"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.
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers”. — “The reality of racial justice and the rule of law for people of color at our Southern Border is rather sobering, as the Biden Administration fails to usher in needed progressive reforms. How many more people will die because this Administration won’t follow the Constitution, The Refugee Act, and our international obligations? We’ll never achieve racial justice so long as dehumanization of people of color is our official policy, carried out by a broken and dysfunctional DOJ!” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)Vice President Kamala D. Harris Vice President of the United States — “Will she be able to get beyond the mistakes of the past and put rationality, humanity, and the rule of law in place at the Southern Border. So far, the results of her leadership are NOT encouraging for those who believe in progressive, humanitarian, legal policies.” (Official Senate Photo)
James Fredrick is a multimedia journalist based in Mexico City and covers migration, crime, politics and sports.
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Obama tried deterring migrants with his characteristic lawyerly tact. Trump did it with his cruel, petty impulsiveness. Biden is doing it with his folksy toughness. The styles are different, but the results of immigration deterrence will always be the same.
We’re trapped in this cycle because the U.S. government refuses to listen to migrants. Having met hundreds of migrants during my years reporting in Mexico and Central America, it’s obvious why deterrence doesn’t work: What’s at home is worse than anything the United States could threaten. Most migrants don’t want to leave home. But they do because violent death or crippling destitution is all that’s left.
Failing to actually come up with a solution, we of the “greatest country on Earth” become tremendously feeble and defensive at the arrival of a few thousand immigrant children. But there is another way.
We must treat immigration as a civil and humanitarian issue, not a criminal one. Criminalizing people fleeing violence, persecution, climate change or economic hardship exacerbates these problems. So decriminalize border crossings and rebuild border facilities as welcome centers, not jails. Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents at the border should be social workers, not cops.
If Trump’s family separation atrocity showed us anything, it’s that millions of Americans want to help immigrants in need. The United States should cooperate more with these groups. There are already large networks around the country that can provide housing, food, legal services, education and medical services to immigrants. Why rely on expensive armed border agents instead of willing, motivated humanitarian groups?
Immigration laws should also address the challenges of the 21st century. In addition to decriminalizing border crossings, our immigration laws rely on outdated quotas and corrupt, abusive worker programs. Asylum law is a relic of the Cold War and doesn’t reflect the world today.
Finally, Washington should stop making the problems worse with bad foreign policy. Despite numerous abuses, scandals and criminal allegations involving Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, the Biden administration refuses to denounce him, though many think he is responsible for the conditions Hondurans are fleeing. In fact, Biden administration officials are working with Hernández to try to prevent Hondurans from fleeing. He’s just one example in a long history of U.S. meddling to prop up corrupt, abusive, U.S.-friendly regimes. No amount of U.S. dollars in aid can make up for bad foreign policy.
President Biden can’t stop the crisis today. After all, he helped create it. But he can make sure this is the last “border crisis” we face.
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Read the complete op-ed at the link.
Ah, “mindlessly” — one of my favorite terms, usually applied these days to Garland and his inept team at DOJ! Actually, Frederick isn’t the only one to figure this out!
The problem remains, as I have stated over and over, the toxic failure of the Biden Administration to bring progressive experts in immigration, human rights, civil rights, and “applied due process” into Government and empower them to solve the problems! It’s bizarrely compounded by the disgraceful unwillingnessof those few in the Biden Administration, like Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke, who actually know better, to speak up for racial justice, social justice, human rights, and human dignity at the DOJ!
Unless VP Harris wakes up, convinces her boss, and brings in the progressive experts, she’s headed for the abyss, taking thousands of vulnerable refugees and, perhaps, American democracy down with her!
Refusal to listen: to migrants, their representatives, experts, our “better angels,” and common sense! The same problems, over and over, Administration after Administration, decade after decade! The same “built to fail” policies repeated!
The truth is in front of the Biden Administration! But, like Garland, Mayorkas, and others leading the way over the cliff, Biden and Harris can’t see it! They appear to have “tuned out” those desperately trying to keep them from plunging over the precipice! So tragic, so unnecessary, so threatening to American democracy and the future of humanity!
Gender Violence continues to to be endemic in Latin America! Yet, shockingly, its victims, refugee women of color, can expect little protection in Garland’s Immigration Courts still applying Jeff Sessions’s inaccurate, misogynistic precedent in Matter of A-B- and continuing to be staffed by too many “judges” selected or promoted by the Trump Administration because of their perceived willingness to support anti-asylum policies targeting many women of color! Recently Garland outraged progressives by appointing 17 “Miller/Barr Holdovers” to powerful, life or death, Immigration Judge positions while eschewing better-qualified progressive experts from the private sector who could bring diversity and gender and racial justice to his dysfunctional Immigration “Courts!” PHOTO: UNHCR website
Migrant women carry children in the rain at an intake area after turning themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, late Tuesday, May 11, 2021, in La Joya, Texas. The U.S. government continues to report large numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border with an increase in adult crossers. But families and unaccompanied children are still arriving in dramatic numbers despite the weather changing in the Rio Grande Valley registering hotter days and nights. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)(Gregory Bull)Natalie Gonnella-Platts Director, Women’s Initiative George W. Bush Institute PHOTO: Bush InstituteJenny Villatoro Associate, George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative PHOTO: George W. Bush Institute
By Natalie Gonnella-Platts and Jenny Villatoro In the Dallas Morning News:
When U.S. Border Patrol found him in the Texas desert, 10-year-old Wilton was crying, “they abandoned me.” Exhausted and alone, his image went viral — a poignant visual of the struggle faced by thousands seeking safety.
But Wilton’s story actually began in Nicaragua when his mother, Meylin, wasn’t able to get legal protection from an abusive partner. Mother and son fled to the United States, seeking asylum, but were expelled under a public health rule and sent to Mexico, where they were kidnapped, according to an account in El Pais. Meylin’s brother in Miami could pay only half the ransom — enough for Wilton alone to be released.
Although Meylin was ultimately released and reunited with her son, the tale that led to Wilton’s arrival at the border as an unaccompanied minor isn’t unique. It illustrates the fact that gender-based violence, revictimization and lack of justice affect children, families and communities thousands of miles away. It also highlights the importance of a safe and legal pathway into the United States for survivors of gender-based violence and other asylum-seekers. For many, arriving at the U.S. border seeking asylum is the only legal pathway available.
Immigration reform in the United States is essential to assuring that we have a secure and efficient border, a system flexible enough to handle changes in migrant flows, and the capacity to treat each migrant with dignity. But more needs to be done in the migrants’ home countries, too, so that they are not forced to flee for their safety in the first place.
Any comprehensive plan on Central America and immigration reform should address gender inequity and gender-based violence.
They are not siloed issues to acknowledge only when horrific stories of femicide and human trafficking force us to pay attention. Rather, they are deeply entangled with broader challenges of corruption and poverty. Proposed solutions shouldn’t overlook the impact of gender-based violence on migrant flows, economic development, education and health.
Fourteen of the 25 most dangerous places for women are in the Western Hemisphere, including countries within Central America. Patriarchy and gang violence subject women and girls to abhorrent actions of abuse and control.
Honduras and El Salvador saw some of the highest incidences of femicide within Latin America in 2019, at rates of 6.2 and 3.3 per 100,000, respectively. In Guatemala, adolescent girls are at a high risk of being “disappeared,” with 8 out of every 10,000 girls between the ages of 15 and 17 reported missing each year.
COVID 19-related lockdowns are being exploited by gangs looking to strengthen control: El Salvador alone has seen a 70% increase in gender-based violence since the beginning of the pandemic. And lockdowns have forced vulnerable individuals to stay in close proximity to their perpetrators. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador reported an increase in intrafamily violence, with El Salvador reporting an increase in intrafamily femicides as well.
Justice systems and access to services need to be strengthened to ensure adequate protection for all under the law. Legal protections often are inhibited by weak institutions, corruption and a culture of impunity toward perpetrators.
According to a 2017 national survey, two-thirds of Salvadoran women over the age of 15 have experienced violence, but only 6% have ever reported it. While laws against child marriage exist across the region, in some countries about 1 in 3 young women are in a union before age 18. Post-trauma support and efforts that inform Central American women of their rights and agency are critical interventions that could help women like Meylin.
Females have been disproportionately affected by the devastating impact of hurricanes Eta and Iota, but the status of women and girls is chronically overlooked in response efforts, exacerbating the risk of violence.
Women and girls must be seen and heard. Greater focus on gender and age-disaggregated data collection and in tracking the effectiveness and efficiency of legal systems is crucial. And women and their lived experiences need to be more fully represented at all leadership levels.
Finally, direct outreach to local communities should be a priority for U.S. government and private sector-led programs. This includes resource and capacity support for advocates and organizations that serve as lifelines for those affected by violence, often at great personal risk. Engagement with men and boys is equally imperative.
How can anyone be expected to thrive when her day-to-day priority is simply to survive? The United States needs to recognize that gender-based violence and gender inequity drive migration.
Immigration reform must include strategies to address the root causes of migration from Central America in effective and lasting ways to prevent situations like Wilton’s and Meylin’s. Women and girls must be front and center in these solutions.
Natalie Gonnella-Platts serves as the director of the Women’s Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute.
Jenny Villatoro is an associate for the George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative.
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“Deterrents” and illegally abusing asylum seekers DON’T WORK! It’s not that difficult a concept. Indeed, these misguided attempts at deterrence have been failing consistently under Administrations of both parties for the past four decades. One would think that an “enlightened nation” would try a different approach rather than simply repeating the costly failures of the past in various forms.
What we need are functioning refugee and asylum systems, led and staffed by progressive experts, operating from INSIDE Government, that will grant status to qualified refugee women in a fair and timely manner and set favorable precedents even while separately addressing the endemic problems in the “refugee-sending countries.” Of course, it will result in more legal immigration of refugees and asylum seekers to the U.S. That’s a good thing for both us and those individuals, not something to be feared or unlawfully and dishonestly “deterred!”
