"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals PAUL WICKHAM SCHMIDT and DR. ALICIA TRICHE, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Lisa Speckhard Pasque writes in the Madison Capital Times:
Erin Barbato is the director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.MICHELLE STOCKER
In October 2018, law professor Erin Barbato and her students represented a Cuban man in a political asylum case.
He was “beaten, detained (and) threatened with disappearance by the Cuban authorities twice,” said Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. He fled when his wife was eight months pregnant because he was accused of a crime he didn’t commit and knew he didn’t have any other options. He traveled to South America and walked all the way to the border.
He was granted asylum.
Barbato and her students want to help with even more cases like this, but due to shifting asylum policies at the border, they haven’t been able to, Barbato said. She’s also seen firsthand how these changes have limited access to justice and due process for asylum seekers.
“These policies are really affecting the work I do, and the way we teach and the way that we can serve,” she said.
Arriving undocumented immigrants used to present themselves at the southern border and tell a customs and border patrol officer they’d like to apply for asylum, Barbato said. They needed to then pass a “credible fear” interview, giving the reasons they believed they would qualify for asylum.
Those who passed the interview could be released on bond or transported to detention centers throughout the U.S., like Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, to await their court hearing.
That’s where Barbato and her students found them. They regularly represented clients from Dodge seeking asylum like the Cuban man. It’s a great chance for students to learn and participate in a humanitarian effort, Barbato said.
After the Cuban man was granted asylum, the judge said he would allow IJC to defend asylum cases in Chicago via telephonic appearance, which would let IJC take more cases.
“I think it’s easier for (the judge) when the individual seeking asylum is represented and the government’s represented,” Barbato said. “And so we left there and we’re like, ‘Wow, maybe we can do more.’”
So when they went back to Dodge a few weeks after that successful case, they prepared to take two asylum cases. But there weren’t any asylum seekers at Dodge, which was “really curious,” Barbato said.
And there haven’t been any since, Barbato said. That’s because many asylum seekers aren’t being allowed into the U.S. after passing a credible fear interview. Instead, even after passing the interview, they have to wait in Mexico for their court hearing, she said.
Barbato witnessed this in action this March when she went to Tijuana to serve with a binational legal services organization called Al Otro Lado. While there, she saw several other immigration trends she considers troubling.
Asylum seekers in Tijuana go through a process called “metering,” which began several years ago. Even if a migrant makes it to customs and border patrol, they are directed back to Mexico, where they are then put on a list in a notebook reportedly managed by another asylum seeker, and given a number. They wait in Tijuana for 30 to 40 days for their number to come up before they can present themselves to CBP, Barbato said. A Mexican immigration organization called Grupos Beta is thought to be responsible for managing the number of migrants who can present themselves for asylum on any day.
And the migrants don’t necessarily have anywhere to stay in Tijuana while they wait to present themselves for asylum, Barbato said.
“Many of the shelters are full, and they’re not very safe because most of these people are fleeing gang violence,” Barbato said.
Once a person’s number comes up a month later, the migrant gets in line once again, where humanitarian volunteers hand out sweaters and socks because the person is headed into a holding facility (called “hielera” or “ice box,” for its frigid temperatures) for seven to 10 days as they await their credible fear interview.
“There’s effectively no way for unaccompanied minors to present themselves lawfully for asylum,” Barbarto said.
Barbato met with a 16-year-old girl who fled after her father sold her to a 25-year-old gang leader, and she was beaten, raped and falsely imprisoned for two years.
Now in Tijuana, the girl’s options were all bad: to wait at the one children’s shelter in Tijuana, where she “felt really alone and unsafe,” try to enter illegally where she would be subject to trafficking or the elements, or present herself to Grupos Beta and risk deportation, in which case she would “be most likely murdered because she fled the gang and disobeyed her husband.”
Barbato encouraged those who are concerned to go volunteer themselves in Tijuana, and “speak out on behalf of these children that are stranded in Tijuana.”
“The bottom line is, we can’t save everybody. Not everyone is going to qualify for asylum, that’s just not it. But at least how our laws stand right now, everyone has the right to at least seek those protections,” Barbato said. “And if our government wants to change those laws, they have to go through Congress to do so, they can’t just change these laws through policies.”
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Thanks, Erin, for all that you and your “band of Due Process heroes” do for the New Due Process Army and the never-ending battle to bring Due Process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all to the U.S. Immigration Courts. You make me proud to be a U.W. Law alum! And thanks so much for giving us a slice of what’s “really” happening at the border as opposed to the Administration’s fictionalized version:
\“There’s effectively no way for unaccompanied minors to present themselves lawfully for asylum,” Barbarto said.
Barbato met with a 16-year-old girl who fled after her father sold her to a 25-year-old gang leader, and she was beaten, raped and falsely imprisoned for two years.
Now in Tijuana, the girl’s options were all bad: to wait at the one children’s shelter in Tijuana, where she “felt really alone and unsafe,” try to enter illegally where she would be subject to trafficking or the elements, or present herself to Grupos Beta and risk deportation, in which case she would “be most likely murdered because she fled the gang and disobeyed her husband.
Yes, this is what our country is doing to our fellow human beings who seek nothing more than to apply for legal protection supposedly guaranteed by international treaties, our statutes, and our Constitution. Is the Trump Administration’s dishonesty, cruelty, and scofflaw behavior really the way we want to be remembered by future generations? Actions have consequences, and failing to stand up for the legal, Constitutional, and human rights of “the most vulnerable among us” will have adversely affect the future of our nation and of humanity. At the same time, Erin and her courageous students are setting examples that will uplift and inspire future generations.
Like most law school clinics and pro bono organizations, Erin and her clinic operate on a “shoestring budget.” Compare that with the waste, fraud, and abuse of the Administration’s squandering of huge sums money on walls, prisons, and defense of patently illegal programs to strip migrants of their few remaining rights. Think what we could do as a nation if we devoted just a modest amount of additional resources to making the laws and the immigration adjudication system work, rather than funding “built to fail” schemes and gimmicks to evade and violate the laws?
So much for the disingenuously named “Migrant Protection Protocols” (a/k/a/ “Stay in Mexico”). As I had predicted, they are actually “Migrant Rejection Protocols,” which was the intent all along.
A federal appeals court said Friday that the Trump administration could temporarily continue to force migrants seeking asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico while their cases are decided.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of a lower-court ruling four days earlier that blocked the administration’s protocol. The appeals court will consider next week whether to extend that stay — and allow the Trump administration policy to remain in effect for longer.
The administration in December announced its new policy, called the migration protection protocols, arguing that it would help stop people from using the asylum process to enter the country and remain there illegally. President Trump has long been angered by so-called catch and release policies, under which asylum seekers are temporarily allowed in the United States while they wait for their court hearings.
On Monday, Judge Richard Seeborg of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued an injunction against Mr. Trump’s new protocols, saying that the president did not have the power to enforce them and that they violated immigration laws.
President Donald Trump’s dramatic purge of Homeland Security leaders is about more than personnel: It helps clear the way for him to take controversial new steps to curb illegal immigration, including an updated version of his furiously criticized family separation policy.
