"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
Category: US Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”)
Description Immigrants & Refugees Welcome – Banner on Facade – Pilsen – Chicago – Illinois – USA Date Taken on 18 February 2017, 10:55 Source Immigrants & Refugees Welcome – Banner on Facade – Pilsen – Chicago – Illinois – USA Author Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada Creative Commons License
Migrants are cut from the same cloth as the rest of us
One of the words I have not heard to describe migrants — but is a more accurate than the negative portrayals — is “families.”
By Letters to the Editor Nov 30, 2023, 5:11pm EST
With the holidays upon us, there will undoubtedly be plenty of work parties, shopping sprees with kids in tow and the ubiquitous family gatherings. The coming months will also challenge us to wear layers of clothes and wrap ourselves and our loved ones in blanket-like coats. I am fortunate to have plenty of gloves, scarves, coats and boots.
Others are less fortunate. The unfortunate ones include the “new arrivals,” most of whom have never experienced a Chicago winter. Since the migrants’ arrival, critics have taken to the airwaves offering their comments about the tents, buses, use of police stations, encroachment on city streets, and, what they believe is the destruction of the city’s social and economic fabric. Descriptions of migrants are also disconcerting: liars, troublemakers, thieves, wayward parents using their kids to manipulate the immigration system and outsiders trying to live off the municipal dough.
One of the words I have not heard but is a more accurate depiction of the new arrivals is families. The buses full of people reflect a multi-generational exit from countries steeped in turmoil and unrest: infants, children, parents, or other caretakers. Describing those who arrive as families could lead us to consider them fully human, more like us. Instead, we use words that create a chasm that places the migrants at an arm’s distance from us, society and our city.
Throughout the next month, love, joy, harmony and peace will be words we will likely hear daily in songs, written in holiday cards and celebrated in plays and movies that bring friends and families together. Some will celebrate the season by remembering the birth of a unique child. Warned to flee to ensure the safety of his wife and newborn child, the family patriarch left for other lands. Wouldn’t it be remarkable if we could see the face of this child in the faces of the children we see coming here? Perhaps we can take the first step by using words that remove the stigma and distance between us and the “new arrivals.” The words? Families, of course.
Esther Nieves, Wicker Park
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Yup, contrary to the absolute, hateful, BS from Trump, Johnson, and the rest of the MAGA right, and the disgraceful indifference of too many Dems, most migrants want: 1) security, 2) opportunity, and 3) a better future, particularly for family. That’s what I found over more than 13 years on the trial bench at the Immigration Court. Basically, what all of us want from life!
Migrants deserve fair, humane, dignified treatment from the U.S. and our legal system, regardless of whether they ultimately are able to meet the legal criteria to remain!
As predicted by experts from the “git go,” AG Merrick Garland’s indolent, half-baked approach to his most important responsibility — bringing justice and functionality to his Immigration Courts, has been a disastrous failure endangering our entire democracy! PHOTO: Thomas Hawk Creative Commons Amateur Night
Here’s the latest report from TRAC documenting how former Federal Judge Merrick Garland’s failure to fulfill his most important duty — reforming and fixing the U.S. Immigration Courts, has built backlog at record paces and undermined our democracy:
Here’s the “action plan” that’s been publicly available since July 2023 — “Rethinking The U.S. Immigration Court System” — yet largely, and disastrously ignored by Garland, his lieutenants, and the Biden Administration:
The U.S. immigration courts—and the nation’s immigration enforcement system they support—face
an unprecedented crisis. With a backlog of almost 2 million cases, it often takes years to decide cases. Moreover, the recent growth in the caseload is daunting. In fiscal year (FY) 2022, immigration courts received approximately 708,000 new cases, which is 160,000 more than in any previous year. Such numbers, coupled with the courts’ resource constraints and decision-making processes, ensure that the court system will continue to lose ground.
For asylum cases, which now make up 40 percent
of the caseload, the breakdown is even more dire. Noncitizens wait an average of four years for a hearing on their asylum claims to be scheduled,
and longer for a final decision. Those eligible for protection are thus deprived of receiving it in a timely manner, while those denied asylum are unlikely
to be returned to their countries of origin, having
established family and community ties in the United
States during the intervening years. The combination
of years-long backlogs and unlikely returns lies at the
heart of our broken asylum system. That brokenness contributes to the pull factors driving today’s migration to the U.S.-Mexico border, thereby undermining the integrity of the asylum and immigration adjudicative systems, and immigration enforcement overall.
Many of the factors contributing to the dramatic rise in the courts’ caseload have deep and wide-reaching roots, from long-standing operational challenges in administering the courts to new crises in the Americas that have intensified both humanitarian protection needs and other migration pressures. The scale of these twin challenges has made it more urgent than ever to address them together. In the aftermath of lifting the pandemic-era border expulsion policy known as Title 42 in May 2023, the Biden administration is implementing wide-ranging new border policies and strategies that establish incentives and disincentives linking how migrants enter the United States with their access to the asylum system. But timely, fair decisions are also central to the success of this new regime.
While many other studies have outlined wholesale changes in the immigration court system that only Congress can enact, such legislative action seems unlikely, at least in the near term. Thus, this report calls
for changes that can be made by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency within the Department of Justice (DOJ) that houses the immigration courts, as it is presently organized. Because the immigration courts are administrative bodies, the executive branch has considerable latitude in determining their policies and procedures. The changes laid out in this report hold great potential to improve the courts’ performance and, in turn, enhance the effectiveness of the U.S. immigration system more broadly.
Some steps in this direction are already being taken. The Biden administration has streamlined certain important policies and procedures at EOIR. Nonetheless, these courts and the Board of Immigration Appeals
2 million
cases in the backlog
About 650
immigration judges nationwide
Less than 500
cases completed per judge in most recent years
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AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM
(BIA), which reviews appeals from immigration court decisions, fall short of meeting the hallmarks of a well- functioning adjudicatory system: that decisions be accurate, efficiently made, consistent across both judges and jurisdictions, and accepted as fair by the public and the parties in the case.
Related issues of caseload quantity and decision quality have given rise to the difficulties EOIR is confronting. Under the Trump administration, the reopening of thousands of administratively closed cases and increased interior enforcement led to rising court caseloads. And since 2016, increased border crossings have accounted for growing numbers of new cases, many of them involving asylum claims.
Cases are also taking longer to complete. While pandemic-related restrictions played a role in this slowdown, case completion rates had in fact already been declining. In FY 2009, each immigration judge completed about 1,000 cases per year. By FY 2021, the completion rate had decreased to slightly more than 200 cases per year, even as the number of immigration judges grew. Thus, more judges alone are not the answer. Slow hiring, high turnover, and a lack of support staff have resulted in overwhelmed judges whose productivity has decreased as the backlog has grown.
Concerns about the quality of decision-making by immigration courts and the BIA have existed for decades. More than one in five immigration court decisions were appealed to the BIA in FY 2020, and appeals of BIA decisions have inundated the federal courts. Federal court opinions have pointed to errors of statutory interpretation and faulty reasoning when overturning decisions. Policy changes at
the BIA, ever-changing docket priorities from one
administration to the next, and some recent Supreme
Court directives have contributed to the diminished
adjudicative quality. Wide variances in case outcomes among immigration judges at the same court and across different courts around the country further point to quality concerns; for example, the rate at which individual immigration judges denied asylum claims ranged from 1 to 100 percent in FY 2017–22.
EOIR has increasingly turned to technology to manage its dockets, primarily through video-conferencing court proceedings. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its use of internet-based hearings. Four important, yet at times competing, considerations are central when evaluating how technology—and particularly video-conferencing tools—are used in immigration proceedings: efficiency, the impact of technical difficulties, security issues, and concerns about due process.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorneys who prosecute removal cases also play an important role in the court system. Their use of prosecutorial discretion, along with judges’ docket management tools, help shape which cases flow through the system, and how.