With stagnating population growth, we should welcome and facilitate legal immigration of courageous, talented, dedicated refugee women from all countries and their children through the refugee, asylum, and a much more robust legal immigration system!
Debi Sanders ESQ “Warrior Queen” of the NDPA PHOTO: law.uva.edu
Thanks to NDPA warrior-queen Debi Sanders for sending in this item. This report should be great evidence for those litigating to halt the Garland misogyny mess at EOIR and, sadly, to some extent in U.S. Courts of Appeals that have chosen to sweep both reality of what’s happening in the Northern Triangle and the patent unconstitutionality of a system governed by bogus precedents entered or promoted by AG’s affiliated with DHS Enforcement who also packed and reshaped the immigration “judiciary” in the image of nativist restrictionists! However, compelling as it is, the report only adds to the existing body of documentation of the dishonest approach by Administrations of both parties to Latin American asylum claims, particularly those of women and children.
For Pete’s sake, first and second year law students know that the EOIR travesty is unconstitutional! Why are life-tenured Article III Judges covering it up? Hopefully, history will take note of their mal-performance on the bench! These guys are life-tenured! So, what’s their excuse for not upholding the Constitution against clear Congressional and Executive abuses?
Hard for me to say this. But, former President George W. Bush is doing more for human rights, gender rights, civil rights, and immigrants rights’ than Garland or anyone else at the Biden DOJ! At least he speaks out publicly for the humanity and contributions of migrants and for their fair and generous treatment, which is more than any member of the Biden Administration has done as they continue to mistake softening the rhetoric with taking firm action to reverse White Nationalist policies and replace them with readily achievable progressive ones.
030114-O-0000D-001.President George W. Bush. Photo by Eric Draper, White House. “Why is this guy willing to speak up for immigrants’ rights . . . .
Meanwhile, despite pleas from nearly every expert, progressive, human rights, immigrants’ rights, and gender rights group in the U.S., Garland continues to allow Sessions’s wrong, toxic, and misogynistic decision in Matter of A-B – to remain in place and threaten the lives of female refugees while ignoring the misogynistic, anti-asylum, culture inculcated by Sessions and Barr at EOIR that continues to flourish and daily dish out abuse to migrants and their representatives without meaningful consequences.
“ . . . while this guy continues to apply misogynistic precedents, eschew progressive experts, recycle failed ‘Aimless Docket Reshuffling’ gimmicks, and allow the Trump-era anti-asylum culture to continue to flourish at EOIR and DOJ?” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Official White House Photo Public Realm
What, indeed, is someone like AAG Vanita Gupta doing with herself at Garland’s anti-progressive, and anti-due-process mess at DOJ? Why are folks like her and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke there in the first place if they aren’t going to stand up to Garland’s tone-deaf, inept approach to gender rights, human rights, and racial justice @ EOIR? How, on earth, do you lead a “Civil Rights Division” while turning a blind eye to grotesque violations of civil and human rights going on daily in your “Boss’s” wholly owned “court” system that functions like no “real court” in America? What’s DAG Lisa Monaco doing presiding over a gender disaster at EOIR? It’s straight out of “Jim Crow!”
James “Jim” Crow Symbol of American Racism, still right at home at Garland’s EOIR!“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” — “Do Garland, Monaco, Gupta, & Clarke work in ‘sound-proofed offices’ where they can’t hear our tortured screams and moans? What’s wrong with those guys? We’re suffering and dying while they are fiddling and diddling!” Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
And, I wouldn’t say that Vice President Harris is looking very good either, as she “swallows the whistle” on notorious scofflaw human rights violations that she was well aware of from her time in the Senate! Doesn’t anyone in the Biden Administration have the backbone to speak up for human rights, human decency, and restoring the rule of law? Is it REALLY our position that following the Constitution, our statutory laws, and the international treaties to which we are party is beyond the capabilities of the U.S. Government? If so, what, may I ask, is the difference between us an any third world dictatorship where laws have no meaning?
Vice President Kamala D. Harris. “Our first African-American, AAPI, child of immigrants VEEP seems curiously deaf and indifferent to the gross abuses being heaped on migrants and women of color at EOIR and at our Souther Border! What’s her excuse for turning her back on the progressive, human rights, gender equality groups that helped put her in office. Why is she remaining silent as Garland continues to appoint Billy Barr’s hand-selected non-progressive, non-diverse Immigration Judges to a life-determining “judiciary” that the Biden Administration wholly controls? How can you create a progressive, diverse, Article III Judiciary that will promote racial equity when you’re unwilling to apply those values and selection criteria to a huge judiciary that you actually control? What message are you sending to ‘next generation progressive attorneys of color’ when you allow Garland to ignore them in favor of lesser qualified candidates? Why aren’t you out there actively recruiting more attorneys of color and other underrepresented groups for the Immigration Judiciary rather than allowing Garland to use same-old, same old bogus “USA Jobs Phantom recruitments?” Lots of unanswered questions here! Vice President of the United States (Official Senate Photo)
I can’t figure it out! But, I do know that Garland’s lousy stewardship at EOIR, failure to speak out for fundamental fairness, usher in progressive changes, and restore due process @ EOIR has reached “crisis proportions” affecting our entire justice system and threatening democracy!
Hopefully, progressive advocacy, human rights, and civil rights groups will keep up the pressure and demands for long, long, long overdue and readily achievable changes at EOIR: in leadership, precedents, culture, and administration of justice! (Get this: Garland just created yet another bogus “Dedicated Docket” without a functional e-filing system to make it work! That’s “Aimless Docket Reshuffling 101,” as anyone who has actually had to deal with the mess in his Immigration Courts could tell him. But, he’s apparently not interested!) Right now, it’s an unmitigated “disaster zone” continuing to spiral downward!
There is a direct link between the “Dred Scottification of the other” that Garland countenances at EOIR and the overall failure of our justice system to deal effectively with institutionalized racism! The U.S. has a long, disreputable history of treating women and persons of color as “non persons” under the Constitution. Much of it traces to our immigration laws where “the others” are routinely dehumanized, stereotyped, demonized, and abused by those who falsely claim to be furthering the “rule of law!” We will NOT achieve racial justice for all in America until we deal with the festering wounds intentionally inflicted on women, children, and people of color in our immigration system, at EOIR, and illegally continuing at our borders!
By choice, Garland now “owns” the misogynistic, anti-due-process, anti-asylum disaster @ EOIR. Make him deal with it in a constructive way!
🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever! Garland’s continued tolerance of misogyny and the anti-due-process, anti-asylum culture at EOIR, NEVER! Stop Garland’s continuing misogynistic nonsense before more refugee women and people of color needlessly die! What’s it going to take finally to get some “real justice @ Justice?”
However, despite advice from public health experts and condemnation by UNHCR, expulsions under Title 42 continue and the human cost has been devastating. Though refugees come from countries all over the world, the Department of Homeland Security expels them to Mexico, just on the other side of the border.
Reports by Human Rights First document the terrifying realities they face once there: kidnappings, violence, sexual assault, extortion and even murder in border towns where criminal gangs and cartels prey on recently expelled children and families. Just this spring, a 4-year-old Honduran boy and his asylum-seeking mother were kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo immediately after they were expelled under Title 42.
Expulsions don’t just impact migrants from Mexico and Central America. Despite the recent designation of temporary protected status for Haitian migrants within the United States, the Biden administration has sent plane after plane of asylum-seeking families back to Haiti, with some Haitians being expelled to Mexico. The UndocuBlack Network and the Haitian Bridge Alliance, for example, document a Haitian woman expelled to Mexico with her three-day-old baby, where she will face extreme anti-Black discrimination and be at risk of violence and homelessness.
Public health has often been used as a pretext for restrictionist immigration policies. Beginning as early as 1793, when Haitians were blamed for bringing yellow fever to Philadelphia, nativism and xenophobia have long merged with concerns about public health to exclude immigrants and refugees. These concerns were not justified by science then, and they certainly are not justified now.
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Lindsay M. Harris (@Prof_LMHarris) is associate professor and director of the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic at the University of the District of Columbia’s Law School. Sarah Sherman-Stokes (@sshermanstokes) is clinical associate professor and associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program at Boston University School of Law.
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Read the rest of the USA Today op-ed at the link!
Thanks, my friends, for speaking out about the continuing outrages perpetrated by the Biden Administration at our Southern Border. So many, many “practical experts” out here in the “real world,” like Lindsay and Sarah, who would be heads and shoulders above current immigration “leadership” at DHS, DOJ, and EOIR and who would bring “real, qualified, expert judging” to the BIA and the Immigration Courts.
The Biden Administration’s failure to actively recruit, attract, and promptly bring on board the “best and the brightest” that American law has to offer for these critical jobs (which do NOT require Senate confirmation) is a disgrace! Betcha Stephen Miller could tell them how to do it! But, curiously, the Biden Immigration Team seems to think that alienating the best progressive minds in the business, the folks who helped them get elected and can fix their immigration problems, is smart politics and great public policy! Go figure!
Suspending the rule of law and international treaty obligations is never “OK” and it’s not something to be “studied.” “Gee whiz, should we comply with the law or continue to violate it; should we continue to send people to possible kidnapping, rape, torture, extortion, and/or death with no process or should we give them fair hearings; should we continue unqualified Trump hacks in key positions and keep defending illegal policies or should we hire qualified experts from the NDPA to restore and promote due process?” These are the “questions” that folks like Garland, Mayorkas, and their “spear carriers” are being paid to “study” while innocent humans are daily being abused and dying in the “real world” that these Biden Cabinet officers appear to have absented themselves from?Gimme a break!
We need an end to the deadly nonsense at DHS, DOJ, and EOIR NOW! Keep the outrage, the op-eds, the law suits, and the exposure and documenting of Mayorkas’s and Garland’s illegal, immoral, and incompetent actions coming until we get change and our Government delivers on the Constitutionally-required promise of due process, equal protection, and racial justice for all persons!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! The Garland/Mayorkas “Miller Lite Nonsense” at the border, never!
