the name of national security. We’re seeing that pattern again.

What precisely did Trump officials mean when they announced “a tougher direction” for immigration? They certainly imply more than just the proposals for new fees and regulations reducing the numbers of asylum seekers. Are the American people ready to confront the reality of harsh security measures? Or will we retreat into euphemisms such as a “hardened” border and “zero tolerance” for migrants that covers up the reality of what is actually happening on the border?

We are deciding day by day whether to extend the basic protections of law and civilization to the people arriving on our border. For much of the nation’s history, the prohibition on cruelty and torture in American law rested on the premise that the fundamental decency of Americans, especially empathy for fellow citizens, would make such violations unthinkable.

But our capacity to empathize begins to fray at the margins, and we grow less certain about who, exactly, deserves protection. Those deemed undeserving, unwelcome or powerless — Native Americans, the enslaved, prison inmates and criminal suspects — have commonly suffered forms of violence and abuse that violated our national principles. Some people are inside the protection of the law, and some are cast out from it.

In fact, we’ve already seen this pattern. Accusations of cruelty and torture by ICE and CBP agents have been circulating for years, and they follow this well-worn pattern. Official denials are followed by investigations that almost always find limited violations by “a few bad apples,” not the kind of systemic abuse that would call our broader policies into question.

This pattern has long historical roots: When investigations of police brutality in Washington during the 1930s revealed widespread use of abusive interrogation methods, the police superintendent, whose predecessors had dismissed similar allegations for decades, only grudgingly conceded that a few officers may have gone too far in their resolve to protect the public.

Focusing on bad apples has long allowed us to excuse morally bankrupt policies. We need to realize that human rights abuses on the southern border aren’t spurred by immoral actors in ICE or CBP, but rather because of a political leadership that can’t or won’t come up with humane immigration policies.

Congress needs to do its job and exercise scrupulous oversight of Trump’s immigration policies. But the real solution to our border crisis is to demand that all elected officials, from local sheriffs to senators, responsibly address immigration and human rights. Trump declared that he wants immigration to be a key campaign issue in 2020. His opponents should accept that challenge. We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.

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Join the New Due Process Army today and fight for human rights, the rule of law, accountability for Government scofflaws, and a return to basic human decency! Fight for a better future for ALL Americans!

PWS
05-07-19

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NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/04/world/americas/honduras-gang-violence.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Azam Ahmed Reports for the NY Times:

. . . .

Shootouts, armed raids and last-minute pleas to stop the bloodshed formed the central threads of their stories. MS-13 wanted the neighborhood to sell drugs. The other gangs wanted it to extort and steal. But the members of Casa Blanca had promised never to let their neighborhood fall prey to that again. And they would die for it, if they had to.

Almost no one was trying to stop the coming war — not the police, not the government, not even the young men themselves. The only person working to prevent it was a part-time pastor who had no church of his own and bounced around the neighborhood in a beat-up yellow hatchback, risking his life to calm the warring factions.

“I’m not in favor of any gang,” said the pastor, Daniel Pacheco, rushing to the Casa Blanca members after the shooting. “I’m in favor of life.”

The struggle to protect the neighborhood — roughly four blocks of single-story houses, overgrown lots and a few stores selling chips and soda — encapsulates the inescapable violence that entraps and expels millions of people across Latin America.

Since the turn of this century, more than 2.5 million people have been killed in the homicide crisis gripping Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Igarapé Institute, a research group that tracks violence worldwide.

The region accounts for just 8 percent of the global population, yet 38 percent of the world’s murders. It has 17 of the 20 deadliest nations on earth.

And in just seven Latin American countries — Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela — violence has killed more people than the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen combined.

Most of the world’s most dangerous
cities are in Latin America

Latin America

Africa

U.S.

Other

SAFER CITIES

MORE DANGEROUS

Cancún,

Mexico

Kingston,

Jamaica

San Pedro Sula,

Honduras

San Salvador

London

Los Angeles

Paris

Tokyo

Istanbul

Los Cabos,

Mexico

Tijuana,

Mexico

Bogotá,

Colombia

St. Louis

Moscow

New Orleans

6.2 global avg.

0

40

60

80

100

120

Average homicide rate per 100k people

By Allison McCann

Source: Igarapé Institute and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Cities include the 50 highest homicide rates in the world and a group of prominent others for comparison, all with populations of at least 250,000. Average homicide rates are from 2016-2018 or the latest data available.

The violence is all the more striking because the civil wars and military dictatorships that once seized Latin America have almost all ended — decades ago, in many cases. Most of the region has trudged, often very successfully, along the prescribed path to democracy. Yet the killings continue at a staggering rate.

They come in many forms: state-sanctioned deaths by overzealous armed forces; the murder of women in domestic disputes, a consequence of pervasive gender inequality; the ceaseless exchange of drugs and guns with the United States.

Underpinning nearly every killing is a climate of impunity that, in some countries, leaves more than 95 percent of homicides unsolved. And the state is a guarantor of the phenomenon — governments hollowed out by corruption are either incapable or unwilling to apply the rule of law, enabling criminal networks to dictate the lives of millions.

For the masses fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, the United States is both a cause and solution — the author of countless woes and a chance to escape them.

Frustrated with the stream of migrants treading north, President Trump has vowed to cut aid to the most violent Central American nations, threatening hundreds of millions of dollars meant to address the roots of the exodus.

But the surviving members of Casa Blanca, who once numbered in the dozens, do not want to flee, like tens of thousands of their countrymen have. They say they have jobs to keep, children to feed, families, neighbors and loved ones to protect.

“There is only one way for this to end,” said Reinaldo. “Either they kill us or we kill them.”

. . . .

 

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For the full version of Azam’s report and a much better chart graphic, go to the above link!

Trump’s complete lack of humanity, empathy, and his constant racist-inspired lies and misrepresentations about refugees and asylum seekers are truly reprehensible.

But, he and his henchmen like Stephen Miller are by no means the entire problem.

Every day in U.S. Immigration Court, DHS attorneys make demonstrably false representations minimizing the truly horrible conditions in the Northern Triangle, particularly for women. Every day, some U.S. Immigration Judges betray their oaths of office by accepting those false representations and using them, along with an unfairly skewed anti-asylum view of the law, to deny asylum cases that should be granted.

And, perhaps worst of all, every day some life-tenured Article III Circuit Judges turn a blind eye to the legal travesty and due process disaster taking place throughout our corrupted Immigration Courts by rubber stamping results that would be totally unacceptable in any other type of litigation and which don’t even pass the “straight face test.” I guess “out of sight is out of mind,” and the wrongfully deported are “out of sight” (or maybe dead, in hiding, or duressed into joining or cooperating with gangs after the U.S. failed to protect them)

But, there are folks our there resisting this malfeasance and dereliction of duty. Among other things, they are memorializing what is happening and making a record of where the “modern day Jim Crows” and their enablers stand and what they have done to their fellow human beings in the name of “expedience” and an “Alfred E. Neuman (“What Me Worry”)” view of the law and our legal system.