Legal defense representation—or the lack of it—is a critical issue plaguing the immigration court system. Noncitizens in immigration proceedings, which are civil in nature, are not entitled to free legal counsel, as
The rate at which asylum claims are denied varies widely, from
1% with one judge to
100%
with another in FY 2017-22
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AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM
defendants in criminal proceedings are. But they can face life-changing, and sometimes life-threatening, circumstances when subject to an order of removal from the United States. Studies have repeatedly found that representation in immigration proceedings improves due process and fair outcomes for noncitizens. It also improves efficiency, as represented noncitizens move more quickly through immigration court. Lawyers, accredited representatives, immigration help desks, and legal orientation programs aid some noncitizens through this process. But many more move through complex proceedings pro se (i.e., unrepresented).
Federal funding for representation of noncitizens in removal proceedings is effectively barred. Public funding at the state and local levels has increased the availability of representation for some noncitizens. A large share of representation is provided by nonprofit legal services organizations and pro bono law firm resources. Nonetheless, representation is fragmented and insufficient, given the scale of need.
One element of this system that has seen notable signs of change in recent years has been how border management feeds into the courts’ caseload. The Biden administration began implementing a new
asylum processing rule at the southwest border in June 2022 that aims to ease the growing pressures on immigration courts.1 The rule authorizes asylum officers, who are part of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to make the final decision in asylum cases instead of immigration judges. Asylum seekers whose claims are denied by an asylum officer can still appeal the decision, but on an expedited timeline. As such, the rule holds the potential to reduce the growth of the immigration court backlog and shorten adjudication times to months instead of years.
Since lifting the Title 42 expulsion policy, the Biden administration has paused implementation of the asylum rule due to competing demands for asylum officer resources. But returning to the rule, and strengthening EOIR’s functioning overall, will be important for managing the flow of cases into the immigration courts and the courts’ ability to keep pace with them. Doing so depends on the court system using technology better, more strategically exercising discretion in removal proceedings, and increasing access to legal representation so that courts deliver decisions that are both timely and fair.
This report’s analysis of the issues facing the nation’s immigration courts and its recommendations for addressing them reflect research and conversations with a diverse group of stakeholders—legal service providers, immigration lawyers and advocates, current and former immigration judges, BIA members and administrators, academics, and other experts who have administered, practiced before, and studied the immigration court system. The report urges EOIR and DHS, in its role as the agency whose decisions and referrals come before EOIR, to work together to:
Strengthen the immigration court system’s management and efficiency
► Schedule new cases on a “last-in, first-decided” basis. Such a reset to the system, which has proven successful in the past, could bring processing times on new cases down to months, rather than years.
1 This rule draws in part on proposals made in an earlier Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report: Doris Meissner, Faye Hipsman, and T. Alexander Aleinikoff, The U.S. Asylum System in Crisis: Charting a Way Forward (Washington, DC: MPI, 2018).
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AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM
Because this disadvantages cases that have already been waiting for a long time, it should be treated as a temporary, emergency measure alongside policy and procedural reforms that protect fairness and promote efficiency more broadly. Shifting resources back to adjudicating older cases, as timeliness is established with incoming cases, is essential for shrinking the growth and size of the backlog, which should be among the courts’ highest priorities.
► Terminate cases that do not meet the administration’s prosecutorial guidelines, which focus priorities on felons, security threats, and recent entrants. One approach to this would be to task ICE attorneys with triaging backlog cases to determine which could be fast-tracked for grants of relief or for removal. Such efforts would allow the courts and ICE attorneys to focus on more serious cases, especially those involving criminal charges.
► Centralize case referrals from DHS. Instead of the current practice of having all three DHS immigration agencies (ICE, USCIS, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection) refer cases separately to EOIR, ICE attorneys should initiate all cases. As de facto prosecutors, they are best positioned to determine the legal sufficiency and priority for moving cases the government has an interest in pursuing.
► Establish two tiers of immigration judges—magistrate and merits judges—modeled on existing state and federal court systems where judges and staff are assigned to different roles or dockets so that cases move through the adjudication system efficiently and expeditiously.
► Expand the use of specialized dockets or courts that handle cases involving specific groups of noncitizens or require certain subject matter expertise, such as juveniles, families, reviews of credible fear determinations, cancellation of removal, adjustment of status, and voluntary departure.Restart the asylum officer rule and provide the support needed to implement it
► Establish a dedicated docket for the asylum officer rule’s streamlined appeal proceedings. As the most far-reaching reform the Biden administration has introduced for strengthening management of the asylum and immigration court systems, implementing the rule effectively is key to reducing the pace of caseload growth in the court system and discouraging weak claims.
Upgrade how the courts use technology
► Ensure that technology is used to make immigration courts fairer for everyone involved, such as by holding hearings remotely when parties would be unable to attend an in-person hearing. Special attention should be paid to how the use of technology can affect detained noncitizens and vulnerable populations such as children.
Increase access to legal representation
► Establish a new unit within EOIR devoted to coordinating the agency’s efforts to expand representation. The unit should collaborate with nongovernmental stakeholders to make representation of detained noncitizens a priority and to allow partially accredited representatives— some of whom may be non-lawyers—to appear in immigration court for limited functions.
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AT THE BREAKING POINT: RETHINKING THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT SYSTEM
► Develop new and innovative ways to scale up representation by coordinating with lawyers who take responsibility for specific aspects of cases or non-lawyers who are specially trained and supervised
to do so. Legal service providers should build a multi-stage, collaborative online system that enables representation by lawyers or non-lawyers in specific stages of a case for which they have the requisite expertise (e.g., filing forms, attending bond or master calendar hearings, or seeking relief ). This approach requires creating e-files for cases, with files moving from one representative or provider to another as cases progress, resulting in both expert representation at each stage and greater efficiency in moving cases forward overall.
► Encourage efforts by state and local governments to provide and/or increase funding to support representation, especially given current restrictions on federal funding of representation in most removal cases.
Despite efforts by successive administrations to bring
the immigration court system’s unwieldy caseload
under control and to improve the quality of its
decision-making, the courts remain mired in crisis.
And while many of the most pressing problems have
roots that stretch back decades, they have in recent
years reached a breaking point. The measures
proposed in this report hold the potential to reduce
case volumes, increase the pace of decision-making,
and improve the quality of adjudications. They would
also mitigate migration pull factors that result from
years-long waits for decisions. The deeply interconnected nature of the nation’s immigration court system and its immigration enforcement and asylum systems mean that such efforts to modernize and fully resource the courts are critical to the health of the U.S. immigration system overall.
The deeply interconnected nature of the nation’s immigration court system and its immigration enforcement
and asylum systems mean that such efforts to modernize and fully resource the courts are critical to the health of the U.S. immigration system overall.
BOX 1
About the Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Project
This report is part of a multiyear Migration Policy Institute (MPI) project, Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy. At a time when U.S. immigration realities are changing rapidly, this initiative has been generating a big- picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in America’s future. It provides research, analysis, and policy ideas and proposals—both administrative and legislative—that reflect these new realities and needs for immigration to better align with U.S. national interests.
The research, analyses, and convenings conducted for MPI’s Rethinking initiative address critical immigration issues, which include economic competitiveness, national security, and changing demographic trends, as well as issues of immigration enforcement and administering the nation’s immigration system.
To learn more about the project and read other reports and policy briefs generated by the Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy initiative, see bit.ly/RethinkingImmigration.
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Read the full report at the link.
Not the first time I’ve said this, but it’s time for “Amateur Night @ The Bijou” (“A/K/A Merrick Garland’s failed EOIR”) to end! Reassign the EOIR senior management folks who have demonstrated “beyond any reasonable doubt” their inability to provide dynamic, due process with efficiency management and visiononary leadership and to solve pressing problems. (This includes the inability to stand up and “just say no” to bonehead “gimmicks” like Garland’s due-process-denying, quality diminishing, backlog-building, “expedited dockets”).
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the anti-asylum, anti-human rights, anti-reality charade now playing out in Congress is driven in large part by Garland’s three-year failure to do his job by getting functionality and due process focused leadership into EOIR.
Bring in a competent, expert executive team, hand them the MPI Plan, and empower them to move whatever “bureaucratic mountains” need to be moved to get results, including, but not limited to, major personnel changes at the BIA and in Immigration Courts and taking a “hard line” with counterproductive performance by DHS (actually “just a party” before the Immigration Courts, NOT “their bosses!”)
Bring in these experts:
Judge (Retired) Dana Leigh Marks
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr
Dean Kevin Johnson
Michelle Mendez (NIPNLG)
Professor Michele Pistone
Jason “The Asylumist” Dzubow
Wendy Young (KIND)
Task this “Magnificent Seven” — folks with centuries of practical expertise and creative ideas for actually solving humanitarian problems (rather than making them worse, as per the ongoing travesty on the Hill) — with turning around the EOIR disaster; support and empower them to achieve results and to reject politicized bureaucratic meddling from DOJ and elsewhere! Make the long-unfilled “promise of INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca” — a legitimate, properly generous, practical, efficient asylum and refugee adjudication system that complies with international and domestic law and simple human decency — a reality!
This is about rebuilding America’s most important and consequential court system, NOT running an “government agency!”
This is also the “demand” that Congressional Dems SHOULD be making of the Biden Administration, instead of engaging in disgraceful (non) “bargaining” with GOP nativists that seek an end to asylum and an increase to human suffering and ensure continuing humanitarian disaster at our borders!
Melissa Del Bosque Border Reporter PHOTO: Melissadelbosque.comCaitlyn Yates Fellow Strauss Center for International Law & Security PHOTO: Strauss Center
This podcast from Melissa Del Bosque of The Border Chronicle and Caitlyn Yates, who actually works with migrants in the Darien Gap, gives real life perspective on the humanitarian crisis and all the reasons why more cruelty, punishment, and deadly deterrence isn’t going to solve the flow of forced migrants. But, unhappily, policy makers aren’t interested in the voices of those who actually have experience with forced migrants, nor are they interested in learning from the forced migrants themselves — a logical — if constantly ignored — starting point for making sound policy decisions!
Migration and human rights experts have excelled in court and academia. Yet, they have been consigned to wander the political wilderness, their wisdom, expertise, and real world solutions are routinely ignored or mindlessly rejected by both political parties. Colmar – Unterlinden Museum – The Isenheim Altarpiece 1512-16 by Matthias Grünewald (ca 1470-1528) – Visit of Saint Anthony the Great to Saint Paul the Hermit in the Wilderness Creative Commons
Four “takeaways” on what a consensus on migration should be:
Human migration is real;
Forced migration is largely beyond the unilateral control of any one nation;
Deterrence alone won’t stop migration;
More legal pathways for migration are necessary.
We’re a long way from that needed consensus right now!
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden is taking a more active role in Senate negotiations about changes to the immigration system that Republicans are demanding in exchange for providing money to Ukraine in its fight against Russia and Israel for the war with Hamas.
The Democratic president has said he is willing to make “significant compromises on the border” as Republicans block the wartime aid in Congress. The White House is expected to get more involved in talks this week as the impasse over changes to border policy has deepened and the money remaining for Ukraine has dwindled.
Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who is leading the negotiations, pointed to the surge of people entering the U.S. from Mexico and said “it is literally spiraling out of control.”
But many immigration advocates, including some Democrats, say some of the changes being proposed would gut protections for people who desperately need help and would not really ease the chaos at the border.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democratic bargainer, said the White House would take a more active role in the talks. But he also panned Republican policy demands so far as “unreasonable.”
. . . .
Critics say the problem is that most people do not end up getting asylum when their case finally makes it to immigration court. But they say migrants know that if they claim asylum, they essentially will be allowed to stay in America for years.
“People aren’t necessarily coming to apply for asylum as much to access that asylum adjudication process,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration court judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration in the U.S.
Some of what lawmakers are discussing would raise the bar that migrants need to meet during that initial credible fear interview. Those who do not meet it would be sent home.
But Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration court judge who blogs about immigration court issues, said the credible fear interview was never intended to be so tough. Migrants are doing the interview soon after arriving at the border from an often arduous and traumatizing journey, he said. Schmidt said the interview is more of an “initial screening” to weed out those with frivolous asylum claims.
Schmidt also questioned the argument that most migrants fail their final asylum screening. He said some immigration judges apply overly restrictive standards and that the system is so backlogged that it is hard to know exactly what the most recent and reliable statistics are.
. . . .
WHAT MIGHT THESE CHANGES DO?
Much of the disagreement over these proposed changes comes down to whether people think deterrence works.
Arthur, the former immigration court judge, thinks it does. He said changes to the credible fear asylum standards and restrictions on the use of humanitarian parole would be a “game changer.” He said it would be a “costly endeavor” as the government would have to detain and deport many more migrants than today. But, he argued, eventually the numbers of people arriving would drop.
But others, like Schmidt, the retired immigration court judge, say migrants are so desperate, they will come anyway and make dangerous journeys to evade Border Patrol.
“Desperate people do desperate things,” he said.
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Ignoring both the powerful forces that drive human migration and folks who actually work with migrants at the border and in foreign countries seems like a totally insane way to “debate policy.” But, then, whoever said this “nativist-driven debate” on enhanced cruelty, dismantling the rule of law, and de-humanization is rational?
You can read Rebecca’s full article, with an “accessible” explanation of what’s at stake and what’s being proposed at the above link.
Rachel Perić Executive Director Welcoming America PHOTO: X
Rachel writes on LinkedIn:
As I head to Geneva to participate in the UN Global Refugee Forum, representing Welcoming America and also as a proud member of the Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), it’s timely to see this narrative-shifting story in the The Washington Post about the power of local leaders to advance a #welcoming infrastructure and reframe who #belongs in an era of migration.
I’m looking forward to presenting more on the movement to show that – far from the narratives of scarcity and chaos being presented by the far right – cities and towns, large and small, rural and urban, are showing that abundance, capacity, and human rights can be driving values.And also putting these values into practice through policies that earn them the designation of #certifiedwelcoming.
Thank you to Pittsburgh Mayor Gainey and his staff, especially Feyisola Akintola (formerly Alabi) MBA, MSUS, featured in this story, for your inspiring leadership and commitment.
And to so many others across the country and globe who are lighting the way.
You can read the WashPost article at the link above.
The WashPost article by Tim Craig is one of the more insightful pieces on migration and the border published by the “mainstream media” recently. This is a great story! Why has the Biden Administration done such a horrible job of asylum seeker resettlement? Also, seems like some missed potential for NGOs to fill the gap in getting folks to places where they are needed and will be appreciated.
“We are not here to reject any immigration. As a matter of fact, we want to make this the most safe, welcoming, thriving place in America, and you can’t do that without immigration,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey (D) said in an interview, adding that he does not make distinctions on the basis of someone’s immigration status or how the person entered the country. “Why wouldn’t we want them?”
Thanks so much for your dynamic, inspirational, humanitarian leadership, Rachel! The Administration, Congress, and the media would do well to pay more attention to what experts like you are saying and reject the cruel, anti-humanitarian, false narratives that currently appear to be “guiding” the one-sided asylum “debate” in Congress!
The settlement involves a 2018 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to block the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which called for separating parents from their children to prosecute the adults for crossing the border illegally. Officials sent parents to detention centers and children to shelters, without a plan to reunite them, under the policy. Some were apart for months, some for years.
“It does represent, in my view, one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw said before he approved the settlement in a hearing that recalled the shock and disbelief surrounding the policy in 2018.
Under the settlement approved Friday, crossing the border illegally will no longer be a reason to separate a family, at least for the next eight years, which is how long that provision will last, lawyers said. The Justice Department has said the government will not prosecute parents for crossing the border without permission, a misdemeanor, or for the felony crime of reentering after being deported.
The settlement also offers aid to once-separated families so that they may apply to stay in the United States permanently. Those who were deported may apply to come back. Their immigration records will be cleared, giving them a fresh start on applying for humanitarian protection such as asylum.
Once they are in the United States, formerly separated families may apply for three-year work permits, six months of housing assistance and one year of medical care, according to the settlement. The families also are eligible for three years of counseling under the settlement.
Sabraw, a Republican nominee, declared the separations unlawful and ordered the families reunited in June 2018, after President Donald Trump halted the policy amid widespread condemnation.
Trump’s zero-tolerance policy ran from May to June 2018. Later, investigations determined that officials separated migrant families throughout Trump’s four-year term, which ended in January 2021.
Biden administration officials said the Trump administration separated more than 4,000 children from their parents, though past estimates have put that figure as high as 5,500. Lawyers for the ACLU, which represented the migrant families in court, estimated that as many as 1,000 children may still be separated from their parents. Advocates are trying to track them down.
The ACLU has called the case the most significant settlement in the organization’s 103-year history.
“This settlement brings much needed help to these brutalized children but there remains significant work to ensure that every family is now reunited and to monitor that no future administration tries to circumvent the agreement and reenact the same horrific policy,” Lee Gelernt, an ACLU lawyer and the lead counsel in the case, said in a statement.
. . . .
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Read the rest of Maria’s report at the link!
The human and fiscal costs of this illegal policy, developed and implemented by GOP White Nationalist child abusers, is beyond comprehension! Some of the damage can never be repaired!
Notably, there has never been any accountability for the architects of this clearly unconstitutional abuse and the Government attorneys who failed to do “due diligence” and misrepresented the facts surrounding child separation in Federal Court. The truth was only brought out when the ACLU was forced to do the DOJ’s job for it! It’s also curious how a prohibition on clearly unconstitutional conduct could have only an “eight year shelf life.”
But, there are even worse developments on the horizon — immoral, illegal, and unconscionable policies under consideration that will dwarf even this horrible episode in terms of preventable deaths, disregard for humanity, dereliction of duty, moral cowardice, and degradation of our nation!
Why are Dems ignoring their “core supporters” and negotiating with this notorious human rights abuser! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com
So why are Dem legislators and the Administration “negotiating” even more outrageous legal violations, moral transgressions, and human rights abuses with the GOP? Talk about “shameful!” If Dems don’t get some backbone and live up to their professed values and the law, “shameful” will have a whole new meaning!
Here’s a link to tell your Congressional representatives to “just say no” to the truly repulsive proposals to bully and inflict pointless harm on the most vulnerable and to arrogantly violate human rights on a massive scale being pushed by theGOP and some so-called Dems.https://lnkd.in/gp2RteRr.
Trading away human rights that are not yours to dispose of for unrelated foreign military aid is beyond unconscionable! 🤮
U.S. immigration law and policy, including border security and asylum, have nothing to do with Ukraine, NATO, Russia and Putin. Right?
Wrong, if you are a Republican in Congress. Here, let Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) explain: “I think … Schumer will realize we’re serious … and then the discussions will begin in earnest.”
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If you are still having trouble with the concept, I’ll translate for you: “Yes, we understand and agree that Russia cannot be allowed to take over Ukraine, and we will fund aid to Ukraine, but in exchange, we insist on fundamental changes to our immigration laws to make sure no more Brown people come to America, starting right effing now.” (“Brown,” in this context, means anyone who is poor, Latin American, Asian, African, non-Anglophone…you get the idea.)
How will this play out in the next few weeks? I see three options: 1) Biden and the Dems cave, so the 1980 Refugee Act is scrapped, Dreamers get deported, the southern border is further militarized, and the economy tanks because a good chunk of the workforce is afraid to come to work; or 2) the GOP does a Tuberville and caves; or 3) the Unknown Unknown.
Stay tuned…
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Thanks for telling it like it is, Dan! There is no validity to the GOP’s attempt to punish asylum seekers by unconscionably returning them to danger and death with no process.
The cruelty and threat to life from forcing desperate seekers to wait in dangerous conditions in Mexico, pushing them to attempt entry in ever more deadly locations along the border, detaining them in inhumane substandard prisons in the U.S., and or returning them without meaningful screening by qualified independent decision-makers is overwhelming. That Congress, the Administration, and much of the “mainstream media” choose to ignore, and often intentionally misrepresent, truth and reality about the horrible human and fiscal wastefulness of “border deterrence” doesn’t change these facts!
The Administration’s three year failure to build a functional, robust asylum system at the border with humane reception centers, access to legal assistance, a rational resettlement system, and sweeping, readily achievable, administrative reforms and leadership changes at EOIR and the Asylum Office (as laid out by experts, whose views were dismissed) is also inexcusable.
Yet, the media misrepresents this farce as a “debate.” It’s a false “debate” in which neither disingenuous “side” speaks for the endangered humans whose rights and lives they are bargaining away to mask their own failures and immorality.
Camille J. Mackler Executive Director Immigrant ARC PHOTO: JustSecurity
Camille writes on Linkedin:
I truly believe that when we look back on the evolution of migration trends and responses, 2022 will be remembered as the year we entered a new era of policy making. What began as a political stunt by the Texas Governor has turned into a full-on, ad-hoc secondary resettlement system, fueled by the seeming inability of the Federal Government to take meaningful responsibility to support a cohesive response.
We’ve been seeing this since the first buses began arriving in New York City, when City staff and local non-profits would walk people directly to ticket counters in the bus terminal and help them continue onward travel. This has of course expanded into a full-on operation here, but we’ve also seen similar efforts – all carried out with very little coordination between local governments – in other cities including Washington, DC, Denver, and Chicago.
But its not just within the US – countries in Central America are also getting into the business of transporting migrants “anywhere but here.” Nicaragua, ostensibly to spite the US and to force better policy solutions for the region, is allowing and likely even encouraging charter flights from Cuba and Haiti to help individuals from those countries travel North (making money off tourist visa applications and other concessions along the way). Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, and Mexico are busing individuals and families North to speed their passage through those countries.
The Los Angeles Declaration, which came out of the 2022 Summit of the Americas, promised to create a regional framework and approach to migration in the Americas, but national governments are moving so slowly that cities are getting ahead of them out of pure necessity. Existing networks (such as Cities For Action, e.g.) turned out to be insufficient to help create the necessary connectivity, so instead we are seeing ad hoc attempts with varying levels of engagement by local non-profits.
And regardless of the level of cooperation from local government, civil society is looking for ways to get involved and minimize the harm caused by this perverse game of “hot potato”. A webinar Immigrant ARC and the National Partnership for New Americans is organizing next week on best practices for rapid responses to new arrivals had over 250 sign-ups within three days of announcing registration was open.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is.. What are we going to do? I can’t remember a time that more clearly highlighted how immigration – at its core – is a local issue. But this is our new normal. Migration is natural and, if global trends are any indication, is not abating any time soon. So our challenge is – how do we treat this as an opportunity, not a challenge? And how do we get our elected officials – from local government all the way to the White House – to remember that we are dealing with human lives, full of promise and courage, and not political pawns to be played with at the whims of those currently in power.
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Follow Camille on LinkedIn.
The “problems” are short term, very visible, and over-hyped by nativist politicos and the media — mainstream as well as far right. Folks wading the river, sleeping in the streets, camping in tents, crowded schools, overwhelmed social services, angry and frustrated local officials are all very much in the public eye and easy to sensationalize for the media.
By contrast, the overwhelming benefits of migration — including refugees and other forced migrants — are more abstract and in the future. Expansion of the the workforce, supply chain improvements, innovations, opportunities created by enriching culture, economic expansion, and robust increases in tax revenues don’t happen overnight. In today’s “instant gratification/instant news” culture, people tend not to pay much attention or give credence to things that aren’t happening in “real time.”
So, the solution is to make the tangible benefits of immigration to everyone in society happen more rapidly and more obviously. “Real life concrete examples” of benefits connect with individuals more than projections and statistics about the future. The challenge would be to:
Get asylum applicants to places where food, shelter, education, legal assistance, and job placement are available;
Concentrate on welcoming locations;
Do it in an orderly fashion so that the benefits of migration are rationally distributed and no particular community feels overwhelmed;
Assist individuals to get them through the legal asylum more rapidly so that those who are successful achieve full legal status, work authorization, and can progress toward green cards and citizenship. Those who aren’t eligible won’t “wander the U.S. forever.”
Neither Congress nor the Administration appear to be interested in making this happen. Indeed, the nativist GOP “border proposals” now being debated would make things demonstrably worse in every way! Yet, too many Senate Dems lack the guts to “just say no” to what are basically “enhanced human rights abuses!”
Therefore, it would be up to NGOs working with receptive state and local governments and taking advantage of things like “public-private partnerships.”
NGOs could set up a “national clearinghouse” and a network of local organizations in welcoming communities where migrants could be placed. In that way, they would be “emulating” that which the Federal Government should, but isn’t, doing, as well as obviating the problems caused by GOP governors who are weaponizing migration to support their nativist “invasion” myths.
It could also provide concrete examples of success in enhancing the quality of life and economic opportunities in communities that welcome migrants. Conversely, it could also take some of the pressure off communities who believe (whether correctly or not) that they are overwhelmed or overburdened.
As to Camille’s question:
And how do we get our elected officials – from local government all the way to the White House – to remember that we are dealing with human lives, full of promise and courage, and not political pawns to be played with at the whims of those currently in power.
Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening without a different set of elected officials. The facts are out here. Politicos primarily on the right, but also too many Dems, have gone out of their way to ignore the truth about asylum seekers because they believe it suits their short-term political interests. That’s a tough nut to crack without a new political movement and some new faces of power.
Even now, too much of the “border debate” is vociferous, but one-sided and ill informed. As one successful NGO at the border recently said:
If you really want to know what’s happening on the Mexican side of the border, follow the humanitarian groups like the Sidewalk School, who are working there,” [Felicia] Rangel-Samporano says. “We are there every day, seven days a week.”
Felicia Rangel-Samparano Director The Sidewalk School PHOTO: The Sidewalk School
Fat chance for a visit to the Sidewalk School or any other humanitarian organization at the border from those in power, or, for that matter, for the “mainstream media” to show much interest in injecting truth and expertise into their border reporting. Organizations like TheSidewalk School appear to have the keys to successful border and asylum policies. But, they will need help from their friends — lots of it!
Don’t expect it from Dems on the Hill. As cogently pointed out by Greg Sargent in today’s WashPost, they are tuning out experts like Camille and Felicia Rangel-Samparano — folks with real solutions that would improve border security while actually furthering human rights — in favor of “negotiating” (for war funding abroad) with those driven by the neo-fascist anti-human-rights agenda of Miller and Trump. As stated by Greg:
Sen. Thom Tillis wants you to know that he’s very “reasonable.” That’s the word the North Carolina Republican used with reporters this week while describing immigration reforms that the GOP is demanding from Senate Democrats in exchange for supporting the billions in Ukraine aid that President Biden wants. But the demands from Tillis and his fellow Republican leading the talks, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, are not reasonable at all — they’re following Donald Trump’s playbook. Under the guise of seeking more “border security,” they’re insisting on provisions that would reduce legal immigration in numerous ways that could even undermine the goal of securing the border. According to Democratic sources familiar with the negotiations, Republican demands began to shift soon after the New York Times reported that in a second Trump term, he would launch mass removals of millions of undocumented immigrants, gut asylum seeking almost entirely, and dramatically expand migrant detention in “giant camps.” As one Senate Democratic source told me, Republicans started acting as though Trump and his immigration policy adviser Stephen Miller were “looking over their shoulders.”
How vile is this “debate” about “sacrificing” other (vulnerable) humans’ lives and rights — things that neither party has a right to use as “bargaining chips?” The GOP, a far-right party that basically has never seen a bomb it didn’t want to drop or a weapon it didn’t want used on some “enemy,” is threatening to withhold weapons for a war against Russian aggression abroad unless Dems agree to kill more folks seeking refuge (ironically, many fleeing from the far-left government of Venezuela) at our border!
In “normal” times, Dems would stand firm for humanitarian assistance, better border processing, and reasonable resettlement assistance (to end the Abbott/DeSantis travesty). But there’s nothing “normal” or remotely “reasonable” about the farce going on in Congress!
It’s remarkable how little attention the “mainstream media” focuses on those working hard and solving problems, on a daily basis, at the border, like the folks running the Sidewalk School! Compare publicity for the “good guys” who are actually solving problems and saving lives with the amount of time and attention given to GOP nativist politicos spreading anti-immigrant myths and demanding yet more cruelty and expensive, deadly, proven to fail, deterrence!🤯
Three principles are at the core of Andy’s article:
. . . .
International Obligations and Refugee Protection
Key international obligations regarding refugees also play a crucial role in shaping the discourse. The United States, as a signatory to the 1967 Protocol to the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, is bound by several obligations, including:
Non-refoulement: Prohibiting the return of refugees to countries where they would face persecution or harm based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
Access to asylum procedures: Ensuring a fair and accessible process for individuals to seek asylum and present their claims for protection.
Non-discrimination: Preventing discrimination against refugees based on factors such as nationality or place of entry.
. . . .
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Read the complete article at the link!
I think that the U.S. is in violation of all three of these essential, mandatory legal obligations.
Gimmicks like Title 42, “Remain in Mexico,” coercive detention, “CBP One,” and artificial roadblocks for those applying between ports of entry have violated and continue to violate our “non-refoulment” obligation.
These provisions, along with conducting interviews in detention settings, improperly limiting access to representation, and “expedited dockets” to limit the ability to prepare and present claims are examples of violations of our obligation to provide “fair access” to our asylum system.
And, by intentionally designing our system to discourage and deny applicants of color from the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and Muslim nations, and imposing illegal higher burdens on those not applying at ports of entry, we clearly are violating the “non-discrimination” requirement.
The GOP answer is simply to double down on the violations and abrogate our domestic and international obligations. While the Biden Administration at least nominally acknowledges these obligations, their actions and policies, some actually carried over or borrowed from the Trump Administration, blatantly undermine these principles of protection.
Indeed, the whole “movement” by both parties to use the refugee/asylum system for “rejection and deterrence” rather than “enhanced protection” is a “bipartisan legal and moral travesty!”
What if our “number one priority” was what it should be: Establish a world-class, expert, efficient, robust, generous system that is driven by, and true to, these three governing obligations?
Only after achieving that can we discuss and achieve “border security” in a realistic and effective manner! And, it couldn’t possibly be more expensive, in both fiscal terms and human lives cost, than decades of costly failed deterrence gimmicks and schemes! It’s a case of badly screwed up priorities aggravated by political cowardice!
Institutionalized cruelty, deterrence, and unlawful behavior by our Government has failed to create order at the border and has demonstrably destroyed or diminished human lives. Why not give adherence to laws and to humanitarian values and principles a chance?🤯
We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!
Katharina Obser Director of Migrants Rights and Justice Women’s Refugee Commission PHOTO: Women’s Refugee Commission website
Close to San Diego, California, hundreds of people seeking asylum are being held in deplorable conditions. So-called open-air detention sites are desolate areas in the US at or close to the US-Mexico border, where men, women, and children seeking protection wait outside, exposed to the elements. Nonprofit organizations and volunteers do their best to provide desperately needed water, meals, snacks, first aid, diapers, clothing, and blankets.
Last month, the Women’s Refugee Commission traveled to San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, to assess the conditions that people seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border face. Our short report, released today, is heartbreaking. We heard about families being separated. About people scared to go to hospital for treatment in case they aren’t reunited with their loved ones. And about rampant exploitation of people seeking asylum as they travel through Mexico to reach the United States.
We will use our findings to advocate that the Biden administration rescind its asylum ban; ends the use open-air detention sites; and that Congress significantly increase investment in organizations providing short-term aid, housing, and services. And we will continue to call for those seeking asylum to be treated humanely and with dignity.
Katharina Obser
Director, Migrant Rights and Justice Program
Compare this with the “border BS” spread by the GOP and the media that ignores the human and legal traumas at the border and falsely insists that competently administering domestic and international refugee and asylum laws is “mission impossible” for the world’s most prosperous superpower.
It appears that the politicos are too busy spreading lies and myths about the most vulnerable among us to solve problems in a humane, reasonable, and efficient manner!
REFLECTIONS on my week assisting detained asylum seekers near the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas.
-The immigration crisis has been and continues to be a humanitarian crisis. Many of our neighbors in Latin America have suffered terrible and enduring instances of persecution at the hands of their own governments, police, military, gangs, and even domestic violence accepted as a social norm. Leaving their own countries is not merely a pursuit for stability and prosperity, it is a Hobson’s choice—death at the hands of your persecutor, or potential death during the tumultuous journey to the United States.
-Mexico, a beautiful country full of wonderful cultures and traditions, seems extremely dangerous for migrants passing through to the United States. I interviewed many migrants awaiting their credible fear interview. All of them suffered persecution during their time in Mexico, whether they were robbed by police, cartel members, or ordinary citizens. Many were kidnapped and held for ransom. Some had group members that did not finish the journey.
-U.S. asylum laws and procedures as currently drafted are messy. We learned about the Asylum Bar and the CBP-1 phone application. Asylum seekers must use the app or otherwise highly likely face the asylum bar. Many migrants I spoke with attempted to use the app every day of their journey and even while waiting at the US-MX border. None successfully completed an application. This was not seemingly for lack of trying, as their screenshots would show you. If the bar applies, the chances for asylum are apparently low. The app, if it worked, seems like it could prove quite effective and efficient. Fix the app.
-Find time for pro bono legal work. Whether one hour, day, week, or month, you WILL make a difference in someone’s life.
-I have many other thoughts on my week. Message me if you are interested.
-I owe a HUGE thank you to Jones Day and AbbVie legal for providing me the opportunity to assist these migrants. Laura Tuell and Emily N., you were phenomenal mentors and hosts. Thank you a million times for the work you do, and for your passion and dedication to the migrant community. Lynette Lupia, Johanna Corbin, and Linda Friedlieb, thank you for championing pro bono work at AbbVie and allowing me to carve out time for this opportunity.
To my in-house legal friends, find a friend at Jones Day and ask them how you can help make a difference.
These views and reflections are mine and not an official company position.
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Jorge says “The [CBP One] app, if it worked, seems like it could prove quite effective and efficient. Fix the app!” This isn’t rocket science!🚀 Experts have been saying this for many, many months! Moreover, why would DHS set up a system almost totally dependent on this app without “beta testing” it to make sure it works and is “user friendly” for the intended audience?
This continues to be obvious “low hanging fruit” that the Administration, inexplicably, has failed to “harvest!”
Thanks Jorge for you work and your report. Interestingly, patent lawyers like Jorge have been well represented among the students taking my “Immigration Law & Policy” class at Georgetown Law. Because both patent work and immigration practices are “highly detail oriented” they as a group have done very well in my class and appear to have an affinity for the practice.
Also appreciate the “shout out” to Laura Tuell the Global Pro Bono Partner at Jones Day (where I worked 1987-92). Laura has been a guest lecturer in my class and has been inspiring others for years.
Some Republican lawmakers are flagging Hamas’ attack on Israel as an example of why more security is needed at the southern U.S. border. Hamas militants breached a border fence and attacked Israeli villages bordering the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.
“Potential terrorists are attempting to cross our southern border. In September alone, 18 illegal immigrants on the terror watchlist were caught at the border,” U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., posted Oct. 21 on X. “The attack on Israel should serve as a warning as to why we must secure the border.”
The next day, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also mentioned the terrorist watchlist on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
“We just caught 18 people, just last month, on the FBI terrorist watchlist, coming across our border,” McCarthy said. “More than 160 have done it this year, a record breaking.”
U.S. immigration officials have encountered rising numbers of people on the watchlist. But not everyone on the list is a terrorist, and not everyone encountered is allowed to enter the country.
Terrorism and immigration experts say that the threat of attacks in the U.S. and Israel are incomparable.
“They both involve borders, but the comparison ends there,” David Bier, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, previously told us. “People aren’t crossing the border to conduct terrorist attacks or take over parts of the United States. A very small percentage may come to commit ordinary crimes, like selling drugs, but overwhelmingly, they are coming for economic opportunity and freedom.”
McCarthy’s office did not respond to our query for more information. A Blackburn spokesperson pointed us to a Fox News reporter’s post on X. Customs and Border Protection did not confirm whether 18 people were stopped in September.
Here’s what we know about who is on the terrorist watchlist, and what the data can and can’t tell us.
. . . .
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Read Maria’s complete article which includes comments from real experts like Professor Stephen Yale Loehr, Professor Denise Gilman, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, and others in addition to David Bier. They stand in sharp and long overdue contrast with the GOP’s alarmist, out of context, claims.
It’s little wonder that a party of anti-democracy activists, insurrectionists, and election deniers would want to deflect attention from themselves onto folks who are overwhelmingly coming to save their lives and to work hard and contribute to our economic growth!
I have previously “called out” Kristen Welker and NBC’s Meet the Press for giving McCarthy an unnecessary public forum for his alarmist narrative. See, e.g.,https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/10/23/🚩politics-gops-bakuninist-clown-show-sows-american-chaos🤮☠️/. Worse yet, there was no effective “pushback” from Welker on McCarthy’s attempt to blame vulnerable asylum seekers for the political disorder and threats to our democracy that he and his righty GOP buddies helped sow!
Many thanks to Maria for setting the record straight and to the experts who were interviewed from her article!You actually did the “due diligence” that Welker and others often brush off when “doing immigration.”
Of course border security is important! A significant, achievable improvement would be to establish a fair, timely, functional asylum screening and adjudication system at ports of entry so that those seeking asylum will be motivated to use it (rather than attempting to “punish” and “deter” those who can’t use the current dysfunctional DHS/EOIR “system.”) That would give CBP a chance to concentrate on the real law enforcement challenge: identifying and stopping those who seek to harm the U.S. That’s going to take even better intelligence and more sophisticated efforts.
I also wouldn’t minimize that, as pointed out by the experts, CBP has been able to identify and deny entry to individuals on their list. That’s a sign of success, not failure!
To state the obvious, further cutting or restricting asylum (as many in the GOP disingenuously advocate) would only force even more of those seeking refuge into the hands of smugglers and push them into the dangerous lands between ports of entry. Misdirecting enforcement resources to fruitlessly and improperly trying to “deter” and “apprehend” those legitimately seeking refuge will only further dilute the attention that CBP can pay to any real dangers lurking at the border!
The fact remains that the U.S. government spent a lot of money to build new barriers to keep migrants out and did not get the result it wanted.
. . . .
Trump used a lot of hyperbole to promote his pet project and was prone to describe the barrier as the personification of his presidency. He took a keen interest in its aesthetic appearance and design features, often urging aides to make it look as imposing as possible. He told supporters his wall would be “impenetrable.” He also said Mexico would pay for it (Mexico did not).
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials didn’t make such claims and weren’t surprised when criminal smuggling organizations in Mexico began sawing through the steel bars — using ordinary power tools — almost immediately.
The border wall has been hacked through thousands of times since then, so often that the government has had to deploy welding crews full-time to shore up the structural integrity of the barrier. Smugglers have figured out a cheaper and even easier way to defeat it, fashioning cheap, disposable ladders out of scrap wood or metal rebar. They send migrants and drug couriers up and over the top, then use ropes to lower them down the other side. Experienced fence-jumpers have developed a technique using the steel bars like fire poles, sliding down onto the U.S. side in seconds.
. . . .
Dozens of migrants have been killed and hospitalized after falling from the structure, often with horrific spinal trauma and broken legs. Immigrant advocates also say the barriers force migrants toward more remote desert areas, contributing to more deaths from heat stroke and exposure. CBP reported 568 migrant deaths along the border during the 2021 fiscal year, the most recent for which data is available — nearly twice the amount of the previous year.
The border wall has a devastating toll on animals too, advocates say. The steel bars have essentially cut in half the habitat of animal species, in some cases cutting off their access to water and grazing areas. Trail cameras set up by researchers have shown pumas, bobcats and other large mammals blocked and searching fruitlessly for some way to get through.
The expensive futility of the wall and border barriers might pale in comparison with the human damage to both migrants and our nation’s soul, according to this interview with border physicians by Melissa Del Bosque in The Border Chronicle:
Melissa Del Bosque Border Reporter PHOTO: Melissadelbosque.com
Dr. Brian Elmore is an emergency-medicine resident physician in El Paso, Texas. He’s also the cofounder of Clínica Hope, a free clinic for migrants in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which he runs with the nonprofit Hope Border Institute. Elmore frequently treats patients who have been injured by razor wire or fallen from the border wall that divides El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. He’s coined a term for these injuries: political pathologies. “These are normally healthy people, most of them young, who have been injured because of political decisions made thousands of miles away,” he says. “These are the political repercussions of the border.”
. . . .
That’s interesting that you use this term political pathologies. Is that a term you coined yourself?
It’s what I’ve started calling these injuries that otherwise healthy folks are receiving. These are mostly young people in their 20s, 30s, and sometimes kids, who out of sheer desperation decided to climb the wall or cross the river or desert. Other than for decisions that politicians made thousands of miles away to fortify the border, and make it as dangerous to cross as possible, they wouldn’t have these injuries. It’s really tragic.
. . . .
I’ve treated quite a few border wall falls. I’ve become used to this. But last week, I had a child who came in with multiple lacerations from barbed wire. She came in with her family, and they were all cut up from barbed wire. It’s jarring to see this, especially when it’s a kid, who’s innocent and has no idea what’s going on.
I started talking to the dad, and he told me they were from Venezuela. He said they’d heard a rumor in Ciudad Juárez that officials were letting Venezuelans cross outside of ports of entry. So a huge crowd showed up to present themselves to U.S. border officials [and ask for asylum]. Everyone became frustrated and irritated when they discovered that it wasn’t true.
And this family were pressed up against the barbed wire by the crowd, and they couldn’t go back. The only way for them to move was forward. So they started crawling under the barbed wire. This is the mother, father, the child, who is about 10, and an infant.
So, I’m stitching them up, making small talk because sewing up lacerations takes time and you’re face-to-face, and I’m talking to the dad and he lifts his shirt, and I see that he has a thoracotomy scar. When you perform a thoracotomy, it’s a last-ditch Hail Mary effort to save somebody’s life. The majority die after a thoracotomy. It’s when you crack open a chest because there’s either aortic bleeding or a penetrating injury to the heart. He told me he’d been stabbed and robbed in Caracas. And it was stunning to see his scar and to know that he’d survived. And the thing is, this is the second thoracotomy scar I’ve seen on a Venezuelan patient I’ve treated. This really reinforced for me the constant levels of violence people are facing. I feel like Americans have very little context for what’s going on in that country and how desperate things are there.
. . . .
There’s a very characteristic injury. It’s called a pilon fracture. It’s a lower-extremity kind of ankle fracture, very debilitating. And it’s often associated with a lumbar spinal fracture. Sometimes the bone has broken through the flesh and may require surgery. A lot of times they’ll be fitted with a device that keeps the bone in place while the swelling goes down, so they can get surgery. They’re then discharged to a migrant shelter in town while they wait for surgery.
. . . .
You see on the news, all these headlines, “migration crisis” and “invasion.” And that’s not what people in El Paso are experiencing or how they’re responding to it. They’re responding to the humanitarian crisis with compassion. You see people at shelters volunteering their time, offering to cook, and giving donations. I think the people of El Paso are amazing in the way they’ve responded. As opposed to how the rest of the country is just totally freaking out. I think El Paso is the most inspiring place to be and to practice.
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You can read the full articles (and listen to Nick’s) at the above links.
Just think what could happen if we stopped “doubling down on failure,” eschewed dehumanizing treatment of asylum seekers, and devoted some of the time, money, and effort we spend on dehumanization, militarization, and deterrence to building better systems for fairly and timely screening, identifying, and resettling refugees.
When Carolina’s captors arrived at dawn to pull her out of the stash house in the Mexican border city of Reynosa in late May, she thought they were going to force her to call her family in Venezuela again to beg them to pay $2,000 ransom.
Instead, one of the men shoved her onto a broken-down bus parked outside and raped her, she told Reuters. “It’s the saddest, most horrible thing that can happen to a person,” Carolina said.
A migrant advocate who assisted Carolina after the kidnapping, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, confirmed all the details of her account.
The attack came amid an increase in sexual violence against migrants in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, both major transit routes for immigrants seeking to enter the U.S., according to data from the Mexican government and humanitarian groups, as well as interviews with eight sexual assault survivors and more than a dozen local aid workers.
“The inhumane way smugglers abuse, extort, and perpetrate violence against migrants for profit is criminal and morally reprehensible,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Luis Miranda said in response to questions about the rise in reported rapes.
Criminal investigations into the rape of foreign nationals, excluding Americans, were the highest on record in the two cities this year, according to state data from 2014 to 2023 obtained by Reuters through freedom of information requests.
The U.S. State Department considers Tamaulipas, where the two cities are located, to be the most dangerous state along the U.S.-Mexico border.
. . . .
A Venezuelan migrant said he was kidnapped in May in Reynosa by a cartel while traveling to the border for his confirmed CBP One appointment. He couldn’t raise the full $800 ransom, so he was forced to work for two months to pay off the remaining $200, he said.
Two other migrants who said they were held at the house during the same time period confirmed the man was forced to work against his will, and that they heard female migrants being raped.
On the nights the Venezuelan man was tasked with standing guard over the other migrants, he said he watched the cartel members ask the man in charge of the house for permission to rape the women of their choosing.
He said the answer was always the same: “Take her.”
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Read the full article at the link.
Walls, detention, eliminating the right to asylum aren’t going to solve this. But, solving it doesn’tseem to be the objective. Blaming the victims is a lot easier than treating them as human beings.
As my friend Debi Sanders (who alerted me to this report) said: “Terrifying!”Yup! 🤯🏴☠️
Yet, just a few days earlier, in deciding to extend TPS to nearly a half million Venezuelans in the US, that same DHS found:
Overview
Venezuela continues to face a severe humanitarian emergency due to a political and economic crisis, as well as human rights violations and abuses and high levels of crime and violence, that impacts access to food, medicine, healthcare, water, electricity, and fuel, and has led to high levels of poverty. Additionally, Venezuela has recently experienced heavy rainfall in the spring and summer of 2023 which triggered flooding and landslides. Given the current conditions in Venezuela, these issues contribute to the country’s existing challenges.
Venezuela is experiencing “an unprecedented political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.” [5] “Venezuela is suffering one of the worst humanitarian crises in the history of the Western Hemisphere,” which has been characterized by “[h]igh levels of poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, and infant mortality, together with frequent electricity outages and the collapse of health infrastructure.” [6] Though there were some positive developments in Venezuela in 2022 “as the economy stabilized and showed signs of economic growth,” the effects of these changes were not felt across the Venezuelan population and did not offset the impact of the large-scale economic contraction which resulted in significant humanitarian challenges that continue today and will take time to address.[7]
Political Repression and Human Rights
The Maduro regime has closed off channels for political dissent, restricting enjoyment of civil liberties and “prosecuting perceived opponents without regard for due process.” [8] The UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (IIFFM) found in its September 2022 report, “Venezuela’s military and civilian intelligence agencies function as well-coordinated and effective structures in the implementation of a plan” to “repress dissent.” [9]
Crime and Insecurity
Venezuela has one of the highest rates of violent deaths in the world.[10] Additionally, “Venezuelans face physical insecurity and violence from several sources, including irregular armed groups, security forces, and organized gangs.” [11] Corruption in Venezuela exacerbates insecurity. InSight Crime has reported that “criminal groups and corrupt state actors together form a hybrid state that combines governance with criminality, and where illegal armed groups act at the service of the state, while criminal networks form within it.” [12] Human trafficking remains a serious concern. Traffickers exploit and subject Venezuelans, including those fleeing the country, to egregious forms of exploitation, including sex trafficking and forced labor.[13] Members of non-state armed groups that operate in the country with impunity, subject Venezuelans to forced labor and forced criminality, and recruit or use child soldiers.[14]
Economic Collapse
Since 2014, Venezuela has suffered from an “economic recession marked by hyperinflation, shortages of basic goods and a collapse in public services such as electricity and water.” [15] Recently, Venezuela’s economy has shown some signs of recovery; however, it is still in a precarious condition.[16] In a report covering the period from May 2022 through April 2023, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted that while economic growth which occurred in 2022 “would bring hope for improved economic prospects, persistent challenges and other factors continued to negatively affect essential public services, transport, education, and health.” [17]
In its annual report covering 2022, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) noted “the high rates of poverty and inequality in the country, in which there are estimates that more than 90% of the population lives in poverty.” [18] The same report stated that “as of March 2022, HumVenezuela estimated that 94.5% of the population would not have sufficient income to cover items such as food, housing, health, education, transportation and clothing.” [19]
Health Crisis
Various sources have referred to severe problems with health systems in Venezuela, including the IACHR, Human Rights Watch, and the Congressional Research Service (CRS).[20] Per The Associated Press, Venezuela’s “health care system crumbled long before” the start of the COVID–19 pandemic.[21] Likewise, in its 2022 annual report, the IACHR acknowledged that while the COVID–19 pandemic “has had significant impacts on the health sector and the population, the serious affectations of the system preceded the health emergency.” [22] Elaborating on this topic, the IACHR identified “shortages of medicines, supplies, materials and medical treatment” as of 2018, and that the “situation has been worsening since 2014, and it is important to highlight that the health system has reportedly collapsed due to its persistent precariousness, which would have been exacerbated by the pandemic.” [23]
According to OHCHR, health centers in Venezuela “report structural underfunding and understaffing resulting in for example, regular blackouts and water shortages.” [24] In its report on the humanitarian situation in Venezuela in 2022, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that “[h]ealth services continue to be affected by insufficient water and sanitation conditions and the lack of electricity supply in facilities.” [25] Similarly, Human Rights Watch stated in its annual report covering 2022 that “[p]ower and water outages at healthcare centers—and emigration of healthcare workers—were further weakening operational capacity.” [26] Furthermore, the IACHR has reported that “98% of the hospitals in the country lack medicines, electrical plants and water, as well as failures in laboratories, reagents and wards. As a result, it is estimated that only between 3 and 10% of the hospitals have medical and surgical material to solve medical circumstances.” [27]
Food Insecurity
In a humanitarian response plan published in 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) identified food insecurity as “the most pressing challenge for the population.” [28] Human Rights Watch stated in its annual report covering 2022 that HumVenezuela reported in March 2022 that “most Venezuelans face difficulties in accessing food, with 10.9 million undernourished or chronically hungry. Some 4.3 million are deprived of food, sometimes going days without eating.” [29] Moreover, the IACHR noted in its 2022 annual report that “32% of children live in a situation of chronic malnutrition.” [30]
Heavy Rains and Flooding
Since May 26, 2023, as hurricane season began, Venezuela has experienced heavy rains which resulted in flooding that affected several areas of the country.[31] According to ACAPS, “Between June and July there have been 19 tropical waves, that have brought heavy rains, floods and landslides across the country.” [32] As of July 11, 2023, the meteorological situation in Venezuela indicated “that rainfall and resulting damages are expected to be more severe than previous years.” [33] Reports of the damage caused by the heavy rains include 5,100 people affected with damage to houses and blockages in the drainage system in the state of Portuguesa.[34] In another area—Delta Amacuro state—around 7,500 people are affected by the 2023 floods.[35]
In summary, extraordinary and temporary conditions continue to prevent Venezuelan nationals from returning in safety due to a severe humanitarian emergency which has resulted in food insecurity and the inability to access adequate medicine, healthcare, water, electricity, and fuel. Additionally, human rights violations and abuses, high levels of poverty, high levels of crime and violence, and heavy rains and flooding prevent Venezuelan nationals from returning in safety and permitting Venezuelan noncitizens to remain in the United States temporarily would not be contrary to the interests of the United States.
Based on this review and after consultation with appropriate U.S. Government agencies, the Secretary has determined that:
• The conditions supporting Venezuela’s designation for TPS continue to be met. See INA sec. 244(b)(3)(A) and (C), 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(3)(A) and (C).
• There continues to be extraordinary and temporary conditions in Venezuela that prevent Venezuelan nationals (or individuals having no nationality who last habitually resided in Venezuela) from returning to Venezuela in safety, and it is not contrary to the national interest of the United States to permit Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries to remain in the United States temporarily. See INA sec. 244(b)(1)(C), 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(1)(C).
• The existing designation of Venezuela for TPS (Venezuela 2021) should be extended for an 18-month period, beginning on March 11, 2024 and ending on September 10, 2025. See INA sec. 244(b)(3)(C), 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(3)(C).
• Due to the conditions described above, Venezuela should be redesignated for TPS beginning on October 3, 2023, and ending on April 2, 2025. See INA sec. 244(b)(1)(C) and (b)(2), 8 U.S.C. 1254a(b)(1)(C) and (b)(2).
For the redesignation, the Secretary has determined that TPS applicants must demonstrate that they have continuously resided in the United States since July 31, 2023.
Initial TPS applicants under the redesignation must demonstrate that they have been continuously physically present in the United States since October 3, 2023, the effective date of the redesignation of Venezuela for TPS.
There are approximately 243,000 current Venezuela TPS beneficiaries who are eligible to re-register for TPS under the extension.
It is estimated that approximately 472,000 additional individuals may be eligible for TPS under the redesignation of Venezuela. This population includes Venezuelan nationals in the United States in nonimmigrant status or without immigration status.
Does this sound like a country that will “ensure orderly, safe and legal repatriation?” Duh!
As for the DHS attempt to “blame the victims” for not taking advantage of legal opportunities, the legal right to apply for asylum in the U.S. attaches at the border to ANYONE “who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status.”INA, section 208.
With huge backlogs at both the Asylum Office and EOIR, and some problematic adjudicators, judges, administrators, and poor precedents, just how could hundreds of thousands of legal removals take place without huge systemic changes that to date the Administration has failed to make at either DHS or EOIR?Sounds like a prescription for massive legal and human rights violations!☠️
Yes, we’re going to hear chants of “we can’t take them all” from all sides. But, the truth that few acknowledge is that we haven’t and won’t be “taking them all” — not by a long shot! Of the more than 7 million who have fled the Maduro regime in Venezuela, only approximately 10% (about 750,000) have come to the U.S.!https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66875264. The vast, vast majority — approximately 90% — have taken refuge elsewhere in Latin American, in poorer countries far less able than the U.S. to absorb them! But, hey, when does truth and reality ever enter into the U.S. political debate on immigration?
A federal judge ordered Texas to remove floating barriers in the Rio Grande and barred the state from building new or placing additional buoys in the river, according to a Wednesday court filing, marking a victory for the Biden administration.
Judge David Alan Ezra ordered Texas to take down the barriers by September 15 at its own expense.
The border buoys have been a hot button immigration issue since they were deployed in the Rio Grande as part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative known as Operation Lone Star. The Justice Department had sued the state of Texas in July claiming that the buoys were installed unlawfully and asking the judge to force the state to remove them.
In the lawsuit, filed in US District Court in the Western District of Texas, the Justice Department alleged that Texas and Abbott violated the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act by building a structure in US water without permission from United States Army Corps of Engineers and sought an injunction to bar Texas from building additional barriers in the river. The Republican governor, meanwhile, has argued the buoys are intended to deter migrants from crossing into the state from Mexico.
Texas swiftly appealed the judge’s order.
. . . .
Ezra also found Texas’ self-defense argument – that the barriers have been placed in the face of invasion – “unconvincing.”
. . . .
Ezra also found Texas’ self-defense argument – that the barriers have been placed in the face of invasion – “unconvincing.”
. . . .
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Read the rest of Priscilla’s report at the link.
Who knows how this will play out in the 5th Circuit and the Supremes, given the composition of those courts. But, at least for a day, Judge Ezra has brought some common sense and the rule of law to bear on out of control grandstanding Texas “Governor” Greg Abbott.
We should also remember that the vast majority of those whom Abbott and the nativists bogusly call “invaders” seek only to turn themselves in to U.S. authorities so they can exercise their clear legal rights to apply for asylum — rights that attach regardless of status or manner of entering the U.S. (Rights that also have improperly been diminished and impeded by the Biden Administration’s ill-advised asylum regulations, currently under legal challenge).
If successful (under a legal system intentionally rigged against them), these so-called “invaders” will use their skills and work ethic to expand our economy and help Americans prosper while saving their lives and those of their families. To anybody other than Abbott and other White Nationalists, that sounds like a potential “win-win” that could and should be “leveraged” for everyone’s benefit!
Judge Ezra’s opinion in the aptly-named U.S. v. Abbottcan be found here:
