Department of Justice – Page 280 – immigrationcourtside.com

HUFFPOST: How White Nationalist “Know Nothing” Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions Tanked Needed Police Reform In Chicago Without Even BOTHERING TO READ The DOJ’s 160 Page Report!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/doj-police-reform-jeff-sessions-chicago_us_58f50a77e4b0da2ff86254cf?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000 report on HuffPost:

Ryan J. Reilly & Kim Bellware report in HuffPost:

“CHICAGO ― In the final months of the Obama administration, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division scrambled to complete its biggest-ever investigation of a city police department: a 13-month probe of Chicago’s 12,000-strong police force that wrapped up just a week before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

For more than a year, the division’s lawyers reviewed thousands of Chicago Police Department documents, visited all 22 police districts, went on 60 ride-alongs, reviewed 170 police shooting files, examined over 425 incidents of less-lethal force, interviewed 340 department members and talked to about 1,000 Chicago residents.

Their final report, issued Jan. 13, recognized the tough job officers had in Chicago as they dealt with spiking gun violence, and praised the “diligent efforts and brave actions of countless” officers. But a “breach in trust” eroded Chicago’s ability to prevent crime, because officers were able to escape accountability when they broke the law, the report found. Because “trust and effectiveness in combating violent crime are inextricably intertwined,” the report found “broad, fundamental reform” was needed in Chicago.

Without a formal legal agreement to reform — known as a consent decree — and independent monitoring, the report concluded, reform efforts in Chicago were “not likely to be successful.”

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general, disagrees. In recent weeks, Sessions has expressed deep skepticism about the role of the federal government in fixing broken police departments, leaving serious doubts about the ultimate outcome of the Justice Department’s work in Chicago.

Sessions wants the Justice Department to serve as the “leading advocate for law enforcement in America.” While admitting he hadn’t read the full Chicago report, he called it “anecdotal” and “not so scientifically based.” Earlier this month in Baltimore, a Justice Department lawyer said Sessions had “grave concerns” about an agreement previously reached between that city and the Obama administration. A federal judge signed off on the deal over Sessions’ objections.

In an interview with a conservative radio host this month, Sessions seemed to suggest that Justice Department investigations and consent decrees were resulting in “big crime increases.” In an op-ed for USA Today last week, Sessions wrote that consent decrees could amount to “harmful federal intrusion” that could “cost more lives by handcuffing the police instead of the criminals.” There’s too much focus on “a small number of police who are bad actors,” Sessions wrote, and “too many people believe the solution is to impose consent decrees that discourage the proactive policing that keeps our cities safe.”

Chicago has a serious violent crime problem. Last year was the deadliest in the city in two decades, with 762 homicides. But supporters of police reform like Jonathan Smith, a former official in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said that Sessions was “simply wrong” to suggest that crime goes up as a result of reform (or, in Chicago’s case, an investigation). DOJ investigations can increase community confidence in police departments and make people safer, Smith argued.

A protester takes part in a weekly nighttime peace march through the streets of a South Side Chicago neighborhood on September 16, 2016.

“In communities like Baltimore and Chicago where certain neighborhoods are experiencing gun violence, the problems long predate Justice Department involvement,” said Smith. “The issues in those communities are linked to weakened gun laws that create easy access to firearms, lack of opportunity for jobs and housing and a history of police misconduct that creates mistrust between police and the communities they serve. Lack of police accountability is often a significant contributing factor in a spike in crime because of community mistrust.”

Lorie Fridell, a criminologist and police bias expert from whom the Chicago’s Police Accountability Task Force solicited information for its report released last year, said DOJ investigations not only help to usher in badly need reforms to the specific departments probed, but other departments also rely on the reports to determine if their own departments are meeting constitutional standards.

“I think it’s very unfortunate the DOJ is no longer going to prioritize police reform,” Fridell said. ”The future of police reform is therefore going to have to come from the ground up. It’s going to be important for concerned individuals to demand high-quality policing.”

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Read the complete HuffPost article at the above link. And, for those of you who would like to be better informed than AG “Gonzo Apocalypto” about the need for serious police reform in Chicago, you can read the complete DOJ Civil Rights Division report here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/925846/download.

Sen. Liz Warren, Sen. Cory Booker, and others who opposed Sessions’s nomination to be AG, and told the truth about his white nationalist views (which he tried to conceal/downplay during his confirmation hearing, in addition to lying under oath about his Russian contacts) were right!

PWS

04-29-17

SUPREMES: “Chiefie” Incredulous At DOJ Position in Natz Case!

http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/27/1656715/–Oh-come-on-Supreme-Court-justices-incredulous-at-Justice-Department-immigration-argument?detail=emaildkre&link_id=1&can_id=aaabbf957f39adda3c39dd02432b2ad6&source=email-oh-come-on-supreme-court-justices-incredulous-at-justice-department-immigration-argument-2&email_referrer=oh-come-on-supreme-court-justices-incredulous-at-justice-department-immigration-argument-2___205999&email_subject=north-carolina-woman-voted-illegally-for-trump-but-wont-be-charged-for-compassionate-reasons

Laura Clawson writes at the Daily Kos:

“It, uh, doesn’t sound like the Trump-Sessions Justice Department is going to prevail in its argument to the U.S. Supreme Court that citizenship can be revoked over any misstatement or failure to disclose at all, however minor, that a person included (or didn’t include) on their citizenship application. Yes, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were all vocally skeptical. But there was also this, from Chief Justice John Roberts:

“Some time ago, outside the statute of limitations, I drove 60 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone,” the chief justice said, adding that he had not been caught.

The form that people seeking American citizenship must complete, he added, asks whether the applicant had ever committed a criminal offense, however minor, even if there was no arrest.

“If I answer that question no, 20 years after I was naturalized as a citizen, you can knock on my door and say, ‘Guess what, you’re not an American citizen after all’?” Chief Justice Roberts asked.

Robert A. Parker, a Justice Department lawyer, said the offense had to be disclosed. Chief Justice Roberts seemed shocked. “Oh, come on,” he said.

It sounds an awful lot like the Trump regime is looking for the right to revoke any naturalized person’s citizenship at any time, while creating an enormous new hoop for people seeking citizenship to jump through. Can you remember every single thing you’ve ever done?

Divna Maslenjak, the woman whose case prompted this exchange, could still face legal problems, since she had claimed that her husband had avoided military conscription in Bosnia when really he served in a unit that committed war crimes. But whatever the specific result for Maslenjak, it doesn’t seem likely that the Trump regime is going to get the far-ranging power it was effectively seeking:

Roberts added that it might not be a constitutional problem, but “it is certainly a problem of prosecutorial abuse.” Given the wide range of questions on the naturalization form, he observed, the government’s position would mean that government officials would have “the opportunity to denaturalize anyone they want, because everybody is going to have a situation where they didn’t put in something like that.” “And then the government can decide,” Roberts warned, “we are going to denaturalize you for reasons other than what might appear on your naturalization form, or we’re not.” For Roberts, giving that “extraordinary power, which essentially is unlimited power,” to the government would be “troublesome.”

Welcome to the Donald Trump presidency, Mr. Chief Justice.”

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For many years (at least as long as I’ve been in DC — since 1973) the DOJ, and in particular the Solicitor General’s Office, has occupied a position of unusual respect and credibility with the Supremes. Indeed, the Solicitor General is sometimes referred to as the “10th Justice” because the Supremes often defer to his or her judgment on whether a case merits certiorari.

But, with Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions at the helm, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the DOJ lose its vaunted reputation and be treated with the same degree of skepticism that other litigants face from the Supremes.

To be fair, however, the DOJ’s “boneheaded” position in Maslenjak originated in the Obama Administration which also, thanks in no small way to its tone deaf handling of many immigration cases (particularly those involving crimes) also “wore out its welcome,” so to speak, with the Supremes.

Perhaps, it’s just the general arrogance with which the Executive Branch and the DOJ have functioned over the last several Administrations of both parties. And, Congress, largely as a result of the GOP and its Tea Party wing, turning into “Bakuninists”– promoting anarchy and achieving almost nothing of value since the enactment of Obamacare, has not helped stem the tide of Executive overreach.

PWS

04-29-17

POLITICO: Despite Mis-Steps & Bombast, Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Policies Are Having An Impact!

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/28/trump-immigration-crackdown-237719?lo=ap_c1

TED HESSON and SEUNG MIN KIM write in HuffPost:

“President Donald Trump has systematically engineered a major crackdown on immigration during his first 100 days in office — even as courts reject his executive orders and Congress nears a spending deal that will deny him funding for a wall along the southern border.

The number of arrests on the U.S.-Mexico border plummeted in March to the lowest level in 17 years — a strong suggestion that Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric is scaring away foreigners who might otherwise try to enter the United States illegally. In addition, part of a lesser-known executive order that Trump signed in January gave federal immigration agents broad leeway to arrest virtually any undocumented immigrant they encounter.

Granted, Trump’s splashiest immigration promises — the border wall and two successive bans on immigrants from various majority-Muslim nations — have been stymied by Congress and the courts. And Tuesday, Trump received another setback when a district court judge blocked a directive denying federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to help enforce federal immigration laws.

But the president has nonetheless reshaped the nation’s immigration policy substantially.

“Even without putting down one single brick,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors lower immigration levels, “Trump has dramatically altered the flow across the southern border.”

Businesses that use foreign workers, worried they’ll get singled out by federal agents during a visa review, are starting to explore the possibility of recruiting domestic labor. Trump’s enforcement policies are affecting higher education, too, with early signs suggesting foreign students are less likely to apply to U.S. colleges and universities. Nearly 40 percent of colleges and universities surveyed by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers reported a decline in international applications, and almost 80 percent said they fielded particular concerns from students in the Middle East. International students are, among other things, an important source of revenue for colleges, since typically they pay sticker price on tuition and fees.

To longtime advocates for undocumented immigrants, the change is less about numbers than about who’s being targeted.

The interior enforcement executive order that Trump signed during his first week in office dumped the Obama administration’s practice of prioritizing the arrests of serious criminals — a policy that allowed low-level immigration offenders to fly below the radar.

“The agents that I’ve talked to over the past few months have said that they feel that they can go out and enforce the law again, whereas they had many limitations on them over the past eight years,” said John Torres, chief operating officer at the consulting firm Guidepost Solutions and acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the George W. Bush administration. “If they encounter someone who is out of status, even though they are not targeting that person, they can now take them into custody.”

Early numbers reflect that shift. ICE arrested 21,362 immigrants from January through mid-March, a 32 percent increase over the same period last year. That tally included 5,441 non-criminals, double the number arrested a year earlier.

Trump, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have all argued that the administration will target serious criminals first. But a steady stream of reports have shown otherwise.

An Ohio woman with four U.S. citizen children was recently deported to Mexico, despite the fact that she had been in the U.S. for 15 years and had no criminal record. Earlier this month, an Indiana restaurant owner with three U.S. citizen children, a two-decade history in the country, and no criminal record also was removed to Mexico.

“What’s really interesting here is how much of the difference seems to be rhetorical,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who was domestic policy director to formerPresident Barack Obama. “By talking tough, they have unleashed officers who now feel like they can do whatever they want.”

The threat of deportation even hangs over Dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That initiative, enacted by Obama in 2012, allows undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. at a young age to apply for deportation relief and work permits.

More than 770,000 people are covered under DACA, which Trump threatened to kill during the campaign. Since taking office, he’s backed off on that pledge — yet infuriated immigration advocates say the administration’s enforcement tactics show Dreamers are in no way safe from deportation.

Earlier this month, Juan Manuel Montes, a DACA recipient who had lived in California, filed a lawsuit that claimed he was deported to Mexico despite his DACA status, the first known removal of its kind under the new administration. The facts of the case remain in dispute — DHS maintains that it has no record of the deportation in question and insists Montes left the U.S. without permission, which would invalidate his DACA protections.

Democrats say Trump’s reluctance to rescind the Obama-era initiative has been a rare silver lining to the new administration’s immigration policy. Still, they are by no means assured, pointing to the ramped-up enforcement by immigration agents across the nation.

“It fails to dispel the fear,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, noting the Montes deportation. “There’s just a variety of ways where the fear can be paralyzing and so insidious. So to have some clear, unambiguous system is so important, and it has been so lacking.”

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Read the full report over on Politico. This analysis, along with others I have posted, suggests that trump is “winning” the immigration war notwithstanding a string of “defeats” in the lower Federal Courts on “signature” immigration issues like the “travel ban” and “sanctions on sanctuary cities.”