Donald Trump is horrible. But, his racism and infliction of lasting damage on our country and on humanity depend on too many judges and other supposedly responsible public officials supporting, acquiescing, enabling, or minimizing his inhumane, dishonest, counterproductive, and often illegal actions.

An appropriate response by an honest, competent Administration with integrity would be:

  • Establish legal precedents recognizing those fleeing politicized gang violence, domestic violence, and violence directed at famnilies as refugees;
  • Establish precedents incorporating the Article III decisions emphasizing the concept of “mixed motive” in determining “nexus” under asylum and withholding of removal laws;
  • Establish precedents granting temporary withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) to those who face torture at the hands of the gangs or Northern Triangle governments (or both), but who can’t establish the convoluted “nexus” for asylum, with a rebuttable presumption that the countries of the Northern Triangle will “acquiesce” in the torture;
  • Liberally use Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) for nationals from Northern Triangle countries which perhaps would make large-scale asylum adjudication less of a priority and allow most cases to be dealt with in due course through the Asylum Offices rather than clogging Immigration Court dockets;
  • Work to insure that applicants for protection have assistance of counsel in developing and presenting their claims (which would also dramatically increase fairness and efficiency).

PWS

05-05-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
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TRUMP SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: Even As Lawless Prez & His Band Of Brigands Considers More Illegal Retaliatory Political Action, U.S. District Judge Slams Termination Of Haitian TPS: “Trump administration . . . being motivated by politics and not facts!” – So, What Else Is New In World Of White Nationalism & Fabricated “Facts?”

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article229151574.html

Jacqueline Charles reports for the Miami Herald:

Accusing the Trump administration of being motivated by politics and not facts, a second U.S. federal judge is blocking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from forcing tens of thousands of Haitians to return to Haiti by ending their temporary legal protection.

In a 145-page federal ruling, U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz of the Eastern District of New York issued a nationwide temporary injunction preventing DHS from terminating Temporary Protected Status, TPS, for Haitians. Kuntz said 50,000 to 60,000 Haitians and their U.S.-born children would suffer “irreparable harm” if the legal protection ended and they were forced to return to a country that is not safe.

Kuntz’s detailed ruling came out of a lawsuit filed by Haitians in Florida and New York, challenging the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS granted to Haiti by the Obama administration after its 2010 devastating earthquake. The administration has rescinded the protection for Central America and some African nations as well, sparking several lawsuits around the country.

“It’s a sweeping indictment of the political manner in which the Trump administration at the very highest levels of the government illegally terminated Protected Status for Haitians,” said Miami immigration attorney Ira Kurzban, one of several lawyers who filed the lawsuit.

In October, a federal judge in California granted a temporary injunction blocking the administration from deporting Haitian TPS holders and others as their termination deadlines approach. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen granted the temporary injunction as part of a California lawsuit filed by lawyers on behalf of TPS recipients from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan who have U.S.-born children. The decision is being appealed by the government.

Kurzban noted that unlike the California case, which had not yet gone to trial when Chen issued his decision, Kuntz’s decision is the result of a full-blown trial. The New York lawsuit was the first of the five to go to trial.

“It’s far more detailed in its reasoning in respect to why what the government did was completely illegal,” Kurzban said of Kuntz’s decision. “It found findings on discrimination. … It found very clearly that the government’s decision was not only an arbitrary decision, but they violated their own procedures in reaching the conclusion that they reached.

“This is a direct and very detailed account of how the government acted in a completely arbitrary way,” he added.

During the trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that then-Acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke violated procedures and TPS holders’ due process when she ended the program for Haiti. They also cited emails and other internal government documents, including Duke’s handwritten November 2017 notes, to bolster the plaintiffs’ argument: that the White House was not interested in the facts about conditions in Haiti as DHS officials mulled over whether to continue to shield up to 60,000 Haitians from deportations, and Duke was under repeated pressure to terminate the program.

The decision, the suit alleged, was also rooted in the president’s “racially discriminatory attitude toward all brown and black people.”

“Clearly political motivations influenced Secretary Duke’s decision to terminate TPS for Haiti,” Kuntz said in his findings. “A TPS termination should not be a political decision made to carry out political motivations. Ultimately, the potential political ramifications should not have factored into the decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS.”

Kuntz said he could not issue a final injunction, only a temporary one, because Haiti’s TPS designation, which was supposed to end on July 22 but was recently extended by DHS until January 2020 due to the legal challenges, has not yet expired.

Steve Forester, an immigration advocate who has been championing the rights of Haitians enrolled in the TPS program, said it was “a victory demonstrating the government’s unlawful and unconstitutional behavior in reaching its decision to terminate Haiti TPS.”

“It’s a resounding condemnation of unlawful government behavior,” added Forester, who works as policy coordinator for the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.

The government is expected to appeal.

Fraud, waste, and abuse right in plain sight.
PWS
04-12-19

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RUTH ELLEN WASEM @ THE HILL: There Are Better Options At The Border – This Administration Refuses To Use Them!

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/436725-to-solve-the-us-crisis-at-the-border-look-to-its-cause

Ruth writes:

When a problem is misdiagnosed, it is no surprise that it gets worse. The current “crisis at the border” is real, but one that results from flawed policy analysis and inappropriate policy responses.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials overseeing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) project that they will have over 100,000 migrants in their custody for the month of March, the highest monthly total since 2008. CBP reported that over 1,000 migrants reached El Paso on one day alone last week. As many border security experts have noted, these numbers are not unprecedented. Border apprehensions of all irregular migrants (including asylum seekers) remain lower than the peak of 1.6 million in fiscal year 2000.

Making matters worse, DHS uses dated policy tools that were crafted in response to young men attempting to enter the United States to work. The threat of detention was considered a deterrent for economic migrants. At that time, they most often were from Mexico and thus could just be turned around at the border because they came from a contiguous country.

Today, the migrants are families with children from the northern triangle countries. Rather than being pulled by the dream of better jobs, these families are being pushed by the breakdown of civil society in their home countries. As the Pew Research Center reports, El Salvador had the world’s highest murder rate (82.8 homicides per 10,000 people) in 2016, followed by Honduras (at a rate of 56.5). Guatemala was 10th (at 27.3). Many of them have compelling stories that likely meet the “credible fear” threshold in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

It is abundantly clear that policies aimed at deterring single men are inappropriate and that CBP is unequipped to deal with families seeking asylum. Journalist Dara Lind maintains that these policy inadequacies have contributed to death of multiple children in DHS custody. Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson recently stated that the Trump administration strategy at the border is not working because it does not address the underlying factors.

Meissner replied: “Because people are uncertain about what’s going to happen. They see the policies changing every several months. They hear from the smugglers that help them, and from the communities in the United States that they know about, that the circumstances are continually hardening. And so with the push factors that exist in Central America — lots of violence, lots of gang activity — they’re trying to get here as soon as they can.”

Fortunately, the United States has an array of policy options that would more effectively respond to the surge of families seeking asylum from Central America than the erratic and ill-conceived policies of the Trump administration.