This truck is NOT delivering due process, best practices, and racial justice to our dysfunctional immigration and asylum systems. “Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color
Lee Gelernt Deputy Director ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Program PHOTO: ACLUElliott Spagat Reporter Associated PressJulie Watson Reporter, AP PHOTO: Pulitzer website
Elliot Spagot and Julie Watson report for AP:
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration has quietly tasked six humanitarian groups with recommending which migrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S. instead of being rapidly expelled from the country under federal pandemic-related powers that block people from seeking asylum.
The groups will determine who is most vulnerable in Mexico, and their criteria has not been made public. It comes as large numbers of people are crossing the southern border and as the government faces intensifying pressure to lift the public health powers instituted by former President Donald Trump and kept in place by President Joe Biden during the coronavirus pandemic.
Several members of the consortium spoke to The Associated Press about the criteria and provided details of the system that have not been previously reported. The government is aiming to admit to the country up to 250 asylum-seekers a day who are referred by the groups and is agreeing to that system only until July 31. By then, the consortium hopes the Biden administration will have lifted the public health rules, though the government has not committed to that.
So far, a total of nearly 800 asylum-seekers have been let in since May 3, and members of the consortium say there is already more demand than they can meet.
The groups have not been publicly identified except for the International Rescue Committee, a global relief organization. The others are London-based Save the Children; two U.S.-based organizations, HIAS and Kids in Need of Defense; and two Mexico-based organizations, Asylum Access and the Institute for Women in Migration, according to two people with direct knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not intended for public release.
Asylum Access, which provides services to people seeing asylum in Mexico, characterized its role as minimal.
The effort started in El Paso, Texas, and is expanding to Nogales, Arizona.
A similar but separate mechanism led by the American Civil Liberties Union began in late March and allows 35 families a day into the United States at places along the border. It has no end date.
The twin tracks are described by participating organizations as an imperfect transition from so-called Title 42 authority, named for a section of an obscure 1944 public health law that Trump used in March 2020 to effectively end asylum at the Mexican border. With COVID-19 vaccination rates rising, Biden is finding it increasingly difficult to justify the expulsions on public health grounds and faces demands to end it from the U.N. refugee agency and members of his own party and administration.
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Read the full article at the link.
Well, I’ll give them this. “Farming out” the asylum system to these NGO experts is better than the Trump approach. The Trump regime “outsourced” the American asylum system to Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.
The common denominators among those countries is that the are all notorious for human rights abuses, corrupt government, dysfunctional legal systems, and lack of any semblance of a fair, functioning asylum adjudication system. Additionally, all are major senders of asylum seekers to America.
But, the Biden Administration’s “under the counter” approach is still fundamentally wrong! It’s yet another “haste makes waste gimmick” that lacks transparency, clear standards, accountability, and most of all, operates outside of any legal framework!
That’s a recipe for arbitrariness, abuse, and unfairness. Even if the system were to produce decent results, the lack of transparency robs it of credibility. It’s therefore likely to be attacked by both advocates and restrictionists while being panned in the press — a self-created “worst case” scenario of the type Dem Administrations seem to specialize in when it comes to immigration and human rights!
The solution here is to do what many of us have been recommending since the day the election results became final. That is, bring in outside experts to USCIS to lead and revitalize the Asylum Officer screening program and bring in real judges, largely from the outside, — progressive practical experts in asylum law committed to human rights and due process — to EOIR to establish legitimate precedents and insure fair, humane, and uniform treatment of asylum seekers.
It’s possible, indeed probable, that the U.S. representatives of some of the NGOs involved would be among the best experts to do this — leading human rights authoritieslike Mark Hatfield at HIAS, Wendy Young at KIND, and Wendy Wylegala, also of KIND are obvious choices.
So, put them and other practical experts like Professor Karen Musalo (Center for Gender & Refugee Studies), Eleanor Acer (Human Rights First), Professor Stephen Legomsky (former USCIS Chief Counsel), Associate Dean Jaya Ramji Nogales (Temple Law), Judge Ilyce Shugall (Round Table), Dean Kevin Johnson (UC Davis), Michelle Mendez (CLINIC), Professor Lenni Benson (Safe Passage Project), Professor Ingrid Eagly (UCLA Law), Laura Lynch (NILC), Professor Stephen Yale Loehr (Cornell Law), Jason Dzubow (The Asylumist), Professor Debi Anker (Harvard Law), Professor Michele Pistone (VIISTA/Villanova Law), and others like them on the payroll at USCIS and EOIR and let them fix the asylum system!
Experts like this could, if properly empowered, in relatively short order, establish a system that is legal, constitutional, fair, generous, humane, practical, efficient, and that complies with all of our international obligations. In other words, a “model system” that would serve the best interests of humanity and our nation!
Bringing in the experts seems like an outstanding, “no brainer” alternative to the godawful, dysfunctional, disgraceful mess that the Trump kakistocracy left at USCIS and EOIR, much of which continues to ramble on, further off the rails all the time, under Mayorkas and Garland. The Biden Administration can’t, and won’t, get the job done on asylum and racial justice without radical, yet logical and badly needed, personnel and leadership changes at USCIS and EOIR!
“This case presents the question whether the departure bar limits an IJ’s ability to reopen immigration proceedings sua sponte. We have jurisdiction to review questions of law under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D), and we conclude that the departure bar does not apply in the context of sua sponte reopening. That is, an IJ’s discretion to reopen a case on his or her own motion is not limited by the fact that a noncitizen has previously been removed or has departed from the United States. Therefore, we grant the petition for review.”
Petition for Review of a Decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals _______________________
(June 1, 2021)
Petitioner,
Respondent.
Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, LUCK and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges.
WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge:
Kelly Sanchez-Castro, a native of El Salvador, petitions for our review after
she unsuccessfully sought relief from removal because a gang targeted her family based on the assumption that her father’s work in the United States made it
USCA11 Case: 19-15091 Date Filed: 06/01/2021 Page: 2 of 15
wealthy. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied her applications for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture, and substantial evidence supports its decision. Sanchez-Castro is ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal because the gang that targeted her family did so only as a means to the end of obtaining funds, not because of any animus against her family. And she is ineligible for protection under the Convention Against Torture because she has not established that any harm she will suffer if returned to her home country will come with at least the acquiescence of a government official. We deny Sanchez-Castro’s petition for review.
. . . .
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“Tough noogies, Baby! Chief Judge Pryor and his all-male, all White ivory tower panel don’t see any nexus here! So, suffer and die, Baby, suffer and die!” “She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
To reach its incorrect and life-threatening endorsement of the BIA’s misconstruction of the nexus requirements (throwing out the normal rules of causation to achieve an anti-asylum-seeker result) the 11th Circuit panel eschewed a much better and more intellectually honest approach by the 4th Circuit in Hernandez-Avalos v. Lynch, 784 F.3d 944, 950 (4th Cir. 2015).
Notwithstanding Chief Judge Pryor’s cavalier attitude about sending Ms. Castro-Sanchez back to possible death or dismemberment at the hands of gangs who operate with relative impunity in El Salvador, these are not “academic exercises.” They are serious life or death matters involving bad law produced by a (non) “court” (the BIA) controlled by a law enforcement official (the Attorney General) that is not comprised of judges who are recognized experts in asylum and immigration laws and has over recent history construed the law against immigrants at almost every opportunity!
These two cases show the difference between this panel of the 9th Circuit that takes judicial review and what’s at stake seriously and the “indifferent to humanity” rubber-stamp approach applied by the 11th Circuit panel. We need better judges, progressives with expertise in due process, human rights, immigration, and racial justice at every level of our Federal Judiciary — from the Immigration Courts to the Supremes! Circuits like the 5th and the 11th with long and disgraceful records of relative indifference to the rights and lives of migrants, mostly those of color, are long, long overdue for infusion of better qualified progressive “practical scholars” and advocates.
That makes the progressive outrage over Garland’s totally inappropriate “giveaway” of Immigration Judge positions he controls to Barr-selected, non progressive, candidates who applied under a flawed recruitment process designed to discourage diversity and exclude the best qualified expert candidates from the private sector, along with his failure to address skewed anti-asylum-seeker precedents like L-E-A- and A-B– all the more understandable! It also makes changes that will put more expert, progressive, due-process oriented judges who have experience representing individuals in court all the more urgent!
Cases like this wouldn’t get into the “Article III Life or Death Lottery” if Garland had dealt promptly and properly with L-E-A-, A-B-, and other Trump-era, anti-asylum, anti-migrant, anti-due-process, misogynist precedents!
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland — His failure to institute long-overdue and obvious progressive due process reforms @ EOIR is costing Kelly Castro-Sanchez and other vulnerable refugee women their lives while enraging their advocates! It’s not an “academic exercise,” as Garland seems to think. There are real life consequences and irreparable harm from his failure to take due process, human rights, and racial justice seriously @ EOIR! Official White House Photo Public Realm
🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever! Tell the Biden Administration that we need progressives, not more “regressives,” on the Federal Bench, starting with the Immigration Courts! End abusive judging by a non-diverse Federal Judiciary!
Is this really the ‘preferred method’ for handling an asylum claim by a female Cuban refugee doctor? Judge Garland seems to think so!” Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal” 17th Century Woodcut Public Realm Source: Ancient Origins Website https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160
In April 2020, COVID-19 reached the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center in Eloy, Arizona. Dr. Merlys Rodriguez Hernandez, who had been detained there for six months, said she knew it would spread quickly.
Rodriguez Hernandez is originally from Cuba, where she and her husband, Lazaro, practiced medicine before they were forced to flee government persecution, she said. When they reached the U.S. border, they applied for asylum. Both were detained, in separate facilities, Merlys said. After eight months, Lazaro was granted protection from having to return to Cuba. Merlys’ petition, based on identical circumstances, was tried in a different immigration court – and denied, she said.
Cornell Law School’s Asylum Clinic took her case, under the direction of Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law practice, and Ian M. Kysel, visiting assistant clinical professor of law. Law students Conor Bednarski, J.D. ’21, and Michelle Zhu, J.D. ’21, litigated an appeal to the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals.
Conor Bednarski
Michelle Zhu
Meanwhile, Rodriguez Hernandez was trapped in a detention system raging with COVID-19, she said. She fell ill with the virus in May 2020 and spent 40 days in isolation, suffering from joint pain, body aches and severe diarrhea and confined to a cell she was expected to sanitize herself, she said. Tara Pilato, co-executive director emerita of the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights at Weill Cornell Medicine, who consulted on the case, observed that “the conditions Merlys reported were not only inhumane, but against all best practices for caring for patients with COVID-19.”
Kayleigh Yerdon
“Watching this preventable tragedy unfold week after week, as we were told to shelter in place, was the hardest part of working on this case,” Bednarski said.
As the pandemic spread, Bednarski and Zhu tried to secure Rodriguez Hernandez’s release, and then supported a collaboration with pro bono counsel who filed a habeas corpus writ in federal court.
Kayleigh Yerdon, J.D. ’21, took the lead on the case during the fall 2020 term. With Spanish interpretation assistance from Cornell doctor of juridical science student Ana Ruival, LLM ’19, Yerdon won her client’s release on bond. Rodriguez Hernandez was released in October 2020, after 13 months in detention, Yerdon said.
“As a law student, being able to step into court for the first time via teleconference and win, knowing my client would walk free as a result, was just an incredible experience,” Yerdon said. She also took on Lazaro’s case, successfully litigating a motion to reopen his case, and eventually securing him asylum, she said. Yerdon was recently honored with the Law School’s Freeman Award for Civil-Human Rights, in part in recognition for her clinical work.
Meryls’ case shows that some of the most harmful flaws in the immigration system can be addressed by applying basic rights principles, Kysel said.
Rodriguez Hernandez and her husband are now living in Kentucky as they work to appeal the denial of her request for asylum. She said she hopes to become an advocate for immigrants who remain detained during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the legal team has continued its efforts to engage in other advocacy and to amplify the impact of their legal work on the doctor’s case, Kysel and Yale-Loehr said.
Recently, Rodriguez Hernandez told her story in a first-person essay in the New England Journal of Medicine, with the support of her Cornell Law clinic team and a team from the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights, led by Pilato and Dr. Gunisha Kaur, assistant professor of anesthesiology.
“As one of our colleagues in the medical field, Merlys’ harrowing experience deserved attention from a medical-legal perspective,” said Pilato and Kaur. “The inhumane conditions in ICE detention centers have triggered some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the country.”
In the piece, Rodriguez Hernandez wrote, “It is a bitter irony that while the first waves of the pandemic ravaged the U.S., I remained in a detention system when I could have made a difference to patients in a health care system in dire need of providers.”
Owen Lubozynski is a freelance writer for Cornell Law School.
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Thanks to my good friend and renowned Immigration “Practical Scholar/Expert” Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr @ Cornell Law for alerting me to this item. And, many many congrats to these amazing students and members of the NDPA!😎👍
Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr Cornell Law
Note that in the dangerous and defective “court system” being run by Garland, the Respondent continues to struggle with appeals of her asylum denial even though her husband’s identical case wasGRANTED! Worse yet, both cases should have been “no brainer” asylum grants that could have been rapidly granted by the Asylum Office without detention or Immigration Court in a properly functioning system with expert judges setting correct asylum precedents at the BIA.
No wonder this system is continuing to deny justice, threaten lives, waste resources, and create backlogs under Garland! As noted in the above posting, even the New England Journal of Medicine is up in arms about this outrageous situation and mockery of our legal process!
But, Garland and his merry band at DOJ and EOIR seem impervious to criticism, rationality, or the rule of law! And to date, they have shown little or no willingness to engage constructively with progressive human rights and Immigration experts. I guess that’s what “Miller Lite Justice” is all about!
Garland continues to get his immigration advice from this source rather than inviting progressive experts in immigration, due process, and human rights, as well as rational administration, to his “Happy Hour @ EOIR.” “Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color
There is simply no excuse for Garland’s continued mishandling of EOIR and asylum law generally! And, bureaucratic “Dedicated Dockets” run from the Falls Church Tower won’t solve the problem. Not by a long shot!
Progressive advocates and members of the NDPA need to stay energized, stay angry, and keep letting the Biden Administration feel the outrage at Garland’s inexcusable continued mishandling of EOIR!These problems will NEVER be solved with the group currently calling the shots at EOIR!
So, the question remains, with all this expertise available and some obvious solutions to some really dumb and life-threatening procedures and policies, why are Garland and Mayorkas “groping in the dark”rather than bringing in and empowering the progressive experts who will solve these problems?
Due Process Forever! Let your continuing outrage at EOIR’s failure to deliver due process and fundamental fairness with efficiency and humanity be heard and felt by the Biden Administration! Don’t take “Good Enough for Government Work” as Equal Justice in America from Democrats or Republicans! “Just say no” to more “Miller Lite Dred Scottification” of asylum seekers and other migrants! Wonder why our nation is struggling with racial justice? Look no further than Garland’s mishandling of EOIR!
President Biden has put Vice President Harris in charge of border issues and racial justice reforms. Progressive advocates should let her know directly that Garland is NOT getting the job done at Justice, and that they are sick and tired of not being consulted and having their expert candidates for EOIR snubbed in favor of Trump holdovers and non-progressives! If her “legacy” includes EOIR’s racially and gender insensitive, due-process denying, intentionally non-diverse “Kangaroo Courts” carrying out the Miller/Sessions/Barr White Nationalist nativist agenda, it won’t be a “good look” for her or her future! And, it most certainly will be bad, perhaps fatal, for our nation’s future as a liberal democracy!
“Diversity @ EOIR” “What’s wrong with this picture? Let Vice President Harris know that you want a new, diverse, progressive, expert, humanitarian, due-process-oriented judiciary in our now broken, biased, and dysfunctional Immigration Courts!” https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up””Just how is a ‘Dedicated Docket’ using current EOIR precedents and methods, and with too many ‘judges’ still ‘programmed to deny asylum for any reason’ going to help me achieve justice? What if I’m sent to an ‘Asylum Free Zone’ or my fate is put in the hands of a judge striving to achieve membership in the ‘90% Denier Club’ encouraged by Sessions and Barr and still running rampant under Garland?” Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal” 17th Century Woodcut Public Realm Source: Ancient Origins Website https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160
ADR = “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” — a DOJ/EOIR specialty now being used by Garland’s DOJ
From: JeanC.King,ActingDirector Date: May 27, 2021
DEDICATED DOCKET
Effective:
OOD PM 21-23
May 28, 2021
PURPOSE:
OWNER: AUTHORITY:
CANCELLATION:
Establishes a dedicated docket for certain individuals in removal proceedings.
Office of the Director
Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) Memorandum, Case Priorities and Immigration Court Performance Measures (Jan. 2018); 8 C.F.R. § 1003.0(b)
Policy Memorandum 19-04
EOIR is initiating a Dedicated Docket to focus on the adjudication of family cases as designated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This docket will run alongside typical court operations in immigration courts in ten cities: Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle. DHS has indicated that it will be placing on the Dedicated Docket families who crossed the Southern border and whom DHS has placed on alternatives to detention. Cases will be identified for this docket as of the effective date of this memorandum.
EOIR’s immigration judges will endeavor to issue a decision in each case on the Dedicated Docket within 300 days after the initial master calendar hearing. To facilitate such timeliness while providing due process, EOIR will only schedule these cases before immigration judges who generally have docket time available to manage a case on that timeline, but EOIR recognizes that unique circumstances of each case may impact the ability to issue a decision within that period. As needed, the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge will provide additional case management guidance to assist immigration judges in meeting this goal.
EOIR remains committed to the timely resolution of immigration court cases in a fair and impartial manner. Importantly, the adjudication timeframe established by this policy memorandum (PM) and any subsequent case management guidance is an internal goal. Respondents whose cases are on these dockets have the opportunity to request continuances, as do all respondents in removal proceedings, and immigration judges retain discretion to determine whether a continuance should be granted for good cause. See 8 C.F.R. § 1003.29. EOIR expects
1
that its immigration judges will make these determinations with full consideration for a respondent’s statutory right to counsel and consistent with due process and fundamental fairness.
Respondents whose cases are placed on these dockets will be provided with a number of services, including access to information services and possible referral services to facilitate legal representation. Each city in which EOIR has established the Dedicated Docket has an established pro bono network.
EOIR previously tracked certain cases designated by DHS in select immigration court locations. See PM 19-04, Tracking and Expedition of “Family Unit” Cases (Nov. 16, 2018). This effort was discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not been resumed. Thus, PM 19-04 is rescinded.
EOIR is managing the hearings with full consideration for the safety of its employees and all parties who appear in court. EOIR will continue to implement practices and procedures consistent with information from public health officials and guidance from the Office of Personnel Management and the DOJ Justice Management Division. See PM 20-13, EOIR Practices Related to the COVID-19 Outbreak (June 11, 2020).
This PM is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or equities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
Please contact your supervisor if you have any questions regarding this PM.
2
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In theory, prioritizing timely adjudication of recently arrived asylum seekers in Immigration Court could be a good idea –along the lines that a number of us recommended to the Biden Transition Team. But, not this way!
This “tone-deaf missive from on high,” as usual, is “designed to fail” rather than “dressed for success:”
It relies heavily on the ready availability of pro bono legal services in certain locations, yet, incredibly, there was NO ADVANCE CONSULTATION & COORDINATION with those key groups;
It is not accompanied by grants or other support to legal assistance groups to help them provide universal representation to asylum seekers;
There is no reason to believe that Immigration Judges in these locations are well-qualified to decide asylum cases merely because they have “docket space available;” indeed there are gross disparities in asylum grant rates among the selected courts;
Anti-asylum precedents issued by the Trump Administration remain in effect which undoubtedly will lead to unfair denials of asylum;
Among these anti-asylum precedents are some incorrectly limiting and discouraging continuances and administrative closing — making the promise of flexibility and fairness totally disingenuous;
Before instituting new programs in consultation with the private bar, the DHS, and the NAIJ (representing the IJs who will actually have to control these dockets), EOIR must slash the backlog by removing from the docket the vast majority of “non-priority” cases forming the astounding, largely self created 1.3 million case backlog;
With better precedents by a new BIA with progressive asylum experts as judges, and some procedural changes, many more asylum cases could be granted “in the first instance” by the Asylum Office, thereby reducing the pressure on the Immigration Courts while reducing the incentives for frivolous opposition to asylum cases by ICE, a big “time waster” in Immigration Court; but no such “progressive thinking or practical problem solving” is reflected in this directive.
Half-baked bureaucratic directives like this won’t solve the problem! It’s just more proof of how completely unqualified Garland’s DOJ and EOIR leadership are to administer a “real court system.” Where are the Article I advocates in Congress? Removing the Immigration Courts from DOJ needs to be one of our highest National priorities.
🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever! DOJ/EOIR incompetence, never!
Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)
Office of Policy, Immigration Law Division
Falls Church, Virginia
Announcement #: EOIR-21-0039
Application Deadline: June 8, 2021
The Attorney Advisor provides technical legal advice on the development and implementation of agency-wide policies for all agency functions.
Area of Consideration:
This position is open to Federal Employees.
Duties include but are not limited to the following:
Drafts and conducts legal reviews of draft regulations, policy directives, and a variety of non-adjudicatory operations.
Performs comprehensive research regarding newly enacted statutes, proposed Federal legislation and regulations, DOJ regulations, and policy statements; prepares legal memoranda necessary as related to such research.
Provides sound recommendations in response to a wide range of questions of immigration law and policy involved in the operations of the Agency and the effect of such operations on other activities, Government agencies, industry, and the general public.
*******************************
This exchange of comments received at “Courtside” says it all:
Q: Why would this be limited to Federal Employees?
A: No idea.But it doesn’t seem as if they are planning to dismantle McHenry’s Office of Policy.Courts don’t have Offices of Policy to my knowledge.
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No, real “courts” don’t have this bureaucratic nonsense created specifically to suppress judicial independence and to create political influence on what is supposed to be independent, expert judging. It also fed the nonsensical Barr attempt to pass off Immigration Judges (basically reduced to the status of “deportation clerks on an assembly line” under Trump) as “policy officials” to “bust” their union (NAIJ) and keep it from exposing abuses and fighting for judicial independence from political meddling.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a retired member of the NAIJ.
“Real courts” might have “Chief Judges,” basically “first among equals” who handle administrative tasks on behalf of their colleagues in addition to performing daily judicial duties. They DON”T have a plethora of “Chiefs, Deputy Chiefs, Chiefs of Staff, Directors, Deputy Directors, Associate Directors, Assistant Chiefs, Unit Chiefs, Executive Assistants, Office Heads, and “Counsel to” many of the foregoing.
As many of us pointed out to the Biden Transition Team, Garland should have “lost” the “bureaucratic, Vatican-style, hierarchical, wasteful, ineffective, bloated bureaucracy” @ EOIR and replaced it with “leaner, progressive, expert judicial leadership” who would:
See that qualified progressive expert judges were appointed on a merit basis;
Replace the BIA with qualified, progressive, “practical scholar” judges to provide uniform legal guidance and enforce due process;
Change the hiring criteria and recruiting practices to encourage diversity and more applicants from the private sector;
Get a functioning e-filing system and other basic professional support for judges and the public in place;
Fend off attempts by politicos at the DOJ, DHS, and White House to interfere with judicial independence once qualified progressive judges are in place at EOIR.
If there is any “legal policy” to be made, that’s the job of the BIA, once comprised of practical experts in due process, immigration, and human rights.
If there are “administrative policies” that need to be instituted to improve due process and efficiency, those should be developed by an “Immigration Judicial Conference” composed of sitting judges, BIA Judges, and perhaps Circuit Court Judges, with meaningful dialogue and input from the private sector and the DHS.
Support functions should be coordinated by a lean, professional “Administrative Office” patterned on the “Administrative Office for U.S. Courts” that serves the Article III Judiciary.
There should also be a transparent system, with public members and judges, to handle ethics and conduct complaints about judges.
Additionally, a training function with some model judicial training should be part of the structure.
There is absolutely no need for all the current ridiculous “quotas, ratings, supervision, policy memos, performance work plans, adjudication centers, and other bureaucratic nonsense” that eat up resources without furthering the mission of guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.
Bureaucrats are incapable of phasing out bureaucracy and replacing it with something better. That’s why every day that Garland dawdles in getting in the progressive talent from outside Government necessary to reform EOIR, ditch the bureaucracy, and turn it into a functioning, progressive, model court system is a “killer” — both figuratively and literally!
If there is a single “ask” I would have of Judge Garland, it’s for him to stop thinking like the DOJ bureaucrat he once was and start acting like an independent Federal Judge (which he also once was) constructing a completely new progressive court system designed to be the “world’s best!”
That’s NOT going to happen by mindlessly and wastefully hiring more “insider Attorney Advisors” for a bogus and unnecessary “Office of Policy!”
“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color
Here’s yet another“big middle finger” 🖕 to progressives and experts from Garland and Mayorkas:
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Office of Public Affairs
DHS and DOJ Announce Dedicated Docket Process for More Efficient Immigration Hearings
WASHINGTON – Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced a new Dedicated Docket process to more expeditiously and fairly make decisions in immigration cases of families who arrive between ports of entry at the Southwest Border. This new process should significantly decrease the amount of time it takes for migrants to have their cases adjudicated while still providing fair hearings for families seeking asylum at the border.
“Families arriving at the border who are placed in immigration proceedings should have their cases decided in an orderly, efficient, and fair manner,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “Families who have recently arrived should not languish in a multi-year backlog; today’s announcement is an important step for both justice and border security.”
“The mission of the Department of Justice’s immigration courts is to decide the cases that come before them promptly and fairly,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “This new program for certain newly arriving families will help achieve that critically important goal.”
Under this new process, certain recently arrived families may be placed on the Dedicated Docket. Families may qualify if they are apprehended between ports of entry on or after Friday, May 28, 2021, placed in removal proceedings, and enrolled in Alternatives to Detention (ATD). DHS, in partnership with the Department of Justice (DOJ) Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), will make available information services to help families understand the immigration system and refer families to pro bono legal service providers for possible representation.
EOIR has identified immigration courts in 10 cities with established communities of legal services providers and available judges to handle the cases. The designated cities are Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Under the Dedicated Docket, EOIR’s immigration judges will work generally to issue a decision within 300 days of the initial master calendar hearing, subject to the unique circumstances of each case including allowing time for families to seek representation where needed. While the goal of this process is to decide cases expeditiously, fairness will not be compromised.
CGRS Concerned Biden Policies Will Undermine Fairness, Endanger Refugee Families
San Francisco, CA (May 28, 2021) – The Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) is deeply concerned by today’s announcement that the Biden administration will begin fast-tracking asylum cases for certain families seeking refuge. By establishing a “dedicated docket” for asylum-seeking families, the administration will sacrifice fairness in the name of speed, adopting a misguided approach that under both the Obama and Trumpadministrations contributed to record backlogs in the immigration system, eroded due process, and endangered lives. Instead of reviving the failed policies of past administrations, the Biden administration should swiftly end cruel and illegal Trump-era policies and fully restore safe asylum processing at the southern border.
Today’s announcement arrives at a time when families seeking asylum face enormous roadblocks to safety and justice. Over four months into its first term, the Biden administration has failed to end myriad Trump-era policies that continue to place refugees at risk of grave violence, and even death. It is shameful that the administration is prioritizing fast-tracked adjudications while continuing to illegally expel asylum seekers to danger under the widelydebunked pretext of the pandemic. So long as the Title 42 policy remains in place, there can be no safe or fair process for asylum seekers.
The Biden administration also has yet to address Trump policies that have gutted protections for people escaping domestic violence and gang brutality, including many of the families impacted by this new policy. Until Attorney General Garlandtakes action to reverse these policies, the asylum system will remain rigged against families fleeing violence in their homes and communities, who will be wrongly denied protection and ordered deported to the very dangers they’ve fled. Rushing adjudications will make it even more difficult for these families to find safety, further undermining any semblance of fairness in the asylum process.
“CGRS and our partners have set forth a clearroadmap for the Biden administration to adjudicate asylum cases in a timely manner and mitigate backlogs, all while improving fairness and protecting due process,” CGRS Legal Director Blaine Bookey said today. “As advocates, we’ve been down this road before. We know policies that rush asylum adjudications fail to keep families and children safe. We implore the administration not to make the mistake of putting speed above justice.”’
Advocates, asylum seekers, and communities are coming together to demand an asylum system that provides every person a safe and fair opportunity to seek protection, with full access to legal representation and community-based support. The Biden administration should put humanity first, reject the cruel policies of the past, and welcome people seeking asylum with dignity.
Brianna Krong | Communications and Advocacy Coordinator
“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” — At DOJ, Garland, Lisa Monaco, Vanita Gupta, and Kristen Clarke appear to regard refugee women applying for asylum at the Southern Border as “less than human.” Human dignity is a bad joke in Garland’s “Star Chambers.” Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Here are other initial comments from asylum experts:
I don’t think there was any consultation w/ private bar. NGOs are very upset. Biden administration just held a q and a about two hours ago to answer NGO questions but there’s a lot of unknowns remaining.
Lots of NGOs are off today because of the long weekend but many are working to respond to this and the President’s budget.
See NGO press release in response to President’s budget:
We Are Home Campaign Deeply Disappointed by Biden’s DHS Budget Request
Calls on Congress to Do Better
Washington, DC —President Biden’s FY 2022 budget, released today, requests $2.7 billion from Congress for ICE detention – almost the same amount enacted by Congress last year under the Trump Administration. It includes funds for 2,500 family detention beds. Alongside recent increases in the number of people jailed by ICE, this budget request is an alarming signal that DHS and the President are not heeding the call of the immigrant justice movement to reduce and ultimately end the federal government’s harmful and unnecessary reliance on incarceration for immigration processing.
In response to the news, Bridgette Gomez, Director of the We Are Home campaign, said:
“We are deeply disappointed to see that DHS plans to continue Trump-era levels of ICE detention. Candidate Biden promised an immigration policy that reflects our highest values as a nation. As president, Biden has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to racial equity. Any plan that doesn’t dramatically shrink ICE’s incarceration system – which mostly jails Black and Brown people – betrays those commitments. We’ll be looking to Congress to do better and cut ICE’s budget significantly.”
In March, We Are Home joined the Defund Hate coalition in calling on Congress to cut funding for ICE and CBP by at least 50 percent.
In February, the campaign sent comprehensive recommendations to DHS to overhaul enforcement and begin to dismantle the detention and deportation machinery that has devastated millions of families, mostly Black and Brown, and squandered billions of taxpayer dollars. These recommendations included policies to cut detention, including 1) a comprehensive file review of all people in ICE custody, with a presumption of release, and 2) an end to the use of private prisons and state and local jails for ICE detention. The urgency to reduce the detained population is even greater during the pandemic, since people in jails and prisons face particular risk of contracting COVID. ICE has no centralized plan to provide vaccines for people in its custody.”
We Are Home is a nationwide campaign to fight for immigrant communities on three fronts: prioritizing and demanding a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in America; a moratorium and overhaul of interior enforcement; and broad affirmative relief from deportation. We Are Home is co-chaired by Community Change/Community Change Action; National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA)/Care in Action; Service Employees International Union (SEIU); United Farm Workers/UFW Foundation; and United We Dream.
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The NGOs are quite upset.Note that this comes days after the Fourth Circuit enforced an IJ’s duty to fully develop the record even in represented cases.And yet here is the administration speeding up the assembly line.
In my view, this will lead to more pro se I-589s being filed.And as Sessions vacated Matter of E-F-H-L-, there is now no safeguard in either case law or regs preventing IJs from summarily denying those I-589s for e.g. failing to correctly delineate a PSG.
I can’t for the life of me understand this administration’s determination topreserveTrump’s policies.
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Quick takes:
Because the system would depend almost entirely on NGOs and pro bono groups to provide counsel, developing policies without consulting those groups or providing grants to increase representation is totally inappropriate, not to mention stupid and insulting;
Special expedited asylum dockets have failed in the last two Administrations, so why try a “proven failure” once again?
Assigning certain Immigration Judges to these “priority dockets” –without first removing non-priority cases from the docket, will result in more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” and increased backlogs;
Professor Karen Musalo Director, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Hastings LawProfessor Stephen H. Legomsky Emeritus Professor of Law. & Former USG Senior Executive Washington U. Law PHOTO: Washington U. Law website
The 10 Immigration Courts selected for this project have widely varying asylum denial rates. For example, for the period 2015-20, according to TRAC, El Paso (an “Asylum Free Zone”) had a denial rate of 90% and New York a denial rate of 32%. How can a system including such extremes be “fair?”
In just a short time, Garland’s outrageous mishandling of the Immigration Courts, and his disdain for expert progressive advice and appointments, shows exactly why Congress must remove these “courts” from the incompetent and biased administration of the DOJ and create an independent U.S. Immigration Court;
Until that happens, progressives and advocates will have to deal with Garland’s “in your face arrogance and ignorance” the same way they dealt with Sessions and Barr — with massive resistance and unending litigation until Garland’s corrupt, incompetent, biased system grinds to a halt.
Turning potential powerful and helpful friends into motivated and committed enemies! Seems pretty stupid to me.
Stephen Miller rightfully made lots of enemies with his racist, neo-Nazi shenanigans. But, he did please and energize his nativist, White Nationalist supporters!
By contrast, Garland has rapidly turned progressive supporters into enemies. But, he won’t get one iota of appreciation or support from Miller and his White Nationalist nativist supporters in the GOP.
Creating policies that are universally opposed or panned. That takes some impressive negative leadership and political idiocy!
Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com. — Why won’t Garland repudiate “Gonzo’s” racist, misogynist, anti-due-process policies @ EOIR? Republished under license“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray”– Garland’s failure to repeal Matter of A-B-, revoke other xenophobic precedents and rules, and appoint progressive asylum experts to end the institutionalized racism, misogyny, and denial of due process at EOIR has become a national disgrace that is crippling the Biden Administration and squandering the support of progressives! Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
El Salvador’s house of horror becomes grisly emblem of war on women
Authorities have sought to portray the ex-policeman at whose home up to 40 bodies, mostly female, may be buried, as a freakish psychopath, despite the arrest of nine other suspects
Bryan Avelar in Chalchuapa and Tom Phillips
Published:
05:00 Tuesday, 25 May 2021
Day after day they flock to the emerald green house on Estévez Street, seeking news of loved ones who have vanished without a trace.
“They say there are lots in there, maybe 40,” said Jessenia Elizabeth Francia, a 38-year-old housewife who had travelled 20 miles to reach the heavily guarded building under a punishing midday sun.
Francia had come to Chalchuapa, a small town in western El Salvador, in search of her son, Luis Fernando, who disappeared seven years ago at the age of 16. “I just want to find at least his bones so I can bury them and find peace,” she said, clutching a cellphone showing a photograph of her missing child and the words: “I have faith.”
Others sought daughters or wives, Central American women feared to have fallen prey to the house’s proprietor, the former police officer and alleged serial killer Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez, who is feared to have buried his victims inside.
El Salvador: dozens of bodies found at ex-cop’s house investigated as femicides
“She was 24,” said Candelaria Carranza Castro, a silver-haired mother whose daughter went missing in July 2015 and who was among those to visit the house on Monday. “Whatever has happened I want to find her.”
The mass grave at No 11 Estévez Street was discovered on the night of 7 May after neighbours called police having heard the cries of a young woman. By the time police arrived more than an hour later she and her mother were dead – reportedly bludgeoned to death with an iron tube by Osorio, who confessed to the crimes. While taking the 51-year-old into custody, police stumbled across the half-buried bodies of two men in the house’s patio and, when they started digging, found more corpses below in a series of pits.
Authorities have yet to announce the precise number of bodies buried inside but the excavators still probing its foundations believe there could be as many as 40, and no fewer than 15.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
What, exactly, is Garland doing about EOIR to justify his continuance in office? What about supposed social justice, gender justice “activists” Lisa Monaco, Vanita Gupta, and Kristen Clarke? The continuing human rights, gender rights farce at DOJ and EOIR should outrage all progressives and be a continuing stain on all the reputations of feckless Biden Administration officials at the failed and ever more failing DOJ !
“Floaters — How The World’s Richest Country Responds To Asylum Seekers” EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT – The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Mart??nez Ram??rez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, Monday, June 24, 2019, after they drowned trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. Martinez’ wife, Tania told Mexican authorities she watched her husband and child disappear in the strong current. (AP Photo/Julia Le Duc)“Justice” Star Chamber StyleStephen Miller & Count Olaf Evil Twins, Notorious Child Abusers: Their policies are still being carried out by Biden, Harris, Garland, and Mayorkas
By Psyche Calderon, Hannah Janeway and Ronica Mukerjee
In a steadily growing encampment mere yards south of the U.S.-Mexico border, we are led to a little girl with a fever. She lies dehydrated and wrapped in her parents’ possessions inside a waterlogged tent. Recently deported from the United States under a Trump-era pandemic policy, the family is camped next to the border wall with thousands of others who have nowhere to go.
In recent months, much attention and political outrage have focused on unaccompanied children crossing into the U.S. and being detained in government custody. But less scrutiny has been given to the mass deportations of migrant families and vulnerable adults expelled with no due process during the pandemic under a U.S. health law called Title 42, which allows the government to bar people from countries where communicable disease exists.
For more than a year — and in the name of public health — the government has been summarily expelling migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, ignoring epidemiologists and health experts, violating the migrants’ human rights and creating a critical situation in Tijuana and other border towns.
As medical professionals who provide care in encampments and shelters in Tijuana, we’ve seen how this expulsion policy has caused a humanitarian emergency in northern Mexico. Even as these encampments become increasingly overcrowded and unsafe, many migrants and their families are still being denied entry or quickly expelled by the U.S. government. The Biden administration has carried out roughly 350,000 expulsions, including nearly 50,000 families.
The administration, as part of a legal settlement, recently agreed to process up to 250 asylum seekers a day deemed vulnerable by advocacy groups so they may continue to pursue their asylum cases in the United States.
However, this is nowhere near sufficient to address the widespread human rights violations and humanitarian crisis we see every day in Tijuana. There are still many thousands of asylum seekers along the border who were previously subjected to inhumane detention and expulsions — and who are now grappling with the subsequent fallout and trauma.
Migrants in Tijuana are subjected to targeted violence by cartels, squalid conditions in encampments and shelters, and despair after the U.S. lied to many of them about their expulsions. Some asylum seekers have said Border Patrol agents told them they were being transferred to a shelter in another U.S. city when, in fact, they were sent to Mexico.
As co-founders of an organization providing healthcare to migrants stranded in Tijuana, we have been working around the clock to provide medical care.
We have seen increasing dehydration, malnutrition and infectious diseases associated with overcrowding. At an encampment in Tijuana that shelters about 2,000 asylum seekers, there are no formal sanitation facilities; gastrointestinal illnesses are causing severe illness in newborns and young children. Chronic diseases and mental health disorders, left untreated, could become death sentences. The migrants have been forced to camp amid very cold temperatures at night during winter months.
Disease is not the only threat. Families fear cartel activity and kidnappings since vulnerable migrants are often targeted for violence. More than 80% of LGBTQ refugees in Baja California reported surviving an assault in Mexico from mid-February to March. Last month, we received a late-night phone call from a lawyer asking for our help. The client — a transgender woman — had been stabbed, forced into hiding and was afraid to go to the local hospital in Tijuana because they are often unsafe places for sexual minorities. We were able to provide her basic medical care, but many others are not as lucky.
The Title 42 expulsion order has been used by the U.S. to essentially eliminate asylum at the border and put thousands of people in immediate danger by either returning them to their countries of origin or to Mexican border cities, even if the asylum seekers are not Mexican or do not speak Spanish. While the administration recently ceased cross-border expulsion flights — a reckless approach during the pandemic used to transfer and expel migrants to Mexico — officials have reserved the right to reinstate them as needed.
The policy has disproportionately affected Black migrants, who are often Haitian. They are expelled without due process back to persecution in Haiti or to pervasive anti-Black violence in northern Mexico — leaving them without access to healthcare, psychological support, safety or asylum.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
I’ve said it many times: The Biden Administration’s efforts to achieve racial justice in America will fail as long as they carry out scofflaw racist immigration policies at the border and Garland runs White Nationalist star chambers @ EOIR under the guise of “courts.” Rhetoric is meaningless without action to back it up! And the fight for racial justice in America begins at the border and in our dysfunctional, lawless Immigration “Courts!”
WaPo: Haitians granted protected status will be exempted from deportation for 18 months. At that point, the Biden administration could choose to renew the designation…Only Haitians already present in the United States are eligible, so migrants who arrive after May 21 would still face potential deportation, according to DHS.
NYT: The new policy effectively guarantees that American and binational couples who use assisted reproductive technology to give birth overseas — such as surrogates or sperm donations — can pass along citizenship to their children.
AP: The Biden administration has agreed to let about 250 people a day through border crossings with Mexico to seek refuge in the United States, part of negotiations to settle a lawsuit over pandemic-related powers that deny migrants a right to apply for asylum, an attorney said Monday.
BBC: The US has a vast system of detention sites scattered across the country, holding more than 20,000 migrant children. In a special investigation, the BBC has uncovered allegations of cold temperatures, sickness, neglect, lice and filth, through a series of interviews with children and staff.
WaPo: Federal officials chose the two facilities mainly because their detention rosters have shrunk and they are “no longer operationally necessary,” said a Department of Homeland Security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s deliberations. Bristol is holding seven detainees out of nearly 200 beds; Irwin has 114 detainees out of almost 1,000 beds.
UN: The agency reminded that, at the height of the pandemic, many countries put in place protocols such as health screening, testing, and quarantine measures, to simultaneously protect both public health and the right to seek asylum.
Hill: The rule was finalized by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which oversees the immigration court system, on Jan. 19, but it has since been blocked amid pending litigation. Though it was one of many rules targeted by the Biden administration for review in an early February executive order, the administration has yet to take any action to formally unwind it through the lengthy rulemaking process.
BuzzFeed: Cristian San Martín Estrada, 19, had been waiting in Mexico since 2019 after asking US immigration authorities for asylum, according to his uncle. As part of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, Estrada was sent back to Mexico after seeking refuge at the border while a US judge adjudicated his case.
Hill: Even as the State Department ramps up vaccinations of its staff, the complications of processing visas during the pandemic are creating a pileup on top of an already daunting backlog.
Politico: The Biden administration is most optimistic about working with Guatemala because it’s willing to talk about the tough issues. And it’s not Honduras or El Salvador.
SCOTUSblog: In 2018, Palomar-Santiago was found back in the United States, and he was indicted for illegally re-entering the country after being deported. Palomar-Santiago sought to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision in Leocal meant that his original removal order was invalid. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with Palomar-Santiago, but in an opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court disagreed.
Law360: A federal appellate court on Monday upheld the conviction and more than eight-year prison sentence of a Rwandan man for lying about his participation in the 1994 Rwandan genocide during asylum and removal proceedings.
Summary order from the Second Circuit vacating due to the IJ’s failure to fully explore competency/mental health issues and to consider for the purposes of credibility. KO had a diagnosis of PTSD detailed in the record, and the judge failed to consider this and the fact that they were taking medication for the PTSD in making a MAM assessment and also in assessing credibility.
LexisNexis: Cazahuatl Torres v. Garland (unpub.) “Because the agency “ignor[ed] a significant aspect of [Cazahuatl Torres’s] testimony . . . we are unable adequately to consider whether substantial evidence” in this case supports the BIA’s determination that Cazahuatl Torres failed to demonstrate a well-founded fear of future persecution.
CA2: Because the agency failed to consider relevant evidence that Akre could easily be located due to his tribal identity, that civil strife is ongoing, and that internal movement is restricted, it erred in relying solely on evidence that the northern part of Côte d’Ivoire is predominantly Muslim and that the government encourages religious tolerance to conclude that it would be reasonable for Akre to relocate.
Law360: The Third Circuit on Wednesday refused to undo removal orders for a Honduran native who feared harm by a gang that committed rape and murder on his family members, reasoning in a precedential decision that the activity didn’t signal the threat of government persecution that would justify staying in the U.S.
In a nonprecedent decision, the AAO withdrew the Director’s decision denying the applicant’s Form I-212 and remanded, finding that it did not reflect a proper analysis of the favorable and unfavorable factors in the applicant’s case. Courtesy of Alan Lee. In Re: 5511191 (AAO 5/6/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051934
Law360: The attorneys general of Texas, Missouri and Arizona urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to allow them to intervene in a lawsuit to reinstate the Trump-era policy forcing asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico during their immigration proceedings, arguing they should be allowed to defend the policy since the Biden administration won’t.
Law360: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have asked a Texas federal court to dismiss a lawsuit over the now-defunct 100-day deportation freeze, jointly saying the object of the suit no longer exists.
Law360: A pair of Boston-area district attorneys on Friday dropped their suit challenging a federal government policy allowing civil immigration arrests in courthouses after the Biden administration issued new guidance limiting the practice.
AIC: The American Immigration Council and Black Alliance for Just Immigration filed 10 Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain government records about the conditions, treatment, and outcomes Black immigrants face in eight immigration detention facilities throughout U.S. southern states.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas announced a new 18-month designation of Haiti for TPS, enabling Haitian nationals and individuals without nationality who last resided in Haiti currently residing in the U.S. as of 5/21/21 to file initial applications for TPS as long as they meet eligibility requirements. AILA Doc. No. 21052430
Advance copy of USCIS notice designating Burma for TPS for 18 months, from 5/25/21 through 11/25/22. The notice will be published in the Federal Register on 5/25/21. AILA Doc. No. 21052436
On 5/18/21, President Biden issued a memorandum directing the Attorney General to “consider expanding DOJ’s planning, development, and coordination of access-to-justice policy initiatives,” and reinvigorating the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR). (86 FR 27793, 5/21/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051833
Attorney General Garland issued a memo reinvigorating DOJ’s Office for Access to Justice and announcing a process to develop a plan for expanding DOJ’s role in leading access-to-justice policy initiatives, including on how DOJ and partners can address barriers to access in the immigration systems. AILA Doc. No. 21051900
On 5/14/21, President Biden revoked Presidential Proclamation 9945 of October 4, 2019, which suspended the entry of immigrants who would financially burden the U.S. healthcare system. (86 FR 27015, 5/19/21) AILA Doc. No. 21051400
DOS announced that children born abroad to parents, at least one of whom is a U.S. citizen and who are married to each other at the time of the birth, will be U.S. citizens from birth if they have a genetic or gestational tie to at least one of their parents and meet the INA’s other requirements. AILA Doc. No. 21051840
DHS issued a statement on the expiration of the 100-day pause on removals. Per the statement: “DHS does not intend to extend or reinstate a policy requiring a pause on the execution of final orders of removal for any noncitizens.” AILA Doc. No. 21052132
BIA Asylum Panel In Action — What are Garland, Monaco, and Gujpta doing to end these atrocities!? So far, nothing! Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Arevalo Quintero v. Garland, 4th Cir., 05-26-21, published
PANEL:MOTZ, WYNN, and FLOYD, Circuit Judges.
OPINION BY: Judge Wynn
CONCURRING OPINION: Judge Motz
KEY QUOTE:
In our country, few populations are as vulnerable as noncitizens facing removal
proceedings who are unable to secure the assistance of adequate counsel. Yet the consequences they may face are severe: family separation, prolonged detention, and deportation to a country where persecution or even death awaits.
We are acutely conscious of the harsh realities of our immigration system faced by thousands of noncitizens each day. These individuals come to our shores in search of sanctuary and a better life. Many are poor, young, uneducated, or (like Petitioner) all three. Of course, we recognize that immigration policies are primarily a concern for the elected branches. But it is our role, and our highest duty, to ensure that those policies are applied fairly and with full regard to our laws and our Constitution.
With these grave concerns in mind, we hold today that under the Immigration and Nationality Act and, where relevant, the United States’ obligations under the Refugee Convention, immigration judges have a legal duty to fully develop the record, which becomes particularly important in pro se cases. We believe this procedural protection is essential for ensuring fundamental fairness and reasoned decision making in removal proceedings.
Based on our review of the record, we conclude that the immigration judge below failed to fulfill her duty to fully develop the record, thereby depriving Petitioner of a vital statutory protection and a full and fair hearing. In light of this and other errors made by the immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals, we grant the petition, vacate Petitioner’s final order of removal, and remand to the Board of Immigration Appeals with instructions to remand the case to the immigration judge for further fact-finding and reconsideration of Petitioner’s application for withholding of removal and Convention Against Torture relief.
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“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color
How many more of these disasters will it take for Garland to oust the deadwood and the “denial club” from the Immigration Judiciary, make the urgently needed, long overdue progressive reforms, and bring in progressive leaders and judges to restore due process at the totally and disgracefully dysfunctional EOIR? How many more lives will be needlessly be lost or squandered by the unconstitutional parody of a “court” system that Garland is running @ EOIR?What will the cost of his “case of the slows” be to Garland’s reputation and to the Biden Administration? Why is the “EOIR Clown Show”🤡⚰️still engaging in its daily deadly performances more than four months into the Biden Administration?
Also, every additional embarrassing, unprofessional performance like this by EOIR makes Garland’s horrible decision to hire 17 more “less than the best,” non-expert Immigration Judges, who haven’t represented individuals in Immigration Court, look worse and worse! There are lots of experts out there in the NDPA who know asylum law, know how to develop a record fully, and are highly sensitive to the due process needs of asylum seekers and other migrants. The continuation of ignorant, haste make waste, “any reason to get to no” decision making at EOIR, that specifically was encouraged by Sessions and Barr, is totally unnecessary ands highly inappropriate!
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
Here’s more from Round Table leader Hon. “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:
Friends, this is a really great win.In a 62-page published decision, a panel of the Fourth Circuit referenced our amicus brief, adopted many of our arguments, and agreed that an IJ has a duty to develop the record in a pro se withholding/CAT claim.
The court actually granted the withholding of removal claim (see pp. 53-54).It also found that the BIA incorrectly applied Matter of W-Y-C- & H-O-B- to a pro se applicant.
While our brief is mentioned in the body of the decision, if you look at footnote 24, the court especially liked the analogy from our brief (the work of our drafter, Steve Schulman of Akin Gump) comparinga pro se applicant’s attempts to formulate a particular social group to a game of Scrabble in which one of the players “does not speak English and cannot spell;” adding that “without help, the respondent could never win, and can’t even meaningfully participate.”
There are also references to Matter of S-M-J- and the UNHCR Handbook.
I think we can be very proud of this one.
Thanks again to Steve Schulman, who has done such an outstanding job in drafting quite a few of our briefs.
Best, Jeff
Just think of what could be accomplished and the resources that would be conserved if the progressive due process experts were on the INSIDE at EOIR rather than perpetually STUCK ON THE OUTSIDE litigating, writing, lobbying, complaining to get Garland to simply do his job! Not rocket science. But, apparently below Garland’s view and beyond his engagement level from the “ivory tower.”
Thanks to Round Table “Fearless Knightess” Judge Sue Roy of NJ for spearheading this effort and taking the drafting lead. Now, a private practitioner, Sue is one of the thousands of lawyers and millions of individuals and family members directly affected by the continuing dysfunction at EOIR and Garland’s failure to bring in progressive leadership from the NDPA to make long-overdue “no brainer” reforms @ EOIR.🆘
In an interesting coincidence, the 17 improperly certified precedents from Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr matches the 17 inappropriate and insulting “Miller Lite/Barr Leftover” Immigration Judge appointments that Garland just made!
One thing is for sure: Garland its NOT getting the job done for progressives nor is he restoring due process at EOIR. Instead, the deadly,☠️ disgusting 🤮downward spiral continues every day!
A FEW MONTHS BEFORE COVID-19 descended, I spent a week in Dilley, Texas, as a volunteer attorney at the South Texas Family Residential Center, which is essentially a holding center, specifically for women and their children. It’s the last stop before expedited removal and the place where many women and children are sent once they’ve claimed fear of persecution for the purpose of applying for asylum, or for those who have also been apprehended internally.
I was working with asylum seekers at the Mexican border port of entry, where people were held without answers for weeks, even months, while they awaited the next step in their asylum claims: the credible fear interview. If asylum seekers, fleeing persecution in their home countries, declare their fear of returning, they are detained as they await this interview, which will determine whether they can proceed to the next step: appearing before an immigration judge to request asylum. The conversation leads to a proverbial thumbs up or down, a trip to a courtroom or the border they just fled. If an asylum officer determines that their story has objective elements of credible fear, they may proceed to the next legal step. Officers essentially check required elements off a list, including what the specific act of persecution is, if the asylum seeker knows the reason why she’s been persecuted, how many times it happened, if she has sought help to remediate it, and more. In other words, asylum seekers’ lives depend on the hour or so answering questions spent either in a small room or, more likely, over the phone with a government official and interpreter.
Right now, our country again faces a critical point in defining our identity: are we in fact a country founded on freedom and designed to welcome those in need? The Biden administration states that it aims to help asylum seekers, but in order to do so we need to reevaluate how we approach asylum at all levels. That begins with reassessing how we determine credible fear.
During my brief time working in Dilley, I helped women prepare for their credible fear interviews. Many asylum seekers might not understand the process, nor necessarily know which details of their stories determine what the United States has deemed credible fear. Asylum is not a guaranteed right, and attorneys are not permitted to help during the interview; thus, preparation is key.
I spoke with a woman who fled five countries to escape her abusive boyfriend. The man followed her from country to country, raping her and threatening her life in each country. No matter where she fled in South and Central America, he followed her. Her five-year-old son, a product of one of these rapes, held her hand during our conversation in the detention center. I spoke with another woman who was threatened by a well-known drug cartel. Through her tears, she could barely communicate to me that they had already killed her brother, taken her money, patrolled the school where she taught, and routinely policed her town, spitting bullets as easily as words. As I interviewed the women, they cradled their young children, who were also visibly traumatized by what they had experienced in their home countries, by their journeys to the United States, and finally by the process to gain safety on this side of the border.
The credible fear interview places the burden of establishing fear on the applicant and is supposed to be non-adversarial, but given the nature of everything that precedes the interview — the lack of representation during the process, the jail-like location in which it takes place, the asylum officer’s constant questions — it feels adversarial. And this is just the first step. If the officer determines that she does have credible fear, the next step is to present her case to an immigration judge in a proper hearing.
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Sadly, and completely unnecessarily and inappropriately, there is nobody in a leadership position at DOJ right now with Elizabeth Silver’s practical insights and understanding of our broken asylum system and how it can be fixed! I’ll bet that neither Garland nor anyone on his senior staff has spent a week at Dilley or any comparable site in the “New American Gulag” trying to represent vulnerable asylum seekers in Garland’s “wholly owned star chamber courts.”
Has Garland even taken the time to observe what’s happening in Dilley, Pearsall, Texas (“home of the Big Peanut”); Jena, Louisiana; Lumpkin, Georgia (“where asylum cases go to die”), or any of the other comparable “courts” (that don’t function like “courts” at all)? Has he ever spoken to asylum applicants and their pro bono lawyers trying to negotiate his fatally flawed and intentionally “user unfriendly” system? Has he gone out and hired progressive “practical scholars” to fill in his “blind spots?”
Round Table Judges John Richardson and I have “seen the Peanut” and lived to tell about it! Pictured here in 2015 with then Pearsall JLC B. Atenis Madico.
That says loads about AG Merrick Garland — none of it good! “Ignorance,” “intransigence,” and “good enough for government work” are not acceptable approaches for the Biden Administration! Yet that’s exactly what Garland has “delivered” on immigration, human rights, racial justice, and gender equity during his first three months at “Justice.”
Of course it’s adversarial! Totally, these days!
The White Nationalist racists in the Trump regime like Miller, “Gonzo” Sessions, “Wolfman,” “Cooch Cooch,” and “Billy the Bigot” hated asylum seekers, people of color, and women and “biased out” the system and selection processes accordingly. Heck, in clear violation of the statute, Trump even replaced USCIS Asylum Officers with totally unqualified Border Patrol Agents to insure denial of even the most compelling claims!
Sessions bogusly bellyached about too many individuals passing “credible fear.” To the contrary, this was totally appropriate, given the “super generous” standards that are supposed to be applied at the “access to the system gateway.” The real systemic problem was in the historically poor performance of the Immigration Courts on asylum grants that got immeasurably worse under Sessions and Barr. (And has remained beyond horrible under Garland’s non-existent “leadership!”)
As almost all legitimate human rights experts would confirm, the “high rejection rate” later in Immigration Court results from far, far, far too many unqualified, non-expert, improperly selected, poorly trained, Immigration “Judges” — at both the trial and appellate levels — operating in a “culture of institutionalized racism, misogyny, and default denial” rather than the generous atmosphere and culture required by the Supremes in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca but never truly implemented at EOIR.
“Herculean” although the task might appear, there are thousands of well-qualified immigration and human rights experts, most of them in the private sector right now, who could solve this problem and establish due process, fundamental fairness, real asylum expertise, and the rule of law in short order. But, Garland and Mayorkas have failed to remove the deadwood and the Trump/Miller holdovers and have not brought in the expert problem solvers to get this currently deadly, defective, illegal, and blatantly unconstitutional system under control. Additionally, qualified, expert Immigration Judges, REAL independent, courageous Federal Judges, not “go along to get along “bureaucratic retreads,” could also train and effectively supervise the Asylum Officer Corps, rather than woodenly and often ignorantly “rubber stamping” defective denials of “credible fear.”
Incredibly, Garland aggravated this festering problem “right off the bat” by improperly hiring 17 new, non-expert, not judicial quality Immigration Judges from flawed recruitments, skewed lists, and bogus recommendations developed by “Billy the Bigot” Barr! What an amazing lack of awareness and “open dissing” of humane progressive values and commitment to quality in Government!
Does this group represent the type of diverse, progressive candidates that President Biden would nominate for Article III Judgeships? OF COURSE NOT! Then, what possible excuse is there for “gifting” them some of the most powerful and important Federal Judgeships — those with probably more “life or death” authority and discretion over individuals than even the Supremes? No excuse whatsoever!
Our asylum system is totally “fixable.” Immediate improvements can be made and noticeable systemic changes could and should be in place before the end of this year! But, not the way that Garland and Mayorkas are going about it! The deadwood needs to go NOW, and be replaced with expert, progressive leadership, judges, and adjudicators!
“Miller Lite” – Garland’s Vision of “Justice @ Justice” for Communities of Color! His indolent and ineffective approach to asylum decision making in Immigration Court is harming and killing vulnerable individuals and bringing our entire justice system into disrepute!