PWS

04-29-17

OPERATION BOGO? — Many Of Those Arrested By DHS In Recent “Raids” Were NOT Serious Felons!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/ice-data-shows-half-of-immigrants-arrested-in-raids-had-traffic-convictions-or-no-record/2017/04/28/81ff7284-2c59-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.9b04937c5746

Maria Sacchetti and Ed O’Keefe report in the Washington Post:

“About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.

Records provided by congressional aides Friday offered the most detailed look yet at the backgrounds of the individuals rounded up and targeted for deportation in early February by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents assigned to regional offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio and New York.

Two people had been convicted of homicide, 80 had been convicted of assault, and 57 had convictions for “dangerous drugs.” Many of the most serious criminals were given top billing in ICE news statements about the operation.

The largest single group — 163 immigrants convicted of traffic offenses — was mentioned only briefly. Over 90 percent of those cases involved drunken driving, ICE said Friday. Of those taken into custody in the raids, 177 had no criminal convictions at all, though 66 had charges pending, largely immigration or traffic offenses.

The raids were part of a nationwide immigration roundup dubbed Operation Cross Check, which accounts for a small portion of the 21,362 immigrants the Trump administration took into custody for deportation proceedings from January through mid-March.

The two-month total represents a 32 percent increase in deportation arrests over the same period last year. Most are criminals, administration officials have said. But 5,441 were not criminals, double the number of undocumented immigrants arrested for deportation a year earlier. The administration has released a detailed breakdown of the criminal records only of the raids in early February.”

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Seems like Trump, Sessions, Kelly & Co. have “embellished” or exaggerated both the threat posed by undocumented individuals and the the achievements of their “enhanced enforcement operations.” And, this is hardly the first time, nor is it likely to be the last.

That being said, as a former U.S. Immigration Judge, I wouldn’t necessarily give a “free pass” to those convicted of DUI. I agree with the commenter who indicated that a DUI far in the past, followed by an otherwise “clean” record would not ordinarily make someone a “danger to society.” But, multiple DUI convictions within the past several years would be a much different story.

Moreover, facts and circumstances are important. A DUI with others, particularly children, in the car, and/or a DUI that resulted in an an accident and injury to persons or property would be something more than a “mere traffic violation.”

Generally, I did not grant bond to individuals with recent multiple DUIs, and I almost never granted a second bond to an individual who had a DUI while out on bond.

PWS

04-29-17

INCARCERATION NATION: Private Prison Corps Win, Everyone Else Loses!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-100-days-private-prisons_us_590203d8e4b0026db1def8fb

Dana Liebelson reports for HuffPost:

“WASHINGTON ― When Donald Trump was running for president, the private prison industry in the United States was down for the count. An undercover reporter exposed abuse at a private prison in Louisiana. A report from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General found private prisons had higher rates of assault than regular prisons.

The Obama administration announced in August that it was phasing out the use of private prisons to house federal inmates; private prison stock subsequently plunged. And Trump’s foe, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton — who had received donations from private prison lobbyists — said she was “glad” to see the end of private prisons. “You shouldn’t have a profit motivation to fill prison cells with young Americans,” she added.

Then Trump won.

In his first 100 days, Trump has failed to fulfill the populist promises of his campaign, while industries like Wall Street have made big gains. But the private prison industry in the U.S. — which is heavily dependent on federal contracts from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Marshals Service — has had one of the biggest turnarounds of all, winning Justice Department approval, new and extended contracts, and an administration that is expected to bolster the demand for a lot of detention beds.

The Obama administration’s 2016 directive to reduce and ultimately end the use of privately operated prisons on the federal level “put these companies on the defensive in a way that we had not seen for at least 15 years,” Carl Takei, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s national prison project, told HuffPost. “But now, we face a total reversal of that situation.”

In February, Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew the Obama-era directive, claiming that it “impaired the [Bureau of Prisons’] ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.” One day after that announcement, CNN reported that the stocks of CoreCivic (previously called Corrections Corporation of America) and GEO Group, the two largest private prison operators, were up 140 percent and 98 percent, respectively, since Trump’s election.

“The attorney general’s announcement in February validated our position that the DOJ’s previous direction was not reflective of the high-quality services we have provided,” said Jonathan Burns, a spokesman for CoreCivic.

But the wins for private prison operators go further than the Trump administration’s reversal of the Obama administration’s memo, which technically only applied to a sliver of federal prisons, not state lockups or immigration detention facilities.

The Trump administration is also expected to implement tough-on-crime policies and large-scale deportations. Just this month, Sessions announced plans to weigh criminal charges for any person caught in the U.S. who has been previously deported, regardless of where they’re arrested.

CoreCivic does not draft legislation or lobby for proposals that might determine the basis or duration of a person’s incarceration, the company spokesman told HuffPost.

But private prison operators acknowledge that “new policies, priorities under the new administration [have helped create] an increased need for detention bed space,” as J. David Donahue, GEO Group senior vice president, told investors in February.

Donahue said his company was having ongoing discussions with ICE about its capabilities, which included “3,000 idle beds and 2,000 underutilized beds.” In April, GEO Group announced it had been awarded an ICE contract to build a new 1,000-bed detention center in Texas.

CoreCivic also announced a contract extension in April at a 1,000-bed detention facility in Texas. The company cited “ICE’s expected detention capacity needs” and “the ideal location of our facility on the southern border” as reasons ICE might extend its contract even further.

The Department of Homeland Security has identified 33,000 more detention beds available to house undocumented immigrants as it ramps up immigration enforcement, according to an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post and dated April 25.

“We can expect that the private prison industry will get rich off of any push by the Trump to expand the number of people in federal custody,” the ACLU’s Takei said.

If you’re determined to lock everybody up as long as possible, whether they’re dangerous or not, you need a place to put them and lots of money to pay for it.Molly Gill, director of federal legislative affairs at FAMM

In February, Trump re-emphasized his support for Kate’s Law, backed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), which would establish a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for undocumented immigrants who re-enter the United States after being convicted twice for illegal re-entry. The ACLU has estimated that even the most limited version of Kate’s Law would require nine new federal prisons.

Sessions has also tapped Steven Cook, who previously headed a group that opposed the Obama administration efforts to implement sentencing reforms, for a key role in a task force that will re-evaluate how the federal government deals with crime. This suggests that the Trump administration is planning to fulfill its promises to prosecute more drug and gun cases federally.