Aid to Central America to stimulate economic growth, improve security and foster governance is a critical policy response to address the factors propelling migrants. Congress appropriated $627 million for these purposes, but reportedly the distribution of the funds is stalled because President Trump wants to cut the aid countries because they failed to stop the flight of their people. This is another misguided policy reaction — if these countries would crack down on people trying to leave, it would escalate people’s panic to flee.

As is often said, the most important step is to beef up the asylum corps in DHS’s Citizenship and Immigration Services and to fully staff the immigration judges in the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. This action would enable expeditious processing of asylum claims in a fair and judicious manner — key to reversing the bottleneck of asylum seekers at the border.

Current law enables asylum seekers arriving without immigration documents to have a credible fear hearing and be released from detention pending their court dates. Those who establish that they have well-founded fear of returning home would be permitted to stay in the United States and those who do not would be deported. If DHS implemented our asylum laws to the fullest effect, it would increase the likelihood that migrants understood our laws.

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

Absolutely, Ruth! Basically what others and I who have spent years working in and studying this system have been saying all along.

The current law provides the necessary tools for addressing the only real border crisis:  the humanitarian tragedy. But, this Administration has neither the competence nor the interest to address that problem in a constructive, effective, and humane manner.  It wouldn’t fit their bogus White Nationalist false narratives and agenda.

That’s why we need “regime change” in 2020.  Until then, we’ll have to rely on private groups, some states, and the New Due Process Army to keep the country functioning until we get better, wiser, and more competent leaders.

PWS

04-05-19

 

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ORION DONOVAN-SMITH @ WASHPOST: Long-Time Liberian Residents Learn That No Group Is Too Small To Escape The Xenophobic Wrath Of The Trump Administration! — PLUS “BONUS COVERAGE” — My “Saturday Essay” — “ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/end-of-immigration-program-gives-liberians-in-us-a-choice-leave-their-american-children-or-become-undocumented/2019/02/20/03b3cae6-30db-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html

Orion writes:

MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — Magdalene Menyongar’s day starts with a 5:30 a.m. conference call with women from her church. They pray together as Menyongar makes breakfast and drives to work, reflecting on everything they are thankful for.

But lately, the prayers have turned to matters of politics and immigration. They pray with increasing urgency for Congress or President Trump to act before Menyongar, 48, faces deportation to her native Liberia, where she fled civil war nearly 25 years ago.

In less than six weeks, the order that has allowed her and more than 800 other immigrants from the former American colony in West Africa to live in the United States for decades will end, the result of Trump’s decision last year to terminate a program that every other president since George H.W. Bush supported. Come March 31, Menyongar will face a choice: Return to Liberia and leave behind her 17-year-old daughter, an American citizen, or stay in the United States, losing her work authorization and becoming an undocumented immigrant.


A portrait of Menyongar outside her home in Maple Grove, Minn., on Feb. 3. She faces a decision: Leave her daughter in the United States and return to Liberia or stay and become an undocumented immigrant. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)

Menyongar is among thousands of Liberian immigrants who were given temporary permission to stay in the United States in 1999, when President Bill Clinton implemented “deferred enforced departure.” DED was routinely extended by previous administrations but is set to end under Trump’s effort to terminate programs for immigrants without permanent status, which also has endangered Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and temporary protected status for immigrants from 10 other countries.

Temporary protected status, or TPS, was established by Congress in 1990 for citizens of countries suffering from war, environmental disaster, health epidemics or other unsafe conditions. They are given temporary permission to work in the United States and travel abroad without fear of deportation.

But that court action does not apply to the smaller and lesser-known DED program, which operates purely at the president’s discretion and gives no statutory basis on which to sue.

Without a change of heart from the president — or new legislation from Congress — Liberians living in the United States under DED will lose their work authorization and become subject to deportation. Instead of self-deporting, many are expected to stay in the United States in hopes of getting a hearing in immigration courts, a process that could take years.

But critics say his move to end protection for Liberians, leaving them undocumented after decades in the country legally, reflects an immigration policy that is capricious and, at worst, driven by racial bias.


Menyongar gets ready for work. Her paychecks from two nursing homes help support relatives in Liberia. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)

Family photos at Menyongar’s home. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)

Menyongar and her daughter, Gabby, at home. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)

“There comes a point where even if relief started as temporary, it needs to end with some possibility for permanence,” said Royce Murray, managing director of programs at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group. “These are people who have built their lives here, have invested in their communities and are raising American citizens.”

Last week, a group of DED holders from Minnesota traveled to Washington to lobby representatives, and Democrats have responded with legislative efforts. Rep. Dean Phillips, a freshman Democrat who represents Menyongar’s Minnesota district, pushed unsuccessfully for a DED provision to be included in the spending bill Trump signed.

Opponents of the programs say they have outlasted their original intent, to provide temporary protection, and represent a misuse of executive authority.

RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors reduced immigration and greater enforcement, calls DED and TPS “flagrant abuses of our immigration system.”

“Both of these ‘temporary’ designations have been on autopilot for years, with one unmerited, open-ended extension after another,” Hauman said. “These individuals should return to their homeland, which has since recovered, and use their skills to enrich Liberian society.”

Liberians don’t have to register with the federal government to qualify for DED, so there’s no reliable count of how many people depend on the program. But as of March 2018, approximately 840 had work authorization under DED, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Liberians must have lived in the United States continuously since 2002 or earlier to qualify.

Most of the original DED beneficiaries have since left the country, died or gained permanent status, Murray said. She estimates as many as “a few thousand” may remain in the country but have not renewed their optional work permits, which cost a total of $495 in annual fees.

[American Girl: A 14-year-old prepares for life without her immigrant parents]

Gabby’s primary focus these days is preparing for college, possibly in Atlanta to be close to her father’s family and escape the frigid Midwest winters. She said she didn’t understand that her mother could have to leave until last March, when Trump declared a one-year “wind-down period” for DED. She has told her best friend how worried she is about the situation but avoids talking about it otherwise.


Some members of Bethel Robbinsdale’s congregation may face deportation when deferred enforced departure ends. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)

Pastor Natt J. Friday preaches at Bethel Robbinsdale on Feb. 3. “These people, if you grant them permanent residence, they are going to be so patriotic,” he said. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)

The choir sings at Bethel Robbinsdale on Feb. 3. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)

A second family, a second home

Minnesota is home to the nation’s largest Liberian community, concentrated in the northwestern suburbs of Minneapolis. A few times each week, Menyongar makes a 20-minute drive to Bethel Robbinsdale — one of several Liberian churches in the Twin Cities area — where she serves as president of the women’s ministry.

After communion during a recent Sunday service, the band and choir struck up a euphoric tune while Menyongar joined the congregation in dancing through the pews. Dressed in a brightly colored jumpsuit and a turquoise head wrap, she exchanged handshakes and hugs along the way.

“The church is my second family,” Menyongar said. “It’s like a support system that we have for each other.”

Friday knows Menyongar isn’t the only member of his church who could face deportation, but he can’t say for sure how many will. Many keep their immigration status secret.