Leading the new charge is Trump’s top White House immigration aide Stephen Miller, who wants tent cities to house migrants on the border and is pressing to extend the amount of time U.S. immigration officials can detain migrant children beyond the current 20-day limit imposed by a federal judge. Miller wants to force migrant parents arrested at the border to choose between splitting apart from their children or remaining together indefinitely in detention while awaiting court proceedings, according to five people familiar with the plans.
Those hard-line policies could get new traction after a major staffing shakeup at the Homeland Security Department over the past several days. Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned Sunday and Secret Service Director Randolph Alles was ousted Monday. Those moves came after the White House on Friday unexpectedly withdrew its nominee for director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ronald Vitiello. Other officials could be on the chopping block in coming days, according to three other people familiar with the White House’s considerations.
The dramatic proposals and leadership purge are politically risky — family separation has sparked more political anger than almost any other issue in Trump’s presidency — and come as Trump has alarmed his fellow Republicans with abrupt threats to kill Obamacare and to shut down the border. But Trump is determined to make immigration central to his reelection push, betting that he can once again energize his core conservative voters on a promise to secure America’s borders.
Trump and Miller have become increasingly frustrated as the number of Central American migrants massing at the southwest border surges to levels not seen in a decade. Now Miller — who’s even started calling mid-level federal officials to demand they do more to stem the influx — will have a new opportunity to pursue his tougher approach amid the leadership vacuum at DHS.
Trump said Sunday that Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would become acting DHS secretary. Other top DHS positions currently filled by acting officials will be the deputy secretary, ICE director, inspector general and administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Three of those jobs lack a nominee from the White House.
Miller did not respond to a request for comment.
A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a plan to send certain non-Mexican asylum seekers back to Mexico while they await a resolution to their case. The order will not be effective until Friday evening, which allows the administration a chance for a quick appeal.
Still, Miller has a set of new policies he wants to try, according to the five people familiar with the plans, including a “binary choice” between separation or joint detention for families, an idea that first surfaced in the run-up to the midterm elections. Miller also wants to fast-track the regulation that would allow migrant children to be detained for longer than the 20-day limit. He’s eager to finalize the so-called public charge rule, which could block immigrants from obtaining a green card if they’ve received public benefits in the past or are deemed likely to do so in the future.
In addition, Miller has pressed for the federal government to set up tent cities along the border, so that cases can be swiftly resolved — and migrants with non-meritorious claims can be deported.
He’s also pushing for the purge at DHS to continue.
“If you lose Claire, and John, and Francis, I don’t know where that leaves us. But it’s not in a good place,” this person said.
At least some of the personnel moves are getting pushback from immigration restrictionist groups, who like Cissna’s approach.
Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a grassroots organization that seeks lower levels of immigration, said he’s confounded by reports that Cissna may be removed from his post at USCIS.
“He’s great. He’s worked in this issue for years, he’s extremely knowledgeable,” Beck said. “He’s exactly the type of person who needs to be in DHS in leadership.”
But Miller has pressed Cissna, unsuccessfully, to launch more experimentally and legally questionable policies, according to three people familiar with the situation.
Cissna’s defenders contend that he tried to adhere to the law while Miller pressed to overstep legal boundaries.
“If they push out the uber-competent guy that the left hates because he’s getting things done within the law and the right loves because he’s actually being faithful to the president’s campaign promises, they’re even bigger idiots than we already know,” one former DHS official said.
Eliana Johnson, Gabby Orr, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.
The fight against the White Nationalist Kakistocracy has just begun. Their supply of vile, racist plots, illegal schemes, cruelty, and hate is almost endless.
But, in the end, justice and the NDPA will prevail!
A federal judge on Monday blocked an experimental Trump administration policy that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases make their way through the immigration court system, a major blow to President Trump as border crossings have surged to their highest point in more than a decade.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco enjoined the Migrant Protection Protocols policy days after outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pledged to expand the program. The policy began in January.
Trump has justified blocking asylum seekers from entering the United States by claiming that many asylum seekers are trying to carry out a scam — that they are coached to file false asylum claims knowing that they will be released into the country because of a lack of detention bed space. The administration had hoped to keep more asylum seekers in Mexico — and off U.S. soil — while they await court hearings on their claims.
Migrants who reach U.S. soil — including areas that are outside U.S. border barriers but inside U.S. territory — have the legal right to seek asylum. They generally are either held in detention facilities to await rulings in their cases or are released into the United States.
The policy had been one idea to stem the flow of migrants into the country, but Seeborg said his order ending the policy will take effect at 5 p.m. on April 12. Within two days, he said, the 11 migrants named in the lawsuit must be allowed to enter the United States, and the administration may not implement or expand the program.
The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit, hailed the ruling as a “very important decision” on an “unpredecented” attempt to block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil.
“What it will mean is that nobody else can be sent to Mexico,” said Judy Rabinovitz, an ACLU lawyer. “They can’t enforce this policy.”
Ex-ICE head: Trump had ‘single dumbest idea I’ve ever heard’
New Day
Former Acting Director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Sandweg says President Trump’s suggestion to eliminate immigration judges is “the single dumbest idea I’ve ever heard” in terms of dealing with border crossings.
Go to the link and watch the short video interview with John.
I totally agree that the answer here is to provide both the Asylum Officers and Immigration Judges necessary to make the system work. However, to really address the problem, we also need to work on the causes of forced migration and embrace wholeheartedly the international mechanisms available through the UNHCR and the U.N. Convention to work on refugee issues cooperatively with other signatory counties.
Nevertheless, I do take issue with John’s implicit assumption that the current 20-25% grant rate for Northern Triangle countries represents reality. This Administration in particular, but also previous Administrations, worked hard to unfairly skew the asylum system against asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle.
This includes:
Limiting opportunities for representation by counsel (counsel increases success rates by at least 4X);
Using detention in a coercive and punitive way to discourage claims and punish those who pursue them;
Skewing the law to make gender-based and gang-based claims, which could fairly easily be fitted into the conventional asylum framework, unnecessarily complicated and hard to establish;
Hiring mostly former prosecutors as Immigration Judges and then sending them a “deny and remove” message through the Attorney General, who unethically and in violation of any common sense concept of Due Process controls the Immigration Courts;
Failing to provide proper training and guidance to Immigration Judges through precedent decisions on how asylum claims can and should be granted;
Tolerating Immigration Judges who have shown bias toward asylum seekers and almost never grant asylum;
Intentionally making asylum law overly legalistic and focused on finding reasons to deny and remove, rather than protect.
One need look no further than two of my recent posts about judges who never grant asylum to see how sick, biased, and unfair the Immigration Court system has become to asylum seekers.
And make no mistake — the racist scofflaws who have assumed control of immigration policy under Trump intend to eradicate asylum, the rule of law, and our Constitution. Don’t think that just because you might happen to be a U.S. citizen or even a Trump supporter you will be immune from the destruction of the foundations of our republic and your individual rights. Some day, your turn will also come. Who will defend and speak up for those who have watched the rights and the lives of the vulnerable among us be trampled?
For much of my tenure at the Arlington Immigration Court the asylum grant rate hovered around 70% with few DHS appeals. As someone who worked on the Refugee Act of 1980 and has been involved in the administration and application of U.S. asylum laws for decades, from all sides, that high grant rate was completely warranted. Those finding reasons to deny at rates approaching 100% are not fairly, impartially, and correctly applying asylum law in accordance with Due Process and the actual legal standards. For too long we have tolerated gross abuses of asylum seekers — it has been taken to a new level under this Administration.
It’s illegal, it’s unconstitutional, it’s unethical, and it must stop!
McALLEN, Texas — Federal immigration officials dropped the first group of several dozen asylum seekers — all Central American parents with children — at the downtown bus station early in the day.
They dropped more throughout the day, all of them Spanish speakers in need of food, medicine and guidance from volunteers.
Jose Manuel Velasquez, 24, cradled his squirming 3-year-old-daughter, Sofia, as volunteer Susan Law advised him how to reach Oklahoma City, where he hoped to join his cousin. He was one of thousands of asylum seekers trying to leave the border region this week to reach friends, family and immigration court hearings in other parts of the country.
Ahead of President Trump’s Friday visit to California,volunteers along the border helped hundreds of asylum seekers who had been released from U.S. custody. Cities are pitching in, but helping the migrants has mainly fallen to volunteers whose resources were already at a breaking point from responding to a slew of new immigration policies.
On Thursday in McAllen, the U.S. released 700 migrants to crowded nonprofit shelters and dropped others at the bus station. Some arrived at the station with confirmation numbers to claim tickets paid for by relatives. Many arrived confused.
Law, a volunteer with the group Angry Tias and Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley, said the constant arrivals this week made volunteers’ work “more overwhelming.”
The 73-year-old, a retired human resources director for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, sat with one parent after another Thursday. She explained each step of their bus trip, highlighting connections on a stack of maps.
She reviewed their paperwork, reminded them to keep their addresses updated and attend immigration court, and shared lists of free legal services at their destinations.
Many eastbound buses arriving in McAllen on Thursday were already packed with those released in El Paso and San Antonio. The wait time for migrants released to shelters to make it onto a bus has stretched to two days, according to Eli Fernandez, a volunteer at a nonprofit shelter.
Migrant advocates have suggested that recent mass releases at the border were intended to create chaos and give Trump something to point to when he argues that there is a national emergency.
Border Patrol officials have said their resources were strained by people crossing into the U.S. and asking for asylum. The officials have asked for millions more in funding to run temporary holding areas in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency team arrived in the valley this week, meant to support Border Patrol operations and nongovernmental groups, a FEMA spokeswoman said. But many volunteers said they hadn’t been contacted by the agency.
Trump policies blocking asylum seekers led volunteers to found Angry Tias and Abuelas about a year ago, after U.S. officials blocked asylum seekers at a border bridge south of McAllen. They brought food and supplies to the bridge and kept helping migrant families once Border Patrol started separating them. As immigrant parents were released, the volunteers shifted to the bus station to assist Catholic Charities, which runs a nearby shelter.
Most volunteers in Angry Tias and Abuelas are local, some are winter Texans, and others out-of-state visitors.
Luis Guerrero, a retired firefighter, remembers a 4-year-old Salvadoran girl explaining why she and her parents had to flee to the U.S.: Armed men had broken into their house and demanded money. “If you stay here,” Guerrero told the couple, “make sure your daughter gets therapy.”
Many of the migrants are from poor, rural areas and need the most basic help, volunteers said.
A young Honduran mother paid attention Thursday as Law traced the route she would follow to join her sister, a legal resident who migrated years ago and settled in Memphis, Tenn. Olga Lara had brought her 3-year-old, Alva, but left her 13-year-old daughter, Lilia, in Honduras with Lara’s mother.
Lara, 29, said she hoped to learn to read, as her sister had, in the U.S. She doesn’t know how to spell her name. She has never attended school, she said, because her family couldn’t afford it.
Law ensured the woman was traveling with another migrant who could read, write and look out for her. Law also warned Lara and other female migrants about the risk of trafficking, advising them to stay in main bus terminals and avoid anyone who might try to persuade them to leave.
Lara tucked her ticket into her bra and her paperwork into a bag next to Alva’s Elmo doll. She was wearing a donated puffy jacket and sneakers that were stripped of shoelaces while she was in Border Patrol detention. Law ran to grab her some of the laces she keeps stashed at the bus station. Lara threaded them through her shoes and thanked the volunteer.
On Thursday, good Samaritans from local churches dropped by with books, toys and hot breakfast tacos for the migrants. But there were not enough tacos to go around. A van from the nearby shelter was delayed when it ran out of gas. A few families boarded buses without eating.
Volunteer Roland Garcia, a former U.S. Marine, loaned his cellphone to a single Salvadoran mother of three, a domestic violence victim, so she could contact family in Houston and book her bus ticket.
“If we could just get more volunteers to help these people,” he said. “To them, everything is new. Some of them don’t even know how to work the Coke machine.”
Garcia, 60, who used to be a truck driver, started volunteering after he ducked into the bus station a few months ago to wait during a delivery and saw the crowds. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and felt the need to do something meaningful. He’s already recruited other volunteers.
His friend Rafael Mendoza said volunteers counter misinformation some asylum-seeking families receive from staff in Border Patrol facilities: “You’re wasting your time, you’re going to lose your case, you’re not welcome here.”
“Our own agents are telling them that,” said Mendoza, 59. “It’s very discouraging.”
The Catholic Charities shelter was packed Thursday, even after opening a second site when the Border Patrol started releasing large groups of families two weeks ago. The shelter’s halls were full of parents with small children who had not bathed in days while being held in chilly Border Patrol cells, where they said they caught colds.
Honduran Eulogio Erazo Varela said his 3-year-old daughter developed a fever while they were held for almost a week, first in a Border Patrol cell — what migrants call a hielera, or icebox — then behind a chain-link fence in a converted warehouse.
He was relieved to meet volunteers at the bus station Thursday. He said they treated him kindly as he prepared to catch a bus to Memphis — unlike Border Patrol agents, he said, who didn’t provide much treatment or help.
Many of the volunteers, including Law, had caught the migrants’ colds. But they were determined to keep helping. Law has driven a few migrants whose families could afford tickets to the airport, and hoped to recruit more volunteer escorts to help them navigate air travel in coming weeks.
Law recalled a migrant mother she met Wednesday, confused by her bus itinerary until the volunteer walked her through it in Spanish. Afterward, the woman said she would have been lost without Law’s help.
Ironically, government by the worst among us (“kakistocracy”) is bringing out the best in many others. Along with the efforts of the “New Due Process Army,” it’s certainly reason to hope for a better future for America and for mankind!
TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
United States Immigration Judges (Retired)
In short, families are coming to ports of entry and crossing the border to turn themselves in to be screened for credible fear and apply for asylum under our existing laws. That’s not a “border crisis;” it’s a humanitarian tragedy. It won’t be solved by more law enforcement or harsher measures; we’re actually quite fortunate that folks still believe in the system enough to voluntarily subject themselves to it.
Most don’t present any particular “danger” to the U.S. They are just trying to apply for legal protection under our laws. That’s something that has been denied them abroad because we don’t have a refugee program for the Northern Triangle. This Administration actually eliminated the already inadequate one we had under Obama.
Certainly, we have enough intelligence to know that these flows were coming. They aren’t secret. There was plenty of time to plan.
What could and should have been done is to increase the number of Asylum Officers and POE Inspectors by hiring retired Asylum Officers, Inspectors, adjudicators, and temps from the NGO sector who worked in the refugee field, but no longer have anything to do overseas since this Administration has basically dismantled the overseas refugee program.
A more competent DOJ could also have developed a corps of retired Immigration Judges (and perhaps other types of retired judges who could do bond setting and other functions common to many judicial systems) who already “know the ropes” and could have volunteered to go to the border and other places with overloads.
Also, working closely with and coordinating with the NGOs and the pro bono bar would have helped the credible fear process to go faster, be fairer, the Immigration Courts to function more fairly and efficiently, and would have screened out some of the “non viable” cases.
For some, staying in Mexico is probably a better and safer option, but folks don’t understand. Pro bono counsel can, and do, explain that.
By treating it as a humanitarian tragedy, which it is, rather than a “fake law enforcement crisis,” the Administration could have united the private sector, border states, communities, and Congress in supporting the effort; instead they sowed division, opposition, and unnecessary litigation. I’m actually sure that most of the teams of brilliant “Big Law” lawyers helping “Our Gang of Retired Judges” and other to file amicus briefs pro bono would just as soon be working on helping individuals through the system.
A timely, orderly, and fair system for screening, adjudicating, and recognizing refugee rights under our existing laws would have allowed the Administration to channel arrivals to various ports of entry.
I think that the result of such a system would have been that most families would have passed credible fear and the majority of those would have been granted asylum, withholding, or CAT.
Certainly, others think the result would have been mostly rejections (But, I note even in the “Trump Era” merits approval rates for Northern Triangle countries are in the 18-23% range — by no means an insignificant success rate). But, assuming “the rejectionists” are right, then they have the “timely rejection deterrent” that they so desire without stomping on anyone’s rights. (Although my experience over decades has been that rejections, detention, prosecutions, and harsh rhetoric are ineffective as deterrents).
No matter who is right about the ultimate results of fair asylum adjudication, under my system the Border Patrol could go back to their job of tracking down smugglers, drug traffickers, criminals, and the few suspected terrorists who seek to cross the border. While this might not satisfy anyone’s political agenda, it would be an effective and efficient use of law enforcement resources and sound administration of migrant protection and immigration laws. That’s certainly not what’s happening now.
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.
The policy crisis we face is not one of the volume of migrants but the demographic mix of the migrants and the factors that are propelling their flight to the United States. Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy and former senior official in the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) during the George W. Bush administration, makes a compelling case that the current apprehension statistics are not comparable to those of the past: “In the past, nearly everyone entering the United States unlawfully attempted to evade authorities, whereas today’s border crossers are mostly turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents and seeking asylum.”
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.
It is becoming clear that the harsh, capricious policies of the Trump administration are exacerbating the influx of asylum seekers from Central America. The Migration Policy Institute’s Doris Meissner, who served as the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration, understands these underlying migration patterns and policies. She recently responded to a question posed by NPR’s Steve Inskeep: “If you can explain, how would the administration’s actions to try to stop this flow actually make the flow worse?”
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.
President Trump reiterated a threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border after a meeting at the White House on Tuesday, saying he stands ready to take drastic action if the country doesn’t do more to curb illegal immigration. He also railed against the U.S. immigration system and said he wants to “get rid” of immigration judges who hear migrants’ cases.
“Security is more important to me than trade,” Mr. Trump said when asked about the severe economic impact of closing the border. “We’ll have a strong border or we’ll have a closed border.”
The president spoke after meeting in the Oval Office with Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Last week, Mr. Trump tweeted threats to close the border if Mexico doesn’t do more to cooperate with the U.S. and slow the flow of migrants. But the commander-in-chief appeared to shift that timeline Tuesday, saying Mexico is assisting the U.S. more than it was even a few days ago. The president said he’s still “totally prepared” to close the border if necessary.
Along with a list of frustrations over immigration, however, Mr. Trump included immigration judges. U.S. immigration court backlogs are at all-time highs, with not enough judges to adjudicate the cases. That problem was exacerbated by the government shutdown earlier this year.
“We need to get rid of chain migration, we need to get rid of catch and release and visa lottery, and we have to do something about asylum. And to be honest with you, have to get rid of judges,” Mr. Trump said in his laundry list of frustrations with the U.S. immigration system.
Mr. Trump also walked back his insistence that the Republican Party will imminently introduce a new health care plan. Overnight, the president tweeted he would wait to hold a vote on his yet-to-be-envisioned health care plan until after the 2020 election. On Tuesday, the president said he will bring forth a plan “at the appropriate time.”
“We don’t have the House,” Mr. Trump said about the delay, which came after he said the Republican Party will become the “party of health care.”
Republicans failed to repeal and replace Obamacare in the two years they held the House and Senate.
Stoltenberg’s visit came as Mr. Trump tries to decrease the U.S. footprint abroad with his “America First” foreign policy. Mr. Trump has urged other NATO nations to increase their defense spending to agreed-upon levels, a stance many see as positive, but on Tuesday the president said defense spending will need to go higher than 2 percent. Currently NATO members agree to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense, but Mr. Trump, in a meeting alongside the secretary general, said that figure “may have to go up.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s close relationships with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin while criticizing U.S. allies has made some ally NATO nations distance themselves from the U.S. Last year, for instance, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany can’t rely “on the superpower of the U.S.” any longer to bring order to the world.
Before he became president, Mr. Trump declared NATO “obsolete.” He later revised that statement, saying he no longer believes that to be the case.
When NATO was founded in 1949, there were 12 ally nations. Now there are 29. Last month, Mr. Trump suggested perhaps Brazil could be a part of NATO, though Brazil is largely in the southern hemisphere.
Trump simply doesn’t care about the Constitution or Due Process of law (except where he, his family, and their corrupt cronies are involved). Migrants seeking to apply for legal protections under our laws aren’t a security problem; Trump is! And, the idea that closing the border wouldn’t cause both an economic catastrophe and threaten our security just shows what an absurdist presidency Trump has foisted on the majority of Americans who did not want him in office in the first place.
Trump has better options to stop dangerous flood of asylum-seeking migrants
By Nolan Rappaport
President Donald Trump has not been able to stop a surge in illegal border crossings, which, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan, is at the breaking point. In February, more than 76,000 migrants were detained, the highest number in 12 years. Most of them were asylum-seeking migrants from Central America.
The State Department told CNN on Saturday that the United States is cutting off aid to those countries.
Apparently, Trump thinks he can gain some control over the situation by pressuring the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (known as the Northern Triangle) into assisting him with his efforts to secure the border.
I think he is mistaken. The amount of the aid he cut off is much smaller than the amount of money migrants from the Northern Triangle are sending home from jobs in America.
In 2017, migrants from the Northern Triangle who work in the United States sent billions of dollars home to their families. These remittancestotaled more than $5 billion for El Salvador, $4 billion for Honduras, and $8.68 billion for Guatemala. This was 20.1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in El Salvador, 17.4 percent in Honduras, and 11.5 percent in Guatemala.
What is the aid supposed to do?
In 2016, the United States gave $131.2 million in aid to Guatemala, $98.3 million to Honduras, and $67.9 million to El Salvador, and Congress has appropriated about $2.1 billion for the program since then.
I encourage you to go on over to The Hill at the above link to read Nolan’s complete article.
I generally agree with Nolan’s observations, except for the idea of lengthening the time for family detention. Family detention is inhumane, unnecessary, expensive, and ineffective.
Why not just operate the asylum system in a fair and efficient manner? Fairly and efficiently administer the “credible fear” system in the Asylum Office as established by law. Give those who pass fair access to legal counsel and process their cases fairly and efficiently through the Immigration Courts. Remove the lower priority cases from the Immigration Court docket to allow priority processing of new asylum cases without long waits or increasing the backlogs. Give folks fair, impartial, and unbiased adjudications of their claims and let the chips fall where they may.
Most of us who are familiar with the asylum system believe that under a fair, impartial, “depoliticized” system that focused on due process and asylum expertise, many, probably a majority, of the arriving cases would be granted asylum or protection under the Convention Against Torture. While the Administration claims otherwise, we can never know because they keep insisting on “gaming” the system against asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle and using gimmicks to prevent individuals from getting the fair determinations to which they are entitled under law.
Trump’s White Nationalism is driving us towards a self-created international economic disaster. Why, when fair administration of our existing asylum system at the border is within our power and capability? Trump just lacks the will, integrity, and competence to make it happen.
Ted Hesson, Immigration, Pro — Staff mugshots photographed Feb. 20, 2018. (M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)
Ted Hesson reports for Politico:
The border crisis that President Donald Trump used to justify declaring a national emergency was never real, but a different crisis at the border is now starting to escalate as immigration officials hold hundreds of parents and children in makeshift facilities, including a parking lot.
During a press conference in El Paso, Texas, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan argued Wednesday that a surge of incoming Central American migrants has pushed the U.S. immigration system to a “breaking point” and that all available resources should be devoted to manage it.
But Democrats and advocates contend that the Trump administration’s response is exacerbating the problems.
Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), a freshman lawmaker who represents El Paso, fumed Thursday over the border situation — which she also described as a crisis — during an interview after leaving the House floor.
“They knew that the numbers would increase,” she said. “Why were they not planning?”
Here’s what’s really happening now at the border:
The president’s frequent claims that unprecedented numbers of undocumented migrants are streaming into the country remain untrue. (Twice as many came during the 1990s and early 2000s.) And President Trump’s caricature of border-crossers as violent criminals is still belied by study after study showing that immigrants in general, and undocumented immigrants in particular, commit fewer crimes than the native-born.
“We have a capacity crisis, if you want to think of it that way,” Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) told POLITICO. “We don’t have capacity to deal with the populations that they’re getting at the border right now.”
Border Patrol anticipates that it will apprehend more than 55,000 family members in March, by far the highest monthly total since such record-keeping began in fiscal year 2012. The warmer spring and summer months ahead will likely bring even higher numbers.
The adult men from Mexico who a decade ago constituted most border migrants were able to be returned more swiftly, often simply by walking them across the border. While they were detained, the men required comparatively little in the way of social or medical services.
Furthermore, a 2008 federal law and related bilateral agreement allowed the U.S. to repatriate Mexican unaccompanied minors rapidly. The law, called the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, does not similarly authorize quick deportation for children from Central America.
By contrast, the greater volume of children among the new Central American migrants imposes on immigration agencies a need for more psychologists, nutritionists, educators and a host of others. Border officials contend that with the rise in families and children, more migrants have health issues than in the past.
“We are doing everything we can to simply avoid a tragedy,” McAleenan said at the border Wednesday. “But with these numbers, with the types of illnesses we’re seeing at the border, I fear that it’s just a matter of time.”
Federal court orders in recent years have limited to 20 days the time children can be kept in detention, which means border agents often must release families into the interior. Such releases speed up processing, but demoralize agents and may encourage more migration, McAleenan argued.
The current migratory flow is also different because of the greater proportion of asylum applications at the border in recent years. Central American families arriving at the border frequently seek such refuge, which puts them into an immigration process that can take years to resolve.
The Trump administration argues that the asylum claims largely lack merit, but immigration court statistics don’t back that up. Roughly 25 percent of defensive asylum applications were approved by an immigration judge in fiscal year 2017, with 41 percent denied and 34 percent resolved in another manner, such as a withdrawn application.
Still, immigration hard-liners contend that lax asylum laws have been a magnet for Central Americans.
Mark Krikorian, director of the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies, compared the current influx at the border to Europe’s migratory surge in 2015.
“We are seeing an Angela Merkel-style disaster on the border caused by loopholes in our laws that the Democrats refuse to even consider changing,” he said.
Democrats and advocates argue that the Trump administration’s response has exacerbated problems at the border.
Administration officials have known for months — arguably years — that more migrant families could trek to the United States, yet they appear to have been caught flat-footed.
During McAleenan’s press conference in El Paso Wednesday, reporters observed hundreds of parents and children held in a parking lot converted into a makeshift detention center.
“That’s their solution? That’s not a solution,” Escobar said. “In my community when these families are released, the community … scrambles and works hard to create hospitality centers, to feed these people, to help get them to their final destination. If we can do it with a fraction of the resources and power of the federal government, surely DHS can find a better solution.”
Escobar said DHS hasn’t taken adequate steps to deal with a long-term trend of more family and child arrivals. Border Patrol often uses small concrete cells that were better suited to the earlier populations of single men, many of whom would be sent back to Mexico in a day’s time, she said.
“They’ve been acting and responding in the same way over the last five years despite the change in the migration pattern,” she said.
The spending package approved by Congress in February included $192 million to construct a large processing center for migrant families in El Paso. The facility will house multiple agencies that deal with families in one building, but will take six months to a year to become functional, according to Escobar.
In the meantime, the Texas Democrat argues that if Trump truly deems immigration a national emergency, he should work harder to house and care for incoming migrants, perhaps with Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers or Red Cross assistance.
Under a January 2017 Trump executive order, federal immigration officials remain tasked with arresting and detaining as many migrants as possible, without a system of prioritization. Advocates contend the enforcement push has sapped resources that could be used to address the care and custody of newly arrived migrant families.
“They just detain any grandpa or mom that they find in the interior and they don’t prioritize who they should be putting in detention,” said Kerri Talbot, a director with the Washington, D.C.-based Immigration Hub. “They don’t need any more money, they need a new strategy.”
Under its “zero tolerance” strategy, the Trump administration sought to prosecute all suspect border crossers for illegal entry. Children couldn’t travel with their parents to criminal detention facilities, so they were reclassified as “unaccompanied” and transferred to the custody of the Health and Human Services Department. Thousands of families were split apart from April until June, only to see Trump reverse the policy and a federal judge order families reunited.
The administration also has sought to keep asylum-seeking migrants in Mexico for longer periods of time.
Using a practice known as “metering,” border officials have forced families to wait in Mexico, only accepting a certain number of asylum applicants at ports of entry each day.
A September report by the DHS inspector general’s office found evidence that forcing migrants to wait at ports actually encouraged more people to cross illegally. The report cited a Border Patrol supervisor and accounts of several migrants who said they attempted to enter illegally after being turned away at a port.
“They’re afraid of waiting in Mexico until they can get in at the port,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “They’re balancing that against their desire to do it legally. And I definitely think its emboldening the smugglers to go to those who are waiting.”
McAleenan acknowledged during a December Senate committee hearing that metering could lead to an increase in the number of people attempting to cross the border illegally, saying it’s “certainly a concern.”
Still, the Trump administration has moved forward with a separate policy to keep asylum seekers in Mexico for extended periods of time.
The administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy — announced in late December and now implemented in several areas along the border — forces certain non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico during the duration of an asylum case.
At the same time, the administration has moved slowly to disperse funding to address root causes of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
POLITICO reported this week that hundreds of millions in aid dollars remain stalled at the White House budget office as aides wonder how seriously to take Trump’s threats to cut the funding.
“Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action,“ Trump tweeted Thursday. “Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!“
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Trump’s unwise threat to “close” the Southern Border could turn a humanitarian situation into a self-created international crisis. And, Trump continues to be the “best friend” of smugglers, cartels, and gangs.
There is a clear and present threat to our national security. It’s not desperate refugees (mostly women, children, and families) seeking to exercise their legal rights; unfortunately, it’s our President.
Trump’s threats are backfiring and bringing more desperate migrants to the border
Families overwhelm facilities and end up behind concertina wire under a bridge in El Paso.
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EL PASO, Texas — Hundreds of migrants have spent days sleeping outside under the bridge connecting El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, wrapped in foil blankets to keep them warm during 50-degree nights. Some say they’ve been there up to five days, despite claims by immigration officials that they are being released in a day or two.
This is the new crisis at the border, one that the Trump administration seems eager to expose with immigration officials uncharacteristically open to allowing TV crews film the makeshift shelter.
On Friday, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke showed up and asked border agents if the purpose if the shelter itself is a stunt. “Are we trying to send the message by having people in the open air, behind concertina wire and barbed wire and fencing with reporters allowed to go up and transmit these images,” he told VICE News. “It invites the question: are we trying to send a message by the way that we’re warehousing people at their most desperate moment?”
The president has championed hard-line immigration policies under the theory that they will deter Central American migrants from coming to the U.S. But instead of deterring migrants, Trump’s tough rhetoric may be doing the opposite: triggering a rush to the border by fueling a sense of “now or never” that has contributed to the highest number of undocumented migrants entering the U.S. in more than a decade.
“The more attention Central American migration gets, the more people start to panic and feel the door to the U.S. is going to close, and they should go now while they still have the chance,” said Stephanie Leutert, director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin.
The cycle is in overdrive.
More than 100,000 undocumented migrants are expected to cross the Southern border this month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, driven by an unprecedented number of parents coming with their children. Overwhelmed, the agency has diverted 750 agents from the major points of entry to the border itself to help with the surge, while acknowledging that the immigration system is at a “breaking point.”
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirjsten Nielsen sent a letter to Congress asking for more funding for detention facilities along the border. She also said she would seek legislation that would make it easier to deport unaccompanied minors back to their home country and “allow” Central American migrants to apply for asylum in the U.S. from their home country.
On Friday, President Trump threatened on Twitter to “close the Southern Border” next week if Mexico “doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States.”
Even assuming Trump could “close the Southern Border” — billions of dollars of cross-border trade are at stake — and any attempt would likely end up in the courts and drag on for months. Meanwhile, Trump may be inadvertently spurring yet another mass wave of migrants, and in particular families.
Catch and release
Already, the initial wave of asylum seekers has snowballed. Because so many migrant families are arriving to the border at once, there is not enough space in detention facilities to hold them. As a result, most spend a few days in detention and are released. They are given a notice to appear at a future court hearing, but in the meantime they can start working and enroll their kids in school.
From their new homes around the U.S., these asylum seekers are relaying the news to friends back home: reaching the U.S. wasn’t so hard — especially if you come with kids, Leutert said.
“The larger the numbers the easier it feels”
“The larger the numbers the easier it feels. Because when you arrive in a large group of people you are processed very quickly. It’s become a selling point for smugglers. That if you show up with your whole family, you will be held for a couple of days and released to start your life.”
The message is being heard across Central America, including El Salvador where it reached the ears of Julio Hernández Ausencio, a farmer who was struggling to survive after a drought devastated his crops and made it impossible to support his family.
“I knew if I came alone they wouldn’t give me the opportunity to stay in the United States. But if they saw me enter with my little girl, they would give us the chance to start a new life,” said Hernandez.
Hernandez paid $7,000 for a smuggler to take him and his 11-year-old daughter to the U.S. He said it usually costs $7,500 per person, but because they wanted to turn themselves in to U.S. immigration officials instead of sneaking across the border they got a better price.
As officials struggle to cope with the crush of asylum seekers, Customs and Border Protection began this week releasing asylum-seekers instead of turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — returning to a practice Trump derisively called “catch and release” when he was a candidate and promised to end. Also, many asylum seekers are being released without ankle bracelets to monitor their whereabouts because there simply aren’t enough.
How crackdowns help smugglers
Andrew Selee, director of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. said that at every turn Trump’s crackdown on migrants has turned into a selling point to smugglers, starting with the now-abandoned family separation policy.
“It created a new cycle of migration around the fact that the U.S. government could not separate families and children. The smugglers take news that people have already heard and sell it as truth,” he said.
Trump’s fixation on the migrant caravan in the fall may also play a role in the current spike of asylum seekers. The caravan was tiny compared to the overall number of migrants entering the U.S. Around 6,000 Central Americans travelled with the caravan; this week, federal agents apprehended 4,000 migrants crossing the border on a single day.
But the attention that Trump gave the caravan – including sending troops to the U.S. border to stop it – elevated its profile and highlighted a new way for Central Americans to reach the U.S. without paying smugglers.
Selee thinks smugglers responded by cutting prices and finding new ways of delivering families to the border, including via express buses that take a week or less. That’s contributed to the large groups of 100 or more migrants that have been turning themselves over to Border Patrol agents.
“Among some people in Central America there is this sense that if they are going to migrate, they better do it now because at some point the U.S. government will really succeed in stopping them,” Selee said.
But Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University who studies human smuggling and migration, disputed the idea that Trump’s policies have backfired. She said Trump’s goal is getting a wall built along the border – whether or not the wall stops Central American migrants.
“These new caravans have helped Trump make a point and support the further militarization at the border,” she said. As for the spike in migrants seeking asylum: “This is perfect for Trump. It’s helping him get his wall built. That’s the bottom line.”
It’s all about “the wall,” a wasteful project with little real law enforcement value but lots of White Nationalist hate symbolism. Meanwhile, human lives and the humane values that were supposed to be embodied in our refugee and asylum laws are being trashed.
The shame is that with a real President and a better Administration the time, money, and effort being wasted on the wall and “built to fail” enforcement gimmicks could be re-channeled into actually addressing the problems driving forced migration, improving the asylum adjudication system, and harnessing they many positives that occur when forced migrants are treated fairly, respectfully, and welcomed into receiving countries.
CBP COMMISSIONER McAleenan Is At It Again — Blaming Victims & The Smugglers He Empowers For His Own Incompetence & Lack Of Courage To Stand Up For Human Rights, The Real Rule Of Law, & Legitimate Law Enforcement — Don’t Let Him Get Away with His Latest False Narrative!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
CBP Commissioner McAleenan is at it again: declaring a self-created “border emergency” and blaming smugglers (whom he aided and empowered with “designed to fail” policies) and lax asylum laws for the problem.
No mention of wasting time on walls and barbed wire, zero tolerance, child separation, mindless detention, Migrant Protection Protocols, bogus “Regional Compacts” that don’t address the problems, illegal regulations, overloading the courts, wrong credible fear advice, failing to deal with root causes, eliminating the Central American Refugee program, slow walking asylum applications, overloading the Immigration Courts with cases that never should have been brought, deporting gang members without considering the consequences, failing to work cooperatively with attorneys and NGOS, failing to focus on conditions in the Northern Triangle, intentional misinterpretation and bias in asylum adjudication, bogus statistics, false narratives about crime, or any of the other many failed Administration “enforcement only” policies that created this perfectly foreseeable “crisis.” While it is a legitimate humanitarian tragedy, it is not a “law enforcement crisis.”
Apparently, the only solution according to McAleenan is for Congress to eliminate rights of asylum seekers and kids so that the Border Patrol can just arrest them and toss them back across the border without any process at all. (No mention, of course, of how that might affect folks turning themselves in — why wouldn’t smugglers just do a “quick reset” and smuggle everyone to the interior? Too deep a thought for the Commish, apparently).
Problem is that in the absence of knowledge and an understandable “counter-message and solutions” McAleenan’s idiotic restrictionist views are getting traction with the press. Indeed, they were reflected in Nielsen’s equally idiotic and dishonest request to Congress for permission to abuse and threaten the lives of the most vulnerable of the vulnerable — children.
Seems like it would be prudent for some group with expertise and credibility to push back against this latest offensive. And, it would also be critical to get folks to the House Dems with the information and facts they need to resist what is sure to be a new offensive by the Administration and GOP for harsh laws basically eliminating asylum status, claiming quite falsely that it’s the only way to secure the border. Or perhaps, the declaration of a “New Border Emergency” suspending asylum laws and the Fifth Amendment.
Indeed, the best way of securing the border would be the immediate removal of Trump and the rest of the “malicious incompetents” who make up his Kakistocracy. But, that’s not going to happen any time too soon.
Trump has failed yet again. That means that his victims and the “usual suspects” — asylum applicants, kids, women, lawyers, NGOs, reporters, Dems — are going to have to pay “big time” for his latest failure. Might as well get ahead of the curve.
WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will ask Congress for the authority to deport unaccompanied migrant children more quickly, to hold families seeking asylum in detention until their cases are decided and to allow immigrants to apply for asylum from their home countries, according to a copy of the request obtained by NBC News.
In a letter to Congress, Nielsen said she will be seeking a legislative proposal in the coming days to address what she called the “root causes of the emergency” that has led to a spike in border crossingsin recent weeks. The letter has not yet been sent.
The legislative proposal would have to clear the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, which is likely to respond with strong opposition.
Since February, Customs and Border Protection has seen a jump in the number of undocumented immigrants attempting to cross the border each day.
Daily border crossings have recently hit a 13-year high, leading immigration agents to release immigrants from their custody rather than transferring them to prolonged detention. The influx has left many charities in the U.S. and Mexico scrambling to provide care and has left many asylum seekers waiting in dangerous areas without shelter on the southern side of the border.
Under current law, children who enter from non-contiguous countries, which effectively means children from Central America, are transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which works to reunite them with a relative or sponsor in the United States. And under a federal court agreement, immigrant families with children cannot be detained longer than 20 days. The Trump administration has previously tried to reverse the court decision through executive action, but has so far been unsuccessful.
In the letter, Nielsen makes the case that the law’s limitations on DHS’s ability to deport migrant children is serving as “another dangerous ‘pull’ factor.”
“The result is that hundreds of Central American children come into our custody each day, await transfer to (Health and Human Services) care, and, ultimately are placed with a sponsor in the United States,” Nielsen said in the letter, which is expected to be sent to members of Congress on Thursday night.
The letter also indicates that the Trump administration will be requesting emergency funds to deal with the migrant flow, including what Nielsen predicts to be thousands of shelter beds for unaccompanied migrant children.
Kirstjen Nielsen, from center, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, tours the border area with San Diego Section Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott at Borderfield State Park along the United States-Mexico Border fence in San Ysidro, California on Nov. 20, 2018.Sandy Huffaker / AFP – Getty Images file
HHS, the agency responsible for sheltering children who arrive at the border without a parent, “is still approaching its maximum capacity and will very likely require thousands of additional beds in the coming weeks and months,” the letter said.
Nielsen said in the letter that the exact dollar amount of the request is still being worked out with the Office of Management and Budget, but a senior administration official told NBC News the request is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The funding would also cover more medical teams and vehicles to transport immigrants, following the deaths of immigrants in the custody of CBP agents who were not able to provide care in time.
Julia Ainsley
Julia Ainsley is a national security reporter for NBC News.
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Every day demonstrates the complete “malicious incompetence” of the Trump Kakistocracy! Clearly DHS needs (but won’t get) competent management at all levels that knows how to deal with humanitarian situations in some way other than rolling out more gimmicks and bogus requests in an attempt to turn a refugee situation into a fake law enforcement crisis.
There is no real law enforcement crisis with refugees turning themselves in to assert their legal rights under our laws. Indeed, a more competent Administration with all this advance notice could have channeled most folks to designated ports of entry where they should have been guaranteed prompt, fair, and humane processing. Instead they mindlessly wasted time and money on unneeded troops, dumb walls, and illegal gimmicks that haven’t and won’t “deter” forced migrants (but do encourage, empower, and enrich smugglers).
Why not rehire retired Asylum Officers, Refugee Officers, and other retired personal at the USCIS Office of International Operations? Why not use VOLAGS involved in overseas refugee processing who now under Trump’s destruction of refugee programs have nothing to do overseas? Why not ask for processing help from the UNHCR? Why not use some of the bloated DHS enforcement and detention budgets to hire temporary Asylum Officers from the private sector? Why not offer grants to Catholic Conference, LIRS, HIAS and other experienced refugee resettlement agencies to aid in temporary placement of those who pass credible fear? Why not beef up accreditation programs for non-attorney representatives working for charitable organization to meet representation needs? Why not simply recognize gender-based persecution as a subset of “particular social group” rather than forcing slow and intensive re-litigation of gender-based issues in ever case with inconsistent results and no guidance for parties or adjudicators.
There are lots of things a competent Administration dedicated to fairly administering refugee and asylum laws could do to handle this humanitarian situation. But, that won’t happen without “regime change” and removal of the Kakistocracy.
Indeed, the most likely outcome of the Trump Admonistration’s “malicious incompetence” will be complete loss of faith in our legal system. Folks will do what they have to do to save their lives — even if it means abandoning a system that has betrayed Due Process and fundamental fairness.
Then, we finally will have a Trump-caused “law enforcement crisis.” While the presence of more refugees in the U.S. presents more of an opportunity than a security problem, the disappearance of our Constitutional protections and intentional destruction of our legal system will be a lasting problem for all of us.
Wendy Fry reports in the LA Times/San Diego Times-Union:
SAN DIEGO — Three months into the Department of Homeland Security’s program that requires asylum-seeking migrants to wait in Mexico until their U.S. immigration hearings, observers said Friday that the policy may actually be encouraging illegal border crossings.
Last week, migrants rushed the border at least four times at Playas de Tijuana, many of them saying they were motivated by not wanting to wait in Mexico.
A Customs and Border Protection official said migrants who cross the border illegally are not being returned to Mexico while they seek asylum. Instead, they are taken into custody, where they eventually get to wait in the United States, sometimes up to three or four years until their asylum hearings before an American immigration judge.
“Why would I spend three years here in Tijuana when I could be in the United States?” asked Jeydi Fuentes Lopez Montes, a 29-year-old mother from Honduras traveling with a 1-year-old child. “I know there is work here in Tijuana, but isn’t the work better over there?”
Fuentes said she went to Tijuana planning to wait in line to ask for asylum, but she said that when she learned the list to get an initial appointment with U.S. officials could take several months, she decided to try to find another way into the U.S.
Legal experts say a judge is not allowed to deny a person’s asylum request based solely on whether he or she entered the country legally or illegally.
Samuel Rodriguez Guzman, from El Salvador, arrived in Tijuana this month. He said he went to the beach Thursday after hearing about more people successfully entering the U.S. illegally, and seeing on the news people getting through the border infrastructure at Playas.
“I’m trying whatever way I can to immigrate to the United States,” Rodriguez said. “I had problems with the gangs in my country and my father did, too. They want to kill us. When we get there to the United States, they have to respect our human rights to ask for asylum, right?”
Alan Bersin, the former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said there is no coordinated system between the Mexican government and the U.S. to accept large numbers of migrants returned to Tijuana.
So far, fewer than 300 people have been returned to Mexico under the program.
“It’s an incompetent program,” said Bersin, adding that people who cross illegally should be returned to Mexico in the same numbers as those who wait for months in line for their turn to cross legally.
“This policy has a chance of succeeding as a deterrent,” he said. “But [Mexican President Andres Manuel] Lopez Obrador is trying to avoid a fight with Trump so he says yes to everything but does nothing.”
This month, migrants have been climbing through holes in border fencing at Playas or climbing over the 15-foot-high fence.
On March 13, some people slipped through a hole in the border fencing near the beach. One of the men, who was seen in a video running down the beach carrying a small child while a border agent chased him, provided updates via WhatsApp to several people in his group and some witnesses. He said he was not apprehended and made it to Los Angeles.
A group of about 60 people who crossed on March 14 included men, women and children, most of whom said they were from Honduras. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ralph DeSio said 52 people from that group were arrested.
Border officials also arrested 23 people from Honduras and one from Guatemala on Tuesday after they scaled the fence near the beach.
Then Thursday, activity at the border intensified as border agents and migrants clashed.
Two migrants and several witnesses said agents shot pepper spray across the fence and into their eyes. During the incident, one man climbed the fence and dropped into the U.S. before he was detained by border agents.
DeSio said Customs and Border Protection is averaging 167 arrests a day in the San Diego County area of responsibility, which stretches east to past Jacumba.
“Every arrest in San Diego Sector is investigated. Every breach in San Diego County is a concern whether it’s near Imperial Beach or in Jacumba,” DeSio said in a written statement. “Compromises in our fence are common due to our aging infrastructure. Efforts are made to repair breaches or compromises in a timely manner.”
On Friday, another hole big enough for people to climb through was visible at the base of the border fence at Playas.
“Really, we’re tired of fighting because we just want to cross and ask for asylum…. We’re not rude. We are allowed to come here and ask for asylum,” said Jose Reinera, a Honduran migrant who climbed up on top of the fence at Las Playas on Thursday.
Reinera said he turned back and climbed back down on the Mexican side of the border when he realized his wife and children would not be able to make the climb.
Fry writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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Up until now, the Administration has been fortunate that their cruel, sometimes illegal, and always incompetent policies haven’t made things even worse.
Fact is, most individuals applying for asylum still turn themselves in either at legal ports of entry or shortly after crossing the border to apply for asylum. They can be logged in, fingerprinted, screened for criminal records and credible fear. Those who can’t demonstrate credible fear can be expeditiously returned.
Those who pass, become part of the legal system. If given an opportunity to understand the asylum system, obtain legal a representation (we know that represented asylum applicants succeed at a rate of 4X to 17X those who are forced to proceed without representation) and fairly present their cases, most will show up in Immigration Court. Many of those who are represented and treated fairly will qualify for asylum, withholding of removal, or relief under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”), even in today’s administrative system which has been intentionally and unfairly skewed against them and their claims.
Those who don’t qualify will be subject to removal, although many will nevertheless face very real and legitimate harm (not fitting within our legalistic and often arcane asylum system) that a more prudent and humane Administration might use to fashion some type of temporary or long-term respite from removal.
But, if the Administration succeeds in it’s mindless plan to destroy the legal asylum and Immigration Court systems, forced migrants, who come of necessity not choice, will simply stop using it. With the help of smugglers, and paying higher prices and taking more deadly risks, many will simply be smuggled into the interior of our country. There, they will lose themselves in our huge country with a diverse population and an insatiable need for labor at all levels.
No screening, no registration, no taxes, etc. — some will undoubtedly be caught and removed. But the vast majority will remain “in the underground” until 1) we legalize them; 2) they decide that conditions have changed so it is their best interests to return to their native lands, or 3) they eventually get old and die. Not to mention that by forcing them into the “immigration black market” we deprive them of their human dignity and a chance to contribute their full potential to our country, while we lose the many benefits of having them do so.
Sounds like a bad system. But, it’s the type of mindless, White Nationalist, “lose, lose, lose” restrictionism that this Administration loves to feed to its “political base.” A bigger “immigration underground” means more folks to hate, loathe, blame, and run against.