“If you’re determined to lock everybody up as long as possible, whether they’re dangerous or not, you need a place to put them and lots of money to pay for it,” said Molly Gill, director of federal legislative affairs at FAMM, a group that opposes mandatory minimums.

Although the federal prison population has declined in recent years, federal prisons are still over capacity. Congress “does not seem to have much of a taste for building new prisons,” Gill noted, so “private prison contractors could make up the difference.”

Private prison critics claim that the industry has an incentive to spend less money on inmate services, as well as sufficient staffing, which can have disastrous human rights consequences including reliance on solitary confinement, poor mental health care, and violence. Private prisons are also not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which means any misconduct is often shrouded in secrecy. (The CoreCivic spokesman said “the comments raised by critic groups are misinformed and neglect the history of our company.”)

A spokesman for GEO Group told HuffPost that the company believes the Obama administration decision to phase out private prisons last August “was based on a misrepresentation” of an Inspector General report that he said demonstrated that privately run facilities “are at least as equally safe, secure, and humane as publicly run facilities and in fact experienced lower rates of inmate deaths.”

In fact, investigators found that in “most key areas, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable [Bureau of Prisons] institutions.” (At the time, GEO Group said higher incidents numbers could be chalked up to better reporting.)

Civil rights advocates, nonetheless, have deep concerns. “Handing control of prisons to for-profit companies is a recipe for abuse and neglect,” Takei argued. “We expect that even greater reliance on private prisons will lead to similar problems, but on a larger scale,” he added.”

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For more on the Administration’s plans for a “New American Gulag,” see my recent post: http://wp.me/p8eeJm-KN.

And, while individuals subject to so-called “civil” detention clearly are the biggest losers, along with our self-respect as a nation with humane values, don’t forget the U.S. taxpayers who, along with shelling out billions for unnecessary incarceration, will also likely be on the tab for some big legal fees and damage awards once folks start suffering actual harm from the Administration’s abandonment of appropriate standards and safeguards on conditions of detention.

PWS

04-28-17

NEW FROM 4TH CIRCUIT: Court Reviews Expedited Removal, Finds VA Statutory Burglary “Not Divisible” — CASTENDET-LEWIS v. SESSIONS!

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/152484.P.pdf

PANEL:

GREGORY, Chief Judge, KING, Circuit Judge, and DAVIS, Senior Circuit Judge.

OPINION BY: JUDGE KING

“In these circumstances, we must assess whether a Virginia statutory burglary constitutes an aggravated felony using the categorical approach. See Omargharib, 775 F.3d at 196. As the Attorney General concedes in this proceeding, the Virginia burglary statute is broader than the federal crime of generic burglary. In Taylor, the Supreme Court included in its definition of a generic burglary “an unlawful or unprivileged entry” into “a building or other structure,” and explained that state burglary statutes that “eliminat[e] the requirement that the entry be unlawful, or . . . includ[e] places, such as automobiles and vending machines, other than buildings,” fall outside the definition of generic burglary. See 495 U.S. at 598-99. As we noted above, the Virginia burglary statute is satisfied by various alternative means of entry, including one’s entry without breaking or one’s concealment after lawful entry. By proscribing such conduct, the statute falls outside the scope of generic burglary. The Virginia burglary statute also reaches several places that are not buildings or structures, such as ships, vessels, river craft, railroad cars, automobiles, trucks, and trailers. As the BIA recently recognized, the breadth of the statute means that it falls outside the definition of an aggravated felony. See In re H-M-F, __ I. & N. Dec. __ (BIA Mar. 29, 2017). Utilizing the categorical approach, we are also satisfied that the Virginia offense of statutory burglary criminalizes more conduct than the generic federal offense of burglary. The DHS therefore erred in classifying Castendet’s conviction as an aggravated felony.”

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Could the wheels be starting to come off the DHS’s “Expedited Removal Machine” before it even gets up to full throttle?

PWS

04-27-17

Supremes Engage On Naturalization Issue!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-fears-giving-government-too-much-power-to-revoke-naturalization/2017/04/26/13b7814e-2aac-11e7-be51-b3fc6ff7faee_story.html?utm_term=.6a9daea75352

Robert Barnes writes in the Washington Post:

“Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said Wednesday he had grave worries about “prosecutorial abuse” if even a minor lie in the application process means the government can later strip a naturalized immigrant of her citizenship.

As the issues of immigration and deportation take center stage under the Trump administration, Roberts and other Supreme Court justices seemed hesitant to give the government unfettered power to remove naturalized citizens from the country.

The case involved a Bosnian native, Divna Maslenjak, who was criminally prosecuted for lying on her application about her husband’s military service. She was deported by the Obama administration, which held the broad view that any misrepresentation — whether relevant or not — was enough to give the government the right to consider revocation.

“It is troublesome to give that extraordinary power, which, essentially, is unlimited power, at least in most cases, to the government,” Roberts said. Because it would be easy in almost all cases to find some falsehood, the chief justice said, “the government will have the opportunity to denaturalize anyone they want.”

Roberts, who regularly warns about the discretionary power of prosecutors, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy added a moment of drama to a lively hearing that was the Supreme Court’s last scheduled oral argument of the term.

They were not persuaded by Justice Department lawyer Robert A. Parker’s assertion that other safeguards are built into the system and that government lawyers had little reason to search through the millions of files of naturalized citizens to find trivial reasons to prosecute. Even denaturalization, Parker said, only returns a person to the status of lawful permanent resident and allows reapplication.

. . . .

Some justices noted that the statute does not specifically require that. “It seems like, linguistically, we have to do some somersaults to get where you want to go,” said Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who testified during his recent confirmation hearings about sticking closely to the text of statutes.

And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Maslenjak’s misrepresentations appeared directly relevant to her application. She lied about what her husband was doing in Bosnia, Ginsburg said. “Under what circumstances would that be immaterial?”

. . . .

The case is Maslenjak v. United States.”

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PWS

04-26-17

WashPost: J. Rubin Says Trump Administration’s War On Illegal Immigration Is Bogus!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/04/26/the-jig-is-up-hysteria-over-illegal-immigration-is-baseless/?utm_term=.73251571b3e1Bogus!

Rubin writes in “Right Turn” in the WashPost:

“The anti-immigrant hysteria that became a mainstay of President Trump’s agenda and the hymnal of the GOP rests on the assumption that we are awash with illegal immigrants. It’s illegal immigrants who are responsible for a crime wave. (There isn’t a wave, but stick with this for a moment.) It’s illegal immigrants, they say, who are responsible for the economic suffering in the Rust Belt. (If we just got rid of them, jobs and wages would go up!) Hillary Clinton was going to continue the Obama administration’s policy: open borders!

Well, it’s all fake. There was a dramatic downturn in illegal immigrants under President Barack Obama, who deported record number of people. As many of us argued, the economic recession reversed the flow of immigrants so on net more are now leaving for Mexico than coming from there. Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute observes, “President Trump can’t take credit for the unprecedented collapse in illegal immigration since 2007 but the Great Recession, growing Mexican economy, and Mexican demographics can. ”

The Pew Research Center tells us:

There were 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2015, a small but statistically significant decline from the Center’s estimate of 11.3 million for 2009, the last year of the Great Recession. The Center’s preliminary estimate of the unauthorized immigrant population in 2016 is 11.3 million, which is statistically no different from the 2009 or 2015 estimates and comes from a different data source with a smaller sample size and a larger margin of error. This more recent preliminary data for 2016 are inconclusive as to whether the total unauthorized immigrant population continued to decrease, held steady or increased.

Oops. You mean getting rid of all those illegal immigrants didn’t create job openings for unemployed factory workers in the heartland or boost wages or prevent Chicago’s crime increase in the past two years? Nope. It seems the anti-immigration crowd will need to find new scapegoats to blame and new ideas for solving our systemic economic problems.

In particular, Trump’s obsession with the Mexican border appears to be entirely misplaced:

Mexicans have long been the largest origin group among unauthorized immigrants – and the majority for at least a decade – but their numbers have been shrinking since peaking at 6.9 million, or 57% of the total, in 2007. In 2014, they numbered 5.8 million (52% of the total). In 2015, according to the Center’s new estimate, they declined to 5.6 million, or 51% of the total. And in 2016, according to the Center’s preliminary estimate, the number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico was the same, but their share fell to 50% of the total, marking the first time since at least 2005 that Mexicans did not account for a majority of the unauthorized immigrant population.

Why, then, do you suppose the Trump team is so fixated on illegal immigrants and the southern border? Well, immigration exclusionists have been ignoring readily available facts for some time. There is no illegal immigrant crime wave. The border is much more secure.

We’re hard-pressed to come up with any other explanation than the obvious one: As in France, fear and hatred of immigrants are a convenient excuse for voters and policymakers who cannot grapple with messy truths. Trump has no policy agenda to help the working and middle class, so he sells xenophobia. Get rid of illegals and you’ll all have $30-per-hour jobs! You can’t make a middle-class living as a manual laborer? blame the immigrants! Scared of terrorism and don’t want to think about the problem of radicalization of Westerners? Blame the refugees, the most thoroughly vetted immigrants there are.

It’s time to put an end to the nonsense, stop turning our cities and communities upside-down, alienating our ally Mexico over an unneeded wall, wasting money on building a wall and vilifying outsiders. Right-wingers should stop pushing the comforting fantasy to displaced workers that nothing they have done (e.g., not gone to college, not developed computer skills, stayed in locales with no jobs) and nothing they have to do (e.g., go back to school, develop new skills, move to where the jobs are) matter so long as all those illegal immigrants are “stealing” their jobs. That sort of fatalism is wrongheaded and ultimately does a huge disservice to those who need to catch up to the globalized economy. And now we now have plenty of evidence that the immigration scaremongering is fraudulent.”

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While I often disagree with Rubin, her points here seem well taken. It appears that Trump & Co’s rhetoric is driven largely by xenophobia and the belief that it wins elections.

Philip Bump in the Washington Post also pointed out that there is good reason to doubt the honesty of Trump’s attempt to link homicide rates in Chicago with undocumented migration. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/04/26/trumps-attempt-to-link-illegal-immigration-to-chicagos-homicide-problem-is-extremely-tenuous/?utm_term=.1916c1e4aa17

PWS

04-26-17

THE HILL: Nolan Rappaport Says NY Times “Sugar Coats” Horrors Of FGM!

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/immigration/330660-politically-correct-ny-times-hides-horror-of-female-genital

Nolan writes:

“The New York Times does not use the term “Female Genital Mutilation” (FGM) in its article about a Michigan doctor who is being prosecuted for allegedly performing that procedure on two seven-year-old girls. The Times calls the offense, “genital cutting,” despite the fact that the prosecution is based on a federal criminal provision entitled, “Female genital mutilation.”

If convicted, the doctor can be sentenced to incarceration for up to five years.

According to Celia Dugger, the Times’ Health and Science editor, “genital cutting” is a “less culturally loaded” term than “FGM.” It will not widen the “chasm” between “advocates who campaign against the practice and the people who follow the rite.”

For reasons that are inexplicable to me, Dugger seems to think that there can be a legitimate difference of opinion on whether it is right to mutilate the genitals of a seven-year-old girl.

Also, her euphemism, “genital cutting,” makes FGM sound less horrific, which is a disservice to the victims and to the people who are trying to stop the practice.

Political correctness serves a valid purpose when it prevents a person from unnecessarily or unintentionally offending others, but I do not understand why we should be sensitive to the feelings of people who subject seven-year-old girls to genital mutilation.”

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Go on over to The Hill to read Nolan’s complete article at the above link.

For those who want to read (or re-read) my majority opinion in Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996) finding for the first time that FGM is persecution, here is the link: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2014/07/25/3278.pdf.

PWS

04-26-17

Career Prosecutor Rod J. Rosenstein Wins Near-Unanimous Approval As Next Deputy AG — Will Be In Charge Of Russia Investigation!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/25/politics/rod-rosenstein-confirmed-deputy-attorney-general/

CNN reports:

“(CNN)Rod Rosenstein was overwhelmingly confirmed to be the next deputy attorney general, after a Senate vote that was 94-6 Tuesday.

Rosenstein’s nomination has been closely tied to the House and Senate Russia investigations — whether he wanted it to, or not.

As the second-in-command under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Rosenstein’s March confirmation hearing focused largely on Sessions’ own undisclosed discussions with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, and eventual recusal from Justice Department investigations regarding Russia.

Senate Democrats pressed Rosenstein to recuse himself and appoint a special prosecutor for any Russia investigations, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that Rosenstein agreed to appoint a special prosecutor if it was needed.“

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Seems oddly well-qualified for a Trump political appointee.

PWS

04-26-17

AMERICAN GULAG: NGOs Fear Administration’s Planned Detention Empire Will Be Deadly!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-immigrant-detention_us_58f0e2b7e4b0bb9638e34621

Elise Foley reports in HuffPost:

“WASHINGTON ― Human rights advocates spent years fighting for even small improvements to the system that detains men, women and children waiting to be either deported or released back into the U.S. Now they fear the progress they have made could disappear under President Donald Trump, who has promised harsher treatment of undocumented immigrants.

“This administration is prepared to make conditions at immigrant detention even worse than they already are, which, given that for some people they’re already fatal, is terrifying,” said Mary Small, policy director of the advocacy group Detention Watch Network.

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is considering looser regulations for new contracts with jails to hold immigrants in deportation proceedings, The New York Times reported earlier this month. That agreement would allow jails to treat immigrants detained for civil offenses the same way they treat people charged with crimes.

The department also plans to eliminate an office at Immigration and Customs Enforcement that focuses on improving the detention system and to ramp up detention and deportation efforts.

Trump’s boosters consider these to be good things ― earlier this month, hosts on “Fox & Friends” gleefully remarked that the “party’s over” at immigrant detention centers, grumbling about detainees being given clean sheets and outdoor recreation time.

In reality, immigrant detention centers ― some of which are inside jails facilities or former prisons ― are bleak places. Inmates report being denied medical care, held in solitary confinement, given inedible food and other mistreatment. This is all on top of the struggle of being locked up, often far from family and legal help.

There’s always a tension between ‘Do we get rid of the cage or do we make a better cage?’Ruthie Epstein, formerly of Human Rights First

The facilities are supposed to be for civil detention, not criminal detention like a prison ― being in the country without authorization is not in itself a crime. Advocates are concerned that the Trump administration’s discussion of new contracts for jails to detain immigrants is more proof that officials will disregard standards meant to make immigrant detention less punitive.

Chris Daley, an attorney with Just Detention International, said his group is “very afraid” those standards aren’t going to be enforced and that “we’re just going to lose any sense that folks are not there under criminal charges.”

. . . .

“If ICE is no longer tracking the use of solitary confinement or no longer requiring that people who are in mental health crisis are checked on every 15 minutes, that can kill,” said Carl Takei, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.

It would be difficult for ICE to dismiss the standards set forth in the Prison Rape Elimination Act because they are regulations. But weakening other standards would hurt PREA’s effectiveness, Daley said.

“You can’t have effective sexual abuse prevention programs if you have folks who don’t have access to appropriate materials in the right language; who can’t communicate concerns they have about threats or violence; who are just held in solitary confinement as a matter of course or who otherwise are just being treated in a demeaning way that compromises their dignity,” he said.

ICE hasn’t made any major changes yet, other than eliminating its Office of Detention Policy and Planning. The office’s staff and mission will be absorbed into other parts of the agency, according to ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez.

Officials are “examining a variety of detention models to determine which models would best meet anticipated detention needs” as part of one of Trump’s executive orders on immigration, Rodriguez said. “As new options are explored, ICE’s commitment to maintaining excellent facilities and providing first class medical care to those in our custody remains unchanged.”

The new contracts could be evaluated based on a checklist from the U.S. Marshals Service, The New York Times reported last week. That checklist is “ridiculous in its lack of detail,” Takei said. The contracts wouldn’t specify what policies jails holding immigrants must maintain for medical health, suicide prevention or solitary confinement, other than that they need to have some sort of policy, according to the Times.

Advocates are bracing for the worst.

“We’ve seen important but very incremental change, so to see change that’s taken so long to come about ― and that still had gaps but that was at least a step toward greater accountability and toward better conditions in these facilities ― to see that now be threatened to be reversed is troubling,” said Katharina Obser, senior program officer at the Women’s Refugee Commission.

They will be watching closely for human rights violations, from detainees being denied due process to poor conditions and even increased deaths in detention.

“These policies are a recipe for a human rights catastrophe in immigrant detention,” Takei said, “and we are prepared to sue as soon as that human rights catastrophe comes to pass.”

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Of course, an unstated reason for purposely allowing immigration detention conditions to deteriorate is to discourage migrants from 1) coming to the U.S. to seek refuge, 2) making claims for refuge, and 3) continuing to pursue those claims.

By locating U.S. Immigration Courts in private prisons and local facilities in obscure locations where counsel are not available, the Department of Justice purposely erodes due process for the purpose of making the courts part of the enforcement, deterrence. deportation mechanism.

At some point, the Article III Courts will have to decide how much of this unseemly travesty of justice they are willing to allow.

PWS

04-26-17

BLOCKED: Federal Judge Rebuffs Trump On Sanctuary Cities –Trump/Sessions Undermine Own Position — Trump Remains Defiantly Clueless!

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/25/sanctuary-cities-trump-judge-blocks-237597

Josh Gerstein reports in Politico:

“A federal judge has blocked a directive from President Donald Trump seeking to deny federal funding to so-called “sanctuary cities” and other localities that decline to cooperate in enforcement of federal immigration laws.

San Francisco-based U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday barring federal officials nationwide from carrying out the portion of a Jan. 25 Trump executive order aimed at cutting off grants to local governments that won’t provide assistance to federal authorities in locating and detaining undocumented immigrants.

Orrick cited public comments from Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in concluding that the order appeared intended to sweep more broadly than allowed by federal law. The judge, an Obama appointee, called “not legally plausible” the Justice Department’s arguments that Trump was simply trying to secure compliance with current law.

“If there was doubt about the scope of the Order, the President and Attorney General have erased it with their public comments,” Orrick wrote. “The Constitution vests the spending power in Congress, not the President, so the Order cannot constitutionally place new conditions on federal funds.”

The White House late Tuesday condemned the ruling in harsh terms.

“Today, the rule of law suffered another blow, as an unelected judge unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our Nation,” the press secretary’s office said in a statement, adding:

“Once again, a single district judge — this time in San Francisco — has ignored Federal immigration law to set a new immigration policy for the entire country. This decision occurred in the same sanctuary city that released the 5-time deported illegal immigrant who gunned down innocent Kate Steinle in her father’s arms. ”

The ruling is another high-profile blow to Trump’s efforts to use executive orders to carry out major policy moves— a drive his staff is highlighting as he approaches the 100-days-in-office mark. Courts have also blocked key portions of two of the president’s other immigration-related executive orders — his travel bans on citizens of several majority Muslim countries.

However, Orrick noted that his new injunction may not block much of what the Trump administration claimed in court it was trying to do through the portion of the Jan. 25 order targeting sanctuary cities. If all Trump wanted to do was cut off Justice Department grants to localities that are out of compliance with the law, he can still do that, the judge observed.

“This injunction does nothing more than implement the effect of the Government’s flawed interpretation of the Order,” Orrick wrote.

Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior did not say whether an appeal is planned, but he emphasized that the judge did not block the federal government from enforcing federal law as it now stands.

. . . .

The judge concluded that the California localities were correct to be concerned that their funding was in jeopardy and that the grants affected might be more than just the few the Justice Department said were covered by Trump’s order.

“Although Government counsel has represented that the Order will be implemented consistent with law, this assurance is undermined by Section 9(a)’s clearly unconstitutional directives. Further, through public statements, the President and Attorney General have appeared to endorse the broadest reading of the Order,” Orrick added.

“Is the Order merely a rhetorical device, as counsel suggested at the hearing, or a ‘weapon’ to defund the Counties and those who have implemented a different law enforcement strategy than the Government currently believes is desirable? The result of this schizophrenic approach to the Order is that the Counties’ worst fears are not allayed and the Counties reasonably fear enforcement under the Order,” the judge wrote.”

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The complete report, along with a link to Judge Orrick’s full opinion can be found at the above link. The case is County of Santa Clara v. Trump.

PWS

04-26-17

PRECEDENT: BIA Opines On “Divisibility” In Agfel Cases — Matter of CHAIREZ-CASTREJON, 27 I&N Dec. 21 (BIA 2017)

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/959656/download

Here’s the BIA headnote:

“In determining whether a statute is divisible under Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016), Immigration Judges may consider or “peek” at an alien’s conviction record only to discern whether statutory alternatives define “elements” or “means,” provided State law does not otherwise resolve the question.”

PANEL: Appellate Immigration Judges Pauley, Greer, Malphrus

OPINION BY: Judge Pauley

CONCURRING OPINION BY: Judge Malphrus

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This case is unusual because BIA Judges seldom file “separate opinions” in published decisions these days.

In his concurring opinion, Judge Garry D. Malphrus appears to be both questioning whether the Supreme Court’s approach to statutory “divisibility” analysis comports with congressional intent in immigration matters and inviting Congress to perhaps change the INA so that the BIA and the Immigration Judges could examine the facts of the case, as set forth in the record of conviction, to determine whether the individual should be removed. Judge Malphrus says in his conclusion:

“Here, we must presume that the respondent committed the least of the acts criminalized within the range of conduct punishable under his statute of conviction. See Moncrieffe v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 1678, 1684–85 (2013). This is true even though the respondent’s plea agreement indicates that he did more—specifically, that he knowingly discharged a firearm at another, and thus he committed an aggravated felony crime of violence. See id.

The approach to divisibility required by Descamps and Mathis will result in immigration proceedings being terminated for many aliens who have committed serious crimes in the United States. See, e.g., Ramirez v. Lynch, 810 F.3d 1127, 1134–38 (9th Cir. 2016) (reversing the order of removal upon concluding that the California statute proscribing felony child abuse was not divisible, and thus it was improper to consider the conviction records in determining whether the alien’s conviction constituted an aggravated felony crime of violence). [footnote omitted]. It is for Congress to determine whether this approach is consistent with its intent regarding the immigration consequences of such criminal conduct.”

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

Another observation: How could an unrepresented respondent charged under this section possibly defend himself consistent with due process when the law is so complex and convoluted. This particular respondent was fortunate enough to have a lawyer, and as we can see, he was able to achieve a favorable result. But, recent studies have shown that the overwhelming number of respondents in detention (as individuals charged as “agfels” must be) must proceed without counsel. http://wp.me/p8eeJm-Gv

PWS

04-24-17

Is Jeff Sessions About To Go After Tax Credits For U.S. Citizen Kids To Fund “The Wall?” — Sessions’s Motives Questioned — CA Girds For Legal Battle With USDOJ! — Trump Administration Fuels Federal Civil Litigation Bonanza!

http://theweek.com/speedreads/694129/sessions-says-mexicans-pay-border-wall-way-another

Bonnie Kristian reports in TheWeek.com:

“We’re going to get paid for it one way or the other,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said of President Trump’s proposed border wall while speaking with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. After raising the issue, Stephanopoulos asked if Sessions has any evidence Mexico will fund construction, as Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail.

Sessions conceded he does not expect the government of Mexico to “appropriate money,” but maintained the United States has other options to get money from Mexicans. We could “deal with our trade situation to create the revenue,” he suggested, or, “I know there’s $4 billion a year in excess payments,” Sessions continued, “tax credits that they shouldn’t get. Now, these are mostly Mexicans. And those kind of things add up — $4 billion a year for 10 years is $40 billion.”

Sessions appears to be referencing a 2011 audit report Trump also cited while campaigning. As Politifact explains, the report said that in 2011, $4.2 billion in child tax credits was paid to people filing income taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) instead of a Social Security number. Some of these filers are illegal immigrants, but many are legal foreign workers, and the audit did not say how many are Mexican.

“The vast majority of that $4.2 billion, the filer may be undocumented, but you have to have a child to receive it,” said Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “And the children are overwhelmingly U.S. citizens.” Watch an excerpt of Sessions’ remarks below. Bonnie Kristian”

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Go to the above link to see the ABC clip that Kristian references at the end of her article.

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Reaction from Daily Kos wasn’t very subtile. Here’s Gabe Ortiz’s “headliner:”

“Racist-as-all-hell Sessions: Child tax credits going to ‘mostly Mexicans’ can pay for the wall”

Read Ortiz’s article here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/04/24/1655786/-Racist-as-all-hell-Sessions-Tax-credits-to-mostly-Mexicans-can-pay-for-the-wall

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Ortiz isn’t the only one to publicly “call out” Sessions’s motivation for his almost daily attacks on immigrants. Here’s what California State Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) had to say, as reported in the L.A. Times: “It has become abundantly clear that Atty. Gen. [Jeff] Sessions and the Trump administration are basing their law enforcement policies on principles of white supremacy — not American values. . . .”

Read the full L.A. Times article, including Republican reaction to de Leon’s remarks, here:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-california-senate-leader-says-white-1492803106-htmlstory.html?utm_source=Politics&utm_campaign=b41d4376f3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_db59b9bd47-b41d4376f3-81147225

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De Leon was not the only California public official to strike back at Sessions’s attack on so-called “Sanctuary cities” last week. As reported in the L.A. Times, in a “Battle of the AGs:”

“[California Attorney General Xavier] Becerra said on Friday that threats to withhold federal funds from states and cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities are reckless and undermine public safety.

. . . .

Becerra said Sunday that California is ready to fight any attempt to withhold federal funds.

“Whoever wants to come at us, that’s hostility, we’ll be ready,” Becerra said. “We’re going to continue to abide by federal law and the U.S. Constitution. And we’re hoping the federal government will also abide by the U.S. Constitution, which gives my state the right to decide how to do public safety.”

The state attorney general was skeptical about comments by President Trump in recent days that so-called Dreamers —young immigrants brought to this country illegally by a parent — will not be targeted for immigration enforcement.

“It’s not clear what we can trust, what statement we can believe in, and that causes a great deal of not just anxiety, but confusion — not just for those immigrant families, but for our law enforcement personnel,” Becerra said.

He also denounced the Trump proposal to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border as a “medieval solution” to immigration issues, adding that neither U.S. taxpayers nor Mexico want to pay for the proposal.”

Read there full report here:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-u-s-atty-gen-sessions-disputes-1492964508-htmlstory.html?utm_source=Politics&utm_campaign=b41d4376f3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_db59b9bd47-b41d4376f3-81147225

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I reported some time ago that California was “lawyering up” by hiring none other than former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to advise on litigation strategies to resist the Fed’s efforts to punish “sanctuary jurisdictions.” Here’s a link to my earlier blog: http://wp.me/p8eeJm-4w.

Lots of Attorneys General and former Attorneys General could be involved in this one before it’s over! As I’ve said from the beginning, whatever he might do for U.S. workers, President Trump is a huge boon to the legal industry! If you doubt this, just go on over to TRAC Immigration and see how civil immigration litigation has increased dramatically under Trump. http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/467/ . (Thanks to Nolan Rappaport for forwarding this to me!)

Instead of solving legal problems, it appears that A.G. Jeff “Gonzo-Apocalypto” Sessions is fixated on going to war with the “other America” that doesn’t share his and Trump’s negative views of immigrants. Stay tuned!

PWS

04-24-17

HUFFPOST “SHOCKER:” Jeff Sessions Is A Hypocrite! — Home State Of Alabama More Dangerous Than Most “Sanctuary Cities!”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-hypocrisy-behind-jeff-sessions-crackdown-on-new_us_58fba934e4b086ce589811b0

Cody Lyon reports:

“I live in the biggest sanctuary municipality of them all―New York City―a place that celebrates its diversity, a melting pot of countless cultures where hard- working immigrants and their children can climb the educational and economic ladder. And it’s incredibly safe for a city its size, especially when compared to the rest of the country. The fact is, I feel five times more safe here than in most of Session’s home state, Alabama, which also happens to be where I grew up and visit often. Although Alabama’s biggest city, Birmingham, is going through an exciting economic and cultural rebirth, there are pockets of nasty violent crime that statistically make New York City look like Mayberry in comparison.

And, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Alabama had the third-highest rate of death by guns in the United States (behind Alaska, Montana and Louisiana). Nonetheless, Alabama’s affection for guns runs deep. State leaders in Montgomery just passed a bill eliminating the requirement for a permit from a county sheriff to carry a concealed handgun.

The bloodshed in Session’s own backyard didn’t stop him from citing Chicago’s spike in gun violence or a gang-bust in the Bay Area, and then he launched into a rant about New York City and the danger it faces from immigrants and transnational gangs.

“New York City continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s ‘soft on crime’ stance,” said the DOJ statement.

New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio wasted no time hitting back on the “soft stance” quip. He wrote in the New York Daily News Saturday that “New York City’s record on public safety is nothing less than stunning. This is a city of 8.5 million people. We host around 60 million visitors a year. Yet, we continue to beat our own records on driving down crime.”

New York City has seen crime fall for the past quarter-century. “Last year was the safest in this city’s modern, recorded history. Last year, we had the fewest shootings,” wrote the mayor.

New York City has been doing something right. In 1990, more than 2,300 people were murdered here. By 2016, that number had dropped to 355. Since 1993 overall crime in this city has fallen 73 percent according to NYPD.

Meanwhile, in cities such as Memphis, population 600,000, there were 228 murders in 2016; in St. Louis, a town of just over 300,000, 188 murders in 2016. And, in mine and Jeff Sessions’ beloved native home state sits Birmingham, a city with barely more than 200,000 people which saw 104 people murdered in 2016.

Sanctuary cities do not permit municipal funds or resources to be applied in furtherance of enforcement of federal immigration laws―at least on paper. These cities normally do not permit police or municipal employees to inquire about one’s immigration status.

Truth be told, U.S. citizens are more likely to commit a violent crime than immigrants. Numerous studies have confirmed this. Jeff Sessions is promoting biased and xenophobic illogic. People like Sessions and President Trump are experts at exploiting fear and ignorance.

There is a also a deep scent of hypocrisy wafting from the Trump administration justice department. If Jeff Sessions and other Trump administration officials truly wanted to take a bite of crime, they would focus their energies on the abject poverty, isolationism, and the social, educational as well as economic inequity infecting many of our cities and rural areas. These are places where poverty equals hopelessness and hopelessness is a state where survival at any cost is the reality. Violent crime festers in communities and conditions like that. I’d argue that Jeff Sessions should consider New York City’s remarkable decline in violence as something to aspire to. Perhaps he could pay the city a visit, and learn a thing or two that could be implemented in places like Alabama.”

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Perhaps it’s time for Sessions to “can” the “Gonzo-Apocalypto” act, learn from the many things that so-called “sanctuary cities” are doing right, and concentrate on “getting his own house” in order in Alabama and other GOP-dominated southern states that consistently rank among the worst, and most dangerous, places to live in the U.S.

PWS

04-23-17

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