“These people, if you grant them permanent residence, they are going to be so patriotic,” Friday said. “The burden would be lifted off their shoulders to know that they can finally live a normal life.”

Liberian immigrants have taken prominent positions in Minneapolis and its suburbs, such as Brooklyn Center, which recently elected its first Liberian-born mayor. They moved in part for the job market — a shortage of nurses and other health-care workers drew many, like Menyongar, to work in hospitals and assisted-living facilities.

Mary Tjosvold, who owns group homes for seniors and people with disabilities, employs more than 150 Liberians. Although she does not track how many of her employees are protected by DED, she said losing even a few workers would have wide ripple effects.

“People have had these jobs for a long time. They’re important parts of businesses,” said Tjosvold. “On an economic basis, it doesn’t make any sense, no matter what you think politically.”

[‘I feel this is my home’: Hundreds protest in Washington to support immigrants with temporary protected status]

An end to the policy also has economic implications abroad. Remittances sent from those working in the United States to their relatives in Liberia act as “a source of de facto foreign aid,” said Paul Wickham Schmidt, a former immigration judge and current adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School.

Menyongar works a combined 60-plus hours each week at two nursing homes, and her paychecks support her 97-year-old mother and other relatives in Liberia.

Schmidt said the idea that Liberians losing DED will self-deport is unrealistic.

“My experience is that most people go home not because they’re threatened, but because they deem it in their overall best socioeconomic interest,” he said. “A lot depends on what faces you at home, which is why this administration’s policy doesn’t work.”

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that supports sharp immigration restrictions, argues that a president should not be able to prolong temporary programs like DED without congressional approval. Even so, he said, “When we’ve permitted people to lawfully reside here for decades, it’s practically and politically and morally problematic to say, ‘Okay, now time is up.’ ”

Liberia has been emerging from war during the past 15 years and last year saw its first peaceful transfer of power since 1944. In a memorandum announcing the end of the temporary status, Trump wrote, “I find that conditions in Liberia no longer warrant a further extension of DED.”

Menyongar strongly disagrees with that assessment, citing violent crime, poor health care and infrastructure, and a lack of jobs in explaining why she could not return to her country of birth.

“The Liberia that I knew and grew up in is not the Liberia of today,” she said.


Menyongar worships at Bethel Robbinsdale. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)

This article was produced in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, where Donovan-Smith is a student.

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

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE: There Is Nothing Inherently Wrong With TPS Or DED — But, There Is Plenty Wrong With The Trump Administration’s Mistreatment Of 800 Long-Term Residents From Liberia

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

Far from being a “problem,” as Trump and his restrictionist “naysayers” like to falsely claim, the TPS/DED program for Liberians has been a tremendous success! With a little “Congressional tinkering,” it could easily become a model for resolving future humanitarian situations without overburdening the US asylum system and adding to the huge existing U.S. Immigration Court backlog.

The US was able to provide humanitarian assistance to at least 10,000 Liberians during the darkest time for their country. This was accomplished without the time, expense, and often inconsistent and unsatisfactory results of forcing them into the formal US asylum system.

While in TPS/DED, Liberians were able to work legally, pay taxes, raise their families, live in peace, and otherwise contribute to American society.  Over the years, many were over able to fit within our legal immigration system. Some died. Others found that with changes in Liberia, it made socio-economic sense for them to return there. A very few violated the rules of our hospitality and were duly arrested and removed after receiving Immigration Court hearings (most before the Trump Administration “trashed” due process in Immigration Court). The Government might even have turned a slight profit on the routine renewals of work authorization for which a fee was charged that probably exceeded the actual time it took to adjudicate them.

Now, we have approximately 800 long-term residents remaining who would like to stay here with their families, jobs, and communities. Passing the necessary legislative fix to allow them to get green cards should be a “bipartisan no brainer” — indeed if the Administration introduced and supported such a fix, it almost certainly would pass by huge margins and be signed into law. Presto — problem fixed and everyone wins! At a minimum, a rational Administration would exercise “prosecutorial discretion” (“PD”) to maintain the status quo and allow the few remaining Liberians to reside in the US and work legally pending good behavior and a legislative solution.

The law might or might not have been specifically designed for this outcome. But, wiser Administrations in the past used the available legal mechanisms along with Executive authority and common sense to solve human problems in a practical, efficient manner.  Thanks exactly what “good government” is supposed to do.

That the Trump Administration chooses to use laws selectively to create “bogus emergencies” and “engineer problems” where none existed, rather than solving problems in a way that promotes the common good, should be of concern to all of us who favor good government and humane solutions to humanitarian issues.

PWS

02-23-19

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SPLIT DECISION: Supremes Deliver “Gut Punch” To Transgender Americans, But Give Another Round To Dreamers

SPLIT DECISION: Supremes Deliver “Gut Punch” To Transgender Americans, But Give Another Round To Dreamers

 

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

United States Immigration Judge (Retired)

On Tuesday, a divided Supreme Court allowed a portion of Trump’s homophobic ban on certain transgender troops to go into effect. At the same time, they properly squelched the arrogantly disingenuous attempt by Trump and his “go along to get along” Solicitor General Noel Francisco to “expedite” review of lower court rulings that found that Trump, former Attorney General Sessions, and DHS acted lawlessly and without any apparent legal rationale in terminating the “DACA” program. In simple terms, decisions that required the Administration to follow the law.

Prior Solicitors General have sometimes balked at representing liars and presenting disingenuous arguments in behalf of their Government “clients.” (Actually, somewhat of a bureaucratic misnomer, because the “institutional client” is really the “People of the U.S.”  who pay Government salaries, regardless of whether they are citizens or can vote.) Not this one, who seems to savor the opportunity to carry Trump’s more than ample “dirty water” and reduce the credibility of his one-respected office to around zero. As I predicted, nobody serves Trump without being tarnished.

For the LGBTQ community, it’s a horrible signal that a narrow majority of the Supremes are unwilling to move into the 21stcentury and recognize their Constitutional rights to equal protection under the 14thAmendment as well as their rights as human beings. It’s also shockingly disrespectful to those who have stepped forward to risk their lives in the name of our country, something Trump took great pains to avoid. It’s doubly disappointing that Chief Justice John Roberts joined his far-right colleagues on this one, at least in part (he rejected the bogus argument for immediate review put forth by Francesco and instead sent the case back to the lower courts for further development).

Unlike some of his colleagues on the right, Roberts has some sense of institutional history, the horror and existential dangers to democracy of Trump as Chief Executive, and the future. Come on, “Chiefie,” we can all get smarter as we get older! Don’t blow your chance to “get on the right side of history.” Leave the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” behind in their dust and join your four more enlightened colleagues in moving America forward and showing some leadership and courage on the Supremes. As this month has shown, you might be the only person able to save America.

Paraphrasing what many pundits have said, “The Supremes can basically do anything they want, whenever they want to, for any reason they can come up with, because they are Supreme.” With that caveat in mind, the Court’s well-deserved slap down of Trump on DACA basically leaves the full protections in effect for Dreamers until the end of the Trump Administration. At that point, we’ll either get a new President, or there won’t be any country left for the “Dreamers,” the Supremes, or the rest of us to “dream about” or live in. The so-called “American Dream” will be at a tragic end. We’ll all be living in a continuing nightmare of cruelty, incompetence, and randomness.

I think the Supremes would be wise not to take up the DACA issue ever. It needs to be resolved by the lower courts, who have for the most part done a fine job, and the Congress, which hasn’t. But, assuming the Supremes do take the issue, they probably wouldn’t schedule argument before the October Term 2020. That makes it highly unlikely that they would reach and issue any final decision before the November 2020 elections. There would certainly be no reason for them to “rush to judgement” on this one.

Thus, Trump’s hollow offer of meager “Dreamer relief,” no path to green cards or citizenship and less than they have now under the court decisions, is even less of a legitimate “bargaining chip” than it was before. And, “poisoning the well” with Stephen Miller’s White Nationalist anti-asylum, child-abuse agenda shows how intellectually dishonest Trump and the GOP are and that the rancid “thousand pages of vile gibberish” that they launched as a “fake offer to reopen our Government” is a pure political stunt and an insult to 800,000 unpaid Government workers.

Moreover, all of this nonsense must be viewed in context of reality. That’s something that seldom intrudes on the daily intentionally created chaos and national dysfunction of this Administration. The Dreamers aren’t going anywhere! Almost all of them have legitimate applications for immigration relief that they can file in Immigration Court, including cancellation of removal, asylum, withholding of removal, or relief under the CAT.

Trump, Sessions, and now Whitaker have totally destroyed the U.S. Immigration Court system.  I’m not sure it will be able to reopen even when the Trump shutdown finally ends. With a politically-created backlog of well over one million cases, growing by tens of thousands with every day of the mindless Trump shutdown, virtually no “Dreamer” (other than a minute percentage who might be convicted of crimes and probably would have had their DACA status revoked or denied on that basis) would be scheduled for removal proceedings within the next four years, let alone by 2020. Indeed, if Congress doesn’t step in and provide Dreamer relief and an Article I independent Immigration Court to replace the current dysfunctional mess in the DOJ, some of these cases may well still be pending a decade from now!

This context also reaffirms the total disingenuous absurdity of SG Francisco’s argument that this is an “emergency” requiring “early intervention” by the Supremes. Nothing could be further from the truth. The only “emergency” is the one intentionally caused by his “client” Trump — by illegally and unnecessarily trying to shut down the DACA program and aggravated by his Administration’s wanton destruction of our U.S. Immigration Courts, and by the “Trump shutdown.”

The Supremes must take a “hard line” against being “sucked in” to the many bogus “emergencies” that Trump creates to detract attention from his and his party’s inability to govern in even a minimally fair and effective manner. Perhaps, it’s also time for Francisco to reread the rule of ethics for lawyers and have a “heart to heart” with his “client” about abusing the Federal Courts with semi-frivolous litigation and presenting lies as “facts.” It’s never too late to learn!

PWS

01-23-19

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  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
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HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE — USCIS RACISTS TARGET BLACK HAITIANS: As Evidence Unfolds In Federal Court, The Blatant Racism & Dishonesty Of USCIS Politicos In Bogus Termination Of TPS Becomes A Matter Of Public Record!

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2019/1/7/haiti-tps-and-racial-bias

Haiti, TPS, and Racial Bias

This morning, the trial begin in Saget v. Trump, before District Judge William Kuntz in the Eastern District of New York.  As your Brooklyn observer, I attended the opening hours of what is likely to be a two or three day trial.

The basis for the case is the Trump administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) for Haitians who have been present in the U.S. since January 12, 2011, and remain unable to return due to conditions in that country following a massive earthquake in 2010, a 2016 hurricane, and a major cholera epidemic.  59,000 Haitians in the U.S. are presently in TPS status, a number too large for the Haitian government to presently absorb if returned en masse.

TPS is not asylum, and offers no permanent status in this country.  It was created by Congress in 1990 to afford blanket protection to nationals of countries to which return is currently untenable for a variety of reasons, including armed conflict, natural disaster, rampant disease, or the inability of the country to absorb the mass repatriation of its nationals.  Such designation is granted in intervals of 6 to 18 months, and is reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) at least 60 days before the end of each designated period. The law only allows TPS status to be terminated where such review finds that the conditions for designation no longer exist in the country; otherwise, the period of TPS is to be extended.  In the case of Haiti, after being designated for TPS in early 2010, such designation was extended in 18-month increments continually until the coming of the Trump Administration in 2017.

DHS, within its subcomponent, USCIS, has a Country Conditions Unit.  I know that unit’s director, LeRoy Potts, and met with him and some of his senior staff when I oversaw EOIR’s country conditions database during my time at the BIA.  They are knowledgeable, fair-minded, and in my experience, issued accurate reports free of political influence. The Country Conditions Unit is generally consulted in TPS decisions.  As it had in the past, the Unit again drafted a report finding serious problems in Haiti that would call for an extension of TPS.

However, as the Plaintiffs’ counsel noted in his opening statement, Robert T. Law, previously director of the vehemently anti-immigration lobby group ironically known by the acronym FAIR, who under the Trump administration was made a senior policy advisor to USCIS (which is mind-boggling on its own), decided that the Country Condition Unit’s memo was “overwhelmingly weighted for extension which I do not think is the conclusion we are looking for.”  According to petitioner’s counsel, Law edited the document (with the blessing of the USCIS chief policy strategist, Kathy Nuebel Kovarik) in 35 minutes, without further research. https://nationaltpsalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DPP-3349-EX-3.pdf   According to the opening statement, the only research requested by the administration was for evidence that Haitians in the U.S. had criminal records or received public assistance, a clear attempt to discredit a nationality using racial stereotypes.  Plaintiff’s counsel stated that the USCIS Country Conditions Unit characterized DHS’s final version of the report used to justify its termination of TPS for Haiti as “complete fiction.”

The Plaintiffs called as their first witness Ellie Happel, an expert on country conditions in Haiti and resident of that country from 2011 to 2017, who took apart the DHS memo sentence by sentence.  For example, Happel explained the meaninglessness of DHS’s claim that 98 percent of internal displacement camps (“IDPs”) in Haiti have been closed. Happel stated that the majority who left the camps did so due to actual or threatened forced eviction, and many did not return to durable housing.  When one settlement, Canaan, was decertified as an IDP camp, it statistically eliminated 50,000 people from the list of those internally displaced. However, those 50,000 people continue to live on the site of the former camp, a windswept, previously uninhabited land far from government services.

Happel cited a report (also referenced in the USCIS report) that a minimum of 500,000 homes would have to be constructed to meet the housing needs of the Haitian population.  Happel also testified in convincing detail to continued food insecurity, political instability, an economy marred by a 2 billion dollar debt to Venezuela caused by misappropriation or embezzlement of funds by government officials, and a continued susceptibility to cholera following one of the worst epidemics of the disease in recent history.

Why would DHS’s leadership go to such lengths to fabricate a fictitious report to justify returning 59,000 Haitians to such conditions before it was advisable to do so?  The plaintiffs pointed to the answer in the statements of President Trump himself, made a few months earlier to members of Congress, in which he referenced predominantly black nations as “shithole countries” (the presiding judge insisted on the use of the unedited quote), questioned “why do we need more Haitians? (whom he previously claimed “all have AIDS”); and stated his preference for immigrants from places such as Norway.  The government’s attorney somehow managed to keep a straight face when claiming in response that DHS’s acting Secretary had reached the decision to terminate independent of Trump’s opinions.

Sadly, Haitians have suffered a long history of unfair treatment under our country’s immigration laws.  In his excellent 1998 law review article “Race, the Immigration Laws, and Domestic Race Relations: A ‘Magic Mirror’ Into the Heart of Darkness,” Prof. Kevin R. Johnson wrote “No U.S. policy approached…the government’s extraordinary treatment of Black persons fleeing the political violence in Haiti.”  When the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1993 decision in Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc., upheld the policy initiated by President George H.W. Bush, and surprisingly continued under President Clinton, of repatriating intercepted Haitians without first screening the returnees to see if they qualified for refugee status, Justice Brennan argued in dissent that the Haitian refugees “demand only that the United States, land of refugees and guardian of freedom, cease forcibly driving them back to detention, abuse, and death. We should not close our ears to it.”

Sadly, 25 years later, our nation’s most openly racist president continues to advocate for policies of extraordinary cruelty towards Haitians.  And seemingly without embarrassment, many of his underlings are happy to go to extreme lengths to carry out such policies, the admirable exception being the USCIS Country Conditions Unit.

It was heartwarming to see the large team of lawyers, paralegals, and expert witnesses united  in Judge Kuntz’s courtroom to continue to fight against such cruelty. Among those in attendance were Ira Kurzban, one of the plaintiff’s lawyers, and Michael Posner, founder and former director of Human Rights First, both of whom were early defenders of Haitian rights in the 1980s.  To see them working alongside a younger generation of attorneys and experts, such as Happel, the director of NYU Law School’s Haiti Project, and Florida attorney Kevin Gregg reminded this aging attorney that the struggle for immigrants’ rights will be passed on to most capable hearts and hands.

Copyright 2019 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

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

Tal Kopan has unearthed some of this in an earlier post based on documents obtained under the FOIA. https://wp.me/p8eeJm-2rC

Gotta wonder about the ethics of DOJ lawyers defending the indefensible in Federal Court.

PWS

01-09-19

 

Related posts:

  1. PROFESSOR FITZ BRUNDAGE @ WASHPOST: Can We Regain Our Humanitarian Values In The Age Of Trump? — “We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.”
  2. COURTS OF INJUSTICE: How Systemic Bias, Bad Precedents, Gross Mismanagement, & Poor Decision-Making Threaten Lives In Immigration Court — What Should Be “Slam Dunk” Grants Of Protection Are Literally “Litigated To Death” Adding To Backlogs While Mocking Justice! — Featuring Quotes From “Roundtable” Leader Hon. Jeffrey Chase!
  3. “CONSTITUTIONAL CASTRATION”– CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: HOW THE FECKLESS GOP CONGRESS IS SCREWING THE MOST VULNERABLE AMONG US BY LETTING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TRASH THE IMMIGRATION LAWS AND END-RUN THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL PARTICIPATION! – “The Trump administration keeps scolding desperate immigrants to shape up and “follow the law.” When will cowardly members of Congress insist that the president do the same?”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

RAFAEL BERNAL IN THE HILL: Federal Courts Are Homing In On The Racism, Dishonesty, & Lawlessness Driving Many Of Trump, Nielsen, & Sessions’s Cruelest & Dumbest Immigration Policies!

https://thehill.com/latino/410012-trump-immigration-measures-struggle-in-the-courts

Bernal writes:

A federal judge’s ruling blocking a Trump administration order to end immigration benefits for nearly 300,000 foreign nationals is the latest in a series of judicial setbacks for the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Federal District Judge Edward Chen late Wednesday blocked the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) order to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that allows citizens of Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti and Nicaragua to live and work in the United States, raising hopes for activists who have fought to make the program permanent.

The preliminary injunction granted by Chen, an appointee of President Obama, follows a trend of court reversals that have slowed the administration’s proposed overhaul of American immigration laws.

The administration’s first judicial setbacks on immigration came weeks into Trump’s presidency, as a New York court stopped in January of 2017 the application of the first version of a travel ban that blocked immigrants and visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries.

After a series of court battles, a third version of the travel ban — which includes non-Muslim countries North Korea and Venezuela — was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in June of this year.

Trump’s termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program is still up in the air.

Because of court action, DHS is still receiving DACA renewal applications, which under Trump’s original order should have ended in October of 2017.

Both the travel ban and termination of DACA tied into Trump’s campaign promises on immigration, but TPS is a relatively obscure program that had been more or less summarily renewed by both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Under TPS, nationals of countries that undergo natural or man-made disasters are allowed to live and work in the United States until their home countries recover.

Chen’s decision only blocks the DHS orders while the lawsuit is in place, but he hinted in his decision that he’s unlikely to change his mind in the final ruling.

The decision came as a surprise, as TPS statute gives a wide berth to the secretary of Homeland Security to determine who receives its benefits.

DHS declined to comment on the case, but Department of Justice spokesman Devin O’Malley panned Chan’s decision, saying it “usurps the role of the executive branch in our constitutional order.”

Emi Maclean, an attorney with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), called it “an extraordinary decision.”

“This is the first time in the history of the TPS statute, a statute from 1990, that there has been a court order halt for any TPS determination,” said Maclean.

“It’s hugely important in what it says about the Trump administration making policies in the arena of immigration, and it’s obviously important for hundreds of thousands of people and their families and communities,” she added.

In his decision, Chen referred to the “animus” behind the administration’s TPS strategy, echoing district and appeals courts decisions on the travel ban, which used Trump’s campaign rhetoric as evidence of discriminatory intent.

Chan said he found “evidence that this may have been done in order to implement and justify a pre-ordained result desired by the White House.”

“Plaintiffs have also raised serious questions whether the actions taken by the Acting Secretary or Secretary was influenced by the White House and based on animus against non-white, non-European immigrants in violation of Equal Protection guaranteed by the Constitution,” he added.

Justice took a different view.

“The Justice Department completely rejects the notion that the White House or the Department of Homeland Security did anything improper. We will continue to fight for the integrity of our immigration laws and our national security,” said O’Malley.

Although the decision is only a temporary setback for the administration, TPS activists — who want to turn their TPS benefits into permanent residency permits — say they’re encouraged to raise the political profile of the program and its beneficiaries.

“While this decision helps us to at least breathe and be comfortable that our friends with TPS are not going to lose immigration status, it also motivates us to continue organizing and hoping that Congress will understand the importance of this,” Jose Palma, the Massachusetts coordinator for the National TPS Alliance, said in a call with reporters.

Immigration causes have been front and center in U.S. politics during the Trump administration.

But TPS has received relatively little attention.

“We were doing some lobbying and some Congresspeople didn’t know what TPS was,” said Palma. “We were asking for support for TPS and they were asking, ‘What is TPS? We don’t know,’”

And while TPS recipients had been included in previous attempts at comprehensive immigration reform, most bills that got traction in 2018 focused solely on Dreamers.

The exception was a bipartisan bill proposed by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), which would have pulled immigrant visas from the diversity visa program to grant permanent residency to certain TPS holders, including some from Haiti.

That bill was shot down in January by Trump at a White House meeting with Graham and Durbin, where he allegedly called Haiti and some African countries “shithole countries.”

Still, TPS advocates say they’ve been able to raise awareness for the program since Haiti’s designation was terminated in November.

Palma pointed to seven legislative proposals in the current Congress that would either extend TPS benefits or give current beneficiaries permanent residency.

Another proposal from Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) would transfer the responsibility of designation from DHS to Congress and restrict access of undocumented immigrants to TPS.

Palma added that the ultimate goal of many TPS recipients, particularly those who have been in the United States for long periods of time, is to achieve permanent residency.

“If we’re going to take the future of this campaign based on what we have achieved from there to now, I feel confident that it’s not going to be easy but it’s something we can definitely achieve,” he said.

Chen’s order covers only El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, which account for a majority of TPS holders.

The most numerically significant TPS countries not included in the lawsuit are Honduras, which has about 57,000 citizens in the program, and Nepal, which has about 9,000. They are not included because their terminations had not been announced at the time the lawsuit was filed.

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

What is missing here is decisive, bipartisan Congressional action to resolve some of these issues in a way that the Trump White Nationalists can’t easily undo. Barring that, various aspects  of the White Nationalist anti-immigrant agenda will continue to “bop along” through the lower Federal Courts: sometimes winning, but often losing.

While the GOP right is obviously feeling a sense of invincibility with the likely advent of Justice Kavanaugh, Trump can’t necessarily count on the Supremes to bail him out by intervening in controversial immigration cases. It would be better for the Court, and particularly for Chief Justice Roberts, presumptive Justice Kavanaugh, and the other “GOP Justices” to take on some less controversial issues — ones where they might actually achieve unanimity or near-unanimity first, and save the inevitable, partisan “5-4s” for a later date. That might mean that he fate of many of Trump’s most controversial immigration schemes could remain in the hands of the lower Federal Courts until sometime after October 2019.

Of course, that isn’t necessarily good news for those opposing the Trump agenda: Trump is quickly turning the lower Federal Courts into bastions of right-wing doctrinaire jurisprudence, just as the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and other right-leaning legal groups have mapped it out.

PWS

10-05-18

 

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

TRUMP SCOFFLAWS BLOCKED AGAIN: US Judge Temporarily Enjoins End Of TPS Programs!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/politics/tps-preliminary-injunction/index.html

Catherine Shoichet reports for CNN:

(CNN)Hundreds of thousands of immigrants who feared they could soon be facing deportation got a reprieve Wednesday, when a federal judge in California temporarily blocked one of the Trump administration’s major immigration moves.

US District Judge Edward Chen granted a preliminary injunction stopping the government from terminating temporary protected status, or TPS, for immigrants from Sudan, El Salvador, Haiti and Nicaragua.
Chen ruled that the government must maintain TPS, and employment authorizations for TPS beneficiaries from those countries, while a lawsuit challenging the government’s decision to eliminate their protections continues.
TPS protects migrants in the United States from countries that have been hit by dire conditions, such as epidemics, war or natural disaster. Previous administrations had opted to extend the protections for most of the countries involved every few years when they came up for review, but the Trump administration has moved toward ending protections for the majority of immigrants under the program, arguing that the initial conditions that necessitated them are no longer present.
The judge’s decision comes a week after a hearing in the case. It goes into effect immediately and is particularly welcome news for TPS recipients from Sudan, who were less than a month away from losing their protections.
“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it,” said Salma Ahmed of Chicago.
The 21-year-old, who was born in Sudan and lived in the United States since she was 2, attended last week’s court hearing in San Francisco and was heartened to hear the judge recognize the urgency of the situation she and many others face.
“My hopes just got higher and higher,” she told CNN Wednesday night. “I wasn’t expecting it right now, but this is good.”
Developing story – more to come

CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich contributed to this report.

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

Information obtained under the FOIA had previously disclosed that nobody recommended or wanted the termination of these grants of TPS except a hard core of White Nationalist restrictionists in the Trump Administration. As has been reported elsewhere, they suppressed and mischaracterized  evidence — all of which supported a continuation of TPS — to  terminate these important programs to achieve a predetermined racially-driven, restrictionist agenda.

The Trump Administration is continually occupying the Federal Courts with unnecessary litigation that a responsible Administration would avoid, for the good of the country. As you might remember, I predicted early on that the Trump Administration’s often lawless and otherwise largely imprudent litigation positions would mean “full employment for lawyers” — both inside and outside Government —  if nothing else.

PWS

10-03-18

Related posts:

  1. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  2. THE “MAINSTREAM MEDIA” HAS FALLEN FOR BILLY BARR’S LATEST “CON JOB” HOOK, LINE & SINKER — But YOU Shouldn’t — Bess Levin @! Vanity Fair Decodes Billy’s Real Message to His Don: “Let [me] turn the judicial branch into your own personal score-settling operation in peace!“  — Plus, My Bonus “Friday Essay” — “Don’t Believe A Word Billy Barr Says!”
  3. TAL @ CNN – TOP “KAKISTOCRAT” JEFF SESSIONS ENTHUSIASTICALLY IMPLEMENTS TRUMP’S IMMORAL, OFTEN LAWLESS, AND PROBABLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA – This Should Disabuse Everyone, Including Federal Article III Courts, Of The (Fictional) “Independence” Or “Professional Responsibility” Of The USDOJ!
  4. 🤡CLOWN CAPITOL:  J.R. PRESIDES OVER GOP CLOWN SHOW HE HELPED CREATE — Empowering The Koch Bros, Suppressing Minority Votes, Enabling GOP Gerrymandering, Ignoring Invidious Racial & Religious Motives, Turning A Blind Eye To Lies & Pretexts, It All Contributed To The Arrogant Display Of GOP Dishonesty & Impunity Now On Public Display In The Senate! — Plus Bonus Friday Mini-Essay: “Profiles in Fecklessness”

NPR: “THIS AMERICAN LIFE” – HEAR ABOUT HOW THE WHITE NATIONALIST RESTRICTIONISTS IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ARE GOING ABOUT SYSTEMATICALLY AND DISINGENUOUSLY PERVERTING US IMMIGRATION LAWS – Useless, Counterproductive, & Expensive Prosecutions Of Asylum Seekers – When The Facts Don’t Support Your Decisions, Just Delete Or Misrepresent Them!

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/656/let-me-count-the-ways

 

Yes, youʼve heard about the family separations. Youʼve heard about the travel ban. But there are dozens of ways the Trump administration is cracking down on immigration across many agencies, sometimes in ways so small and technical it doesnʼt make headlines. This week, the quiet bureaucratic war that’s even targeting legal immigrants.

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

Long, but highly documented, compelling, and well worth the listen if you really want to know about the ugly, depraved policies of Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, Cissna, Gene Hamilton, and the rest of the White Nationalist Racist Brigade.

Regime Change, Regime Change, Regime Change; Vote, Vote, Vote!

PWS

09-29-18

 

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DIVERSE “NATION OF IMMIGRANTS” ANOINTS A COMMITTED XENOPHOBE AS ITS CHIEF LAW OFFICER? – Gonzo Is Deconstructing Our System Of Justice, One Day At A Time!
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

TWO FROM TAL @ CNN: 1) RACISM TRUMPS IDEOLOGY IN TERMINATION OF NICARAGUAN TPS; 2) SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE UPDATE – HUNDREDS REMAIN SEPARATED WHILE ABUSER REMAINS AT LARGE, DISSING FEDERAL JUDGES!

‘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.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/30/politics/tps-nicaragua-trump-immigrants-fear/index.html

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

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.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/08/30/politics/family-separations-hundreds-children-separated/index.html

 

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

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.

PWS

08-31-18

 

Related posts:

  1. GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”
  2. LISTEN TO TAL KOPAN AND CATHERINE SHOICHET OF CNN DISCUSS SEPARATION OF MIGRANT FAMILIES ON THIS PODCAST!
  3. COURTS: TIMEOUT ON THE KILLING FLOOR! – JUDGE SABRAW TEMPORARILY HALTS DUE-PROCESS-LESS DEPORTATIONS OF REUNITED FAMILIES TO HARM’S WAY – Will Hear Arguments From Both Parties, As He Tries To Figure Out Just What Nefarious Plan Sessions Has Up His Sleeve Now!
  4. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!

EXPLOSIVE EXPOSE’: TAL @ CNN SHOWS HOW WHITE NATIONALISTS IN THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IMPROPERLY SKEWED THE DECISION TO TERMINATE TPS!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/24/politics/trump-administration-tps-end/index.html

‘It IS bad there’: Emails reveal Trump officials pushing for TPS terminations

Tal Kopan
“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.

Trump admin was warned a policy change could strengthen MS-13. They did it anyway.

Trump admin was warned a policy change could strengthen MS-13. They did it anyway.
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.”

Trump's immigration policies were supposed to make the border safer. Experts say the opposite is happening.

Trump’s immigration policies were supposed to make the border safer. Experts say the opposite is happening.
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.

Documents reveal DHS knew ending protections could cause more, not less, illegal immigration

Documents reveal DHS knew ending protections could cause more, not less, illegal immigration
“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.

DHS terminations of protected status ignored diplomats' recommendations, report says

DHS terminations of protected status ignored diplomats’ recommendations, report says
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!

PWS

08-24-18

Related posts:

  1. TWO FROM TAL @ CNN: 1) RACISM TRUMPS IDEOLOGY IN TERMINATION OF NICARAGUAN TPS; 2) SESSIONS’S CHILD ABUSE UPDATE – HUNDREDS REMAIN SEPARATED WHILE ABUSER REMAINS AT LARGE, DISSING FEDERAL JUDGES!
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: WHITE NATIONALIST AG MAKES VICIOUS UNFOUNDED ATTACK ON REFUGEES & THEIR ATTORNEYS THE CENTERPIECE OF HIS SPEECH TO LARGEST CLASS OF INCOMING U.S. IMMIGRATION JUDGES — “Good lawyers using all their talents and skills work every day … like water seeping through an earthen dam to get around the plain words of (immigration law) to advance their clients’ interests.”
  3. KELLY TRIED TO BULLY ACTING DHS DIRECTOR ELAINE DUKE INTO TERMINATING TPS FOR HONDURANS – SHE WOULD HAVE NONE OF IT!
  4. INSIDE THE CHILD ABUSE CONSPIRACY: LIKE MANY CRIMINALS, TRUMP’S “GANG OF SIX” CAN’T KEEP THEIR STORIES STRAIGHT — But, There Is One Consistency — Everything These “Kakistocrats” Say Is A Lie!

SESSIONS & TRUMP: MS-13’S BEST FRIENDS! – Tal Kopan @ CNN Confirms What I Have Been Saying All Along! – Administration’s “Gonzo” Immigration Enforcement Strengthens, Empowers, Emboldens Gangs While Harming Victims!

Trump admin was warned a policy change could strengthen MS-13. They did it anyway.

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The Trump administration was warned that ending US protections for more than 300,000 Central Americans would strengthen and grow MS-13 and gangs that President Donald Trump has called “animals,” according to an internal report obtained by CNN.

But the administration went on to end the protections for citizens of El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua regardless.

The warnings came from experts at the State Department in October 2017, and were attached to a letter from then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke.

The State Department also warned that ending the “temporary protected status” program could also hurt US national security and economic interests, including by driving up illegal immigration.

The program covers migrants in the US of countries that have been hit by dire conditions, such as an epidemics, civil war or natural disasters. Previous administrations spanning party had all opted to extend the protections for Central America every roughly two years.

“Many of the deportees would be accompanied by their US-born children, many of whom would be vulnerable to recruitment by gangs,” warned the section on Honduras.

“The lack of legitimate employment opportunities is likely to push some repatriated TPS holders, or their children, into the gangs or other illicit employment,” warned the section on El Salvador.

“With no employment and few ties, options for those returning to El Salvador and those overwhelmed by the additional competition will likely drive increased illegal migration to the United States and the growth of MS-13 and similar gangs,” the report added.

Trump has called MS-13 “animals.” “We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in. … You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals,” he said in May, later explaining he was speaking about the vicious gang.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/07/25/politics/trump-gangs-temporary-protected-status/index.html

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

Once again, ignorant and biased Administration political officials ignore the advice of the Government’s own experts!

This article doesn’t even focus on another major way in which Trump & Sessions empower MS-13. By unnecessarily sowing terror in ethnic communities in the U.S., they are precluding cooperation with local police against gangs, making young people in the community “easy marks” for gangs, and by dehumanizing all migrants they are sending a strong message that a young person can only be empowered and respected by joining a gang. Not only that, but the perception of “Old Anglo White Guys” like Trump & Sessions in charge of the Administration’s anti-gang initiatives makes them totally ineffective.

Combatting gangs in a difficult problem that requires well-considered, nuanced solutions involving local police, educators, social workers, positive role models, and local communities, including both documented and undocumented community members. 

We’ve proven over and over again that “deportation only” approaches not only don’t solve gang problems, but make them much worse. When policies are driven by racism, bias, and White Nationalism, the result is almost certain to be stupidity and futility.

 

 

PWS

07-25-18

Related posts:

  1. INSIDE THE CHILD ABUSE CONSPIRACY: LIKE MANY CRIMINALS, TRUMP’S “GANG OF SIX” CAN’T KEEP THEIR STORIES STRAIGHT — But, There Is One Consistency — Everything These “Kakistocrats” Say Is A Lie!
  2. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations!