"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.
For the Republicans, justice is not something that “rolls down like waters,” it’s something that comes down like a hammer.
This was a failure that Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) aimed to make clear when he asked Garland whether he was familiar with a biblical reference to justice that advises to “act justly and to love mercy.” Much of Booker’s questioning centered around racism within the criminal justice system — the disproportionate arrests of minorities, lousy legal representation for the poor, sentencing imbalances and the issue that caused Kennedy such befuddlement, implicit bias.
Garland acknowledged these issues, the flaws in the system, the need to change. And then he told in public, the story he’d told Booker in private about why he wanted to leave a lifetime appointment on the federal bench to do this job. It’s the most reasonable question, but one that so often is never asked: Why do you want to do this?
Garland acknowledged these issues, the flaws in the system, the need to change. And then he told in public, the story he’d told Booker in private about why he wanted to leave a lifetime appointment on the federal bench to do this job. It’s the most reasonable question, but one that so often is never asked: Why do you want to do this?
“I come from a family where my grandparents fled antisemitism and persecution,” Garland said. And then he stopped. He sat in silence for more than a few beats. And when he resumed, his voice cracked. “The country took us in and protected us. And I feel an obligation to the country, to pay back.”
“This is the highest, best use of my one set of skills,” Garland said. “And so I want very much to be the kind of attorney general you’re saying I could be.”
And that would be one focused on protecting the rights of the greatest and the least — and even the worst. Punishment is part of the job. But it’s not the definition of justice.
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Read Robin’s complete article at the link. She can write! So delighted the Post got her off the “fashion beat” where her talents were being squandered, and got her onto more serious stuff!
Judge Garland’s awareness and humility are refreshing. But, unless he takes immediate action to redo EOIR and the rest of the DOJ’s immigration kakistocracy, it won’t mean much.
Judge, it could have been YOUR family forced to suffer kidnapping, extortion, murder threats, family separation, and other overtly cruel and inhuman treatment in squalid camps in Mexico, waiting for “hearings” that would never come before “judges” known for denying almost 100% of claims regardless of merit! YOUR family’s plea for refugee could have been rejected by some nativist bureaucrat or “hand-selected by the prosecutor” “Deportation Judge” for specious, biased reasons!
YOUR family was welcomed! But what if the only thought had been how to “best deter” “you and others like you” from coming?
Maybe because you and yours are White and hail from Eastern Europe, the “rule of law” has a different meaning and impact than it would if you were Brown, Black, or some other “non-White” skin color and had the misfortune to be from a “shithole” country where we have no concern for what happens to humanity? Or, worse yet, what if your family’s claim had been based on your Grandmother’s gender status? You would really be out of luck under today’s overtly misogynist approach to refugee law flowing out of EOIR!
Then, where would you and your nice family be today? Would you even be? THOSE are the questions you should be asking yourself!
Unfortunately, it’s easy to see that folks like Cotton, Hawley, Cruz, and Kennedy will be deeply offended if you attack their White Nationalist privilege, views, and agendas in any meaningful way.
And, if you actually make progress in holding the Capitol insurrectionists accountable, you’ll have to deal with the unapologetic, disingenuous, anti-democracy, insurrectionist actions of folks like Hawley and Cruz. That won’t be too “bipartisanly popular” with a GOP gang that just overwhelmingly worked and voted to ignore the evidence and “acquit” the “Chief Insurrectionist.”Who, by the way, was a main purveyor of the institutionalized racism that infects EOIR and the rest of the DOJ. It’s no real secret that “America’s anti-democracy party” aids, abets, encourages, and exonerates White Supremacists and domestic terrorists.
In the GOP world, “mercy” and “due process” are reserved for White guys like Trump, Flynn, Stone, White Supremacists, and “Q-Anoners.” Folks of color and migrants exist largely below the floor level of the GOP’s definition of “person” or “human.” For them, justice is a “hammer” to beat them into submission and punish them for asserting their rights.
So, restoring the rule of law at the DOJ is going to be a tough job —you need to clean house and get the right folks (mostly from outside Government) in to help you. And, you must examine carefully the roles of many career civil servants who chose to be part of the problems outlined by Chairman Durbin in his opening remarks.
You’re also going to have to “tune out” the criticism, harassment, and unhelpful “input” you’re likely to get from GOP legislators in both Houses who are firmly committed to the former regime’s White Nationalist agenda of “Dred Scottification,” disenfranchisement, nativism, and preventing equal justice for persons of color, of any status!
Think about all the reasons why you and your family are grateful for the treatment you received from our country. Then, think of the ways you could make those things a reality for all persons seeking refuge or just treatment, regardless of skin color, creed, or status. That’s the way you can “give back” at today’s DOJ! That’s the way you can be remembered as the “father of the diverse, representative, independent, due-process exemplifying21st Century Immigration Judiciary!” 🧑🏽⚖️👩⚖️👨🏻⚖️
I assume Suzanne will provide more coverage and analysis on CQ-Roll Call.
Let’s hope this is the first step to dismantling the disreputable “Supremes Shadow Docket” used by the Court and the SG’s Office during the Trump regime to screw asylum seekers and other migrants, deny due process, and stomp on human rights, many times without even deigning to provide a full rationale to those they are victimizing and abusing. Never seen so many totally unjustified stays of correct lower Federal Court rulings blocking blatantly illegal and invidious Executive action.
For many of us, it didn’t take an armed insurrection to show the Trump regime’s racism, contempt for democracy, and disregard of our Constitution. But, the Supremes’ GOP majority feigned ignorance that Trump wasn’t a “normal Executive” whose decisions might be entitled to “deference.” So much for all those fancy Ivy League law degrees! (Not to mention anti-American, anti-Democracy insurrectionists and conspiracy theory mongers Teddy Cruz and Josh Hawley who also had the benefit of what was once thought to be a “premier” legal education.)
America deserves better from its highest Court and the Government lawyers who appear before it! Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new day in American justice!
“The BIA erred in imposing evidentiary requirements of ongoing injury or treatment beyond the sexual assault itself in order to show persecution. Kaur’s credible testimony about the attempted gang rape is sufficient to show persecution. Attempted rape by a gang of men, in broad daylight on a public street, is especially terrorizing because it powerfully demonstrates the perpetrator’s domination, control over the victim and imperviousness to the law. Requiring evidence of additional harms both minimizes the gravity of the sexual assault and demeans the victim. We grant Kaur’s petition for review and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
[Hats off to Douglas Jalaie!]
1st Calls Out Violation Of Regs, Incredibly Stupid Denial Of Reopening For Approved U Visa Petition Beneficiary Waiting For “Number:”
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
“Petitioner Carlos Antonio Granados Benitez seeks review of the Board of Immigration Appeals’ (“BIA” or “Board”) denial of his motion to reopen his removal proceedings and to remand to the immigration judge (“IJ”) for further consideration in light of the fact that he had been placed on a waiting list by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) for a U-1 nonimmigrant visa (“U visa”) pursuant to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (“VTVPA”), Pub. L. No. 106-386, § 1513(a)(2)(A), (b), 114 Stat. 1464 (2000) (codified as amended at 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(U)). Because we find that the BIA abused its discretion, in that it failed to render a reasoned decision that accords with its own precedent and policies, and it further failed to consider the position of its sister agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), we grant the petition. In so holding we join the views of the Seventh Circuit in Guerra Rocha v. Barr, 951 F.3d 848, 852- 54 (7th Cir. 2020).”
[Hats off to Paige Austin, with whom Philip L. Torrey, Make the Road New York, and the Harvard Law School Crimmigration Clinic were on brief, for petitioner, and Brian D. Straw, Gregory E. Ostfeld, and Greenberg Traurig, LLP on brief for ASISTA Immigration Assistance, Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, National Network to End Domestic Violence, Safe Horizon, and Tahirih Justice Center, amici curiae!]
3rd “Perplexed” By BIA’s Ignorance Of “Equitable Tolling,” Own Authority:
“Hey, guys, ever hear of something called “equitable tolling?” “Nah, is it spelled D-E-N-I-E-D?” “Equitable TROLLING,” I’ve heard of that?”https://www.flickr.com/photos/rasputin243/ Creative Commons License
“Because Nkomo properly raised equitable tolling before the BIA, the BIA erred in failing to consider her request for equitable tolling on the merits. We remand for the Board to do so in the first instance.”
“The BIA’s suggestion that it does not have the authority to make decisions on equitable grounds is perplexing. The BIA has authority to equitably toll the deadline for motions to reopen the precise relief Nkomo sought.”
Demeaning rape victims! ☠️🤮👎🏻 So, what else is new @ EOIR? “Gonzo” Sessions 🦹🏿♂️ set the tone for anti-asylum, racially motivated misogyny in Matter of A-B- and “his judges” have taken it from there! (I repeat my oft-made observation: What kind of “due process” system lets a characters like Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr “own” judges? How would you like to be a woman on trial for her life before a “judge” selected, directed, and “owned” by the likes of these men with clear records of “applied contempt” for equal justice? Sessions, Whitaker, Barr, & Jeffrey Rosen are gone — but their legacy of bias and injustice lives on @ EOIR!)
One of my esteemed Round Table 🛡⚔️ colleagues summed up the latest set of outrageous miscarriages of justice from Falls Church:
All of these decisions demonstrate the degree of careful and detailed analysis that these cases require.And yet the BIA couldn’t keep staff attorneys after McHenry capped them at GS-13 (entry level), and keeps increasing the monthly quotas for BIA staff attorneys.Plus of course the Board Members themselves are now all these types who only review the decisions to make sure they end in the word “dismissed.”
If you were trying to create a recipe for disaster, you couldn’t have planned it better.
I heard the latter comment twice yesterday from immigration/human rights/due process experts on opposite sides of our country who observe and participate in the system at various levels.
To quote Justice Sotomayor’s recent dissent: “This is not justice.”
Historical Footnote:One of my first actions as BIA Chair in 1995 was to establish a “GS-15 Career Ladder” for all Attorney Advisors at the BIA. This made the BIA competitive with the rest of the DOJ.
It allowed us to attract and retain not only “top talent” coming from the “DOJ Honors Program” (how I got my first job at the BIA in 1973), but also outstanding career attorneys who wanted an opportunity to do research, writing, and “applied scholarship” that made a difference in individuals’ lives. Indeed, at various times the BIA has had on its staff former Senior Executives seeking a “change of focus” to a career that allowed them to do the things they liked best about the law.
One of them was a former SES colleague at the “Legacy INS” who found in transferring to a GS-15 BIA Attorney Advisor position a career satisfaction, fulfillment, and sense of meaningful contribution that person had been missing in INS management at that time.
Reducing the top grade for Attorney Advisors is not only professionally and personally demeaning, it also marks the entire organization as “second class” and shows just how stupid and incompetent (and, in recent history, overpaid) EOIR “management” has become! And, as pointed out in my colleague’s comments above, it has not only adversely affected careers but the human lives in the balance on the BIA’s docket.
As I understood my “mission” from then Attorney General Janet Reno in 1995, the BIA was supposed to be about “attracting the best and the brightest judges and supporting them with the best and brightest staff.” Essentially getting it to function like the “12th Circuit” was a description mentioned during my interview process for the Chair job.
Sadly, now, it has become an assembly line of expediency, injustice, shoddy legal work, mindless “corner cutting,” unprofessional behavior, and human misery.
To repeat my colleague’s comment: “If you were trying to create a recipe for disaster, you couldn’t have planned it better.”
All of these cases should have been resolved in the foreign national’s favor without ever getting to the Courts of Appeals! Bad judging, grossly incompetent administration, and lack of qualified, dynamic, judicial leadership from respected “practical scholars” costs lives, produces unacceptable and unfair inconsistencies, and clogs the Article III Courts with unnecessary litigation.
Indeed, the First Circuit’s decision in Granados basically reveals OIL’s “smorgasbord” of bogus arguments to uphold the BIA’s incorrect decision as “without merit” — actually frivolous! There are deep problems @ DOJ resulting from the ongoing corruption and disregard for ethics and professional leadership from the now-departed kakistocracy! They go far beyond the mess at EOIR!
Sure hope that Judge Garland, Vanita Gupta, and their incoming team @ DOJ have a comprehensive plan for replacing the BIA and reforming EOIR! The human beings suffering in this disgracefully inept and abusive “court system” and their courageous, long suffering attorneys are counting on you! Think of it this way: What if YOUR daughter were the rape victim demeaned, dehumanized, and denied justice by EOIR?
As the Migration Policy Institute has shown, the Trump-era changes to the immigration system numbered in the hundreds and consisted of dramatic reinterpretations of the laws alongside seemingly clerical changes, such as revised application forms for visas, higher fees and tighter deadlines in immigration courts — all to advance a maximalist enforcement agenda and slow down the ordinary gears of immigrant admissions. High-level White House advisers, working with knowledgeable allies in the Homeland Security and Justice departments, pushed out regulation after regulation to render asylum laws more restrictive and make it harder for noncitizens to present their case in immigration courts. Trump’s attorneys general exerted unprecedented authority to define asylum laws to severely limit claims by victims of domestic and gang violence, and to constrain immigration judges’ ability to grant relief and manage their dockets in a way that provides a semblance of due process.
. . . .
And yet, the new administration’s policy agenda will not be complete unless legislative proposals are accompanied by concerted executive action across the administrative state, and not just because ambitious legislation on any issue faces an uphill climb in a Senate with the narrowest of Democratic majorities. Even when it comes to pass, legislation emerges from a bargain, leaving issues unaddressed, introducing new concepts to be interpreted and creating new programs that demand administration. Changing the direction of our government requires not only executive vision, but also multilayered strategies that make their way through the bureaucracy and down to the ground — along with the stamina and patience to see them through.
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THE BATTLE FOR DUE PROCESS @ JUSTICE ISN’T OVER: Flailing, Failing Department Needs A Bureaucratic House-Cleaning, Now!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
Jan. 24, 2021
Read Cristina’s complete article at the link. The book that she and Adam Cox wrote The President and Immigration Law along with that of my friend and colleague Professor PhilSchrag, Baby Jails, should be required reading for all incoming Biden-Harris officials.
A “democracy” that doesn’t understand how it came to run prisons for vulnerable kids and star chambers for legal asylum seekers, and how to end them immediately, can expect little success in achieving social justice, promoting economic equality and prosperity for all, or leading and advocating for democracy abroad.
It all starts with immigration. I can draw a straight line from the Muslim Ban, to the Roberts’ Court’s disgraceful and cowardly abdication of responsibility to stop it in its tracks (grotesquely undermining the many lower court Federal Judges who had courageously “mapped it out for them”), to GOP politicos running around undermining our free and fair elections, to “magamorons” and other traitor/crazies storming the Capitol. Folks “get” the abdication of moral responsibility and legal accountability when it is delivered by those who should be standing up for democracy.
The failure of career civil servants at all levels to “just say no” and rebel against these outrageous failures of Constitutional governance and simple human decency, combined with a horribly deficient Supremes’ majority that abandoned both legal legitimacy and moral leadership, created a beyond dangerous pattern that came very close to toppling two centuries of the “democratic experiment” and still has the future of our democratic republic “on the ropes.”
Just look at what happened at the DOJ in the final weeks of the regime! Government officials who knew better settled for “heading off” a President’s treasonous acts rather than exposing them to the public, the Vice President, and leaders of Congress (perhaps other than treacherous co-conspirator Kevin McCarthy) who could have taken action for the immediate removal of this “clear and present threat” to our national security from the office for which he was so completely unqualified. Who knows, they might even have stopped the insurrection!
Look at the failed and ethically vapid Solicitor General’s Office (once, but no longer, one of the “Jewels in the Crown” of Government) that time and time again moved forward to defend unethical and unconstitutional policies before a willing Supremes’ majority based on patently false narratives and obvious pretexts (not very convincingly) concealing the overt racist, White Nationalist agenda of Trump, Miller, and the other neo-Nazis who had seized control of large portions of our governing machinery. Who, with the disgraceful complicity of the Supremes, turned American asylum law from the life-saving humanitarian refuge it was intended to be to instead an ugly weapon of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, child abuse, death, torture, unjust imprisonment, and overall dehumanization of the most vulnerable among us! What’s wrong with this picture? Everything!
Checks and balances and the courage and integrity of a professional career civil service are supposed to halt abuses like this, even in the face of failure of one of our two major political parties and our highest Court to act with integrity and adhere to democratic norms! But, with a few exceptions, courageous folks like U.S. Immigration Judge Ashley Tabaddor, Col. Alexander Vindman, and others like them, it did not happen over the past four years. That nearly cost us our country! (Note that Tabaddor, Vindmin, and others like them were punished, with the disgraceful treasonists from the GOP looking on and actually cheerleading, for speaking out and upholding their oaths of office.)
Buried in the carnage of the departed regime are the many lives unnecessarily lost, futures ruined, and lasting trauma — trauma that will continue to adversely affect our nation far into the future — caused by failure to stop the kakistocracy’s unconstitutional, cruel, and inhuman abuses. From intentionally inept COVID policies, to “politicizing” masks, to deaths in detention, to unlawful deportations to torture, to unfair, clearly political misapplications of the death penalty (basically “legalized murder”), to officially-sanctioned misogyny — this damage can’t be swept away overnight.
Like legislative and judicial failures, bureaucratic failure comes at a cost — a huge one! The fact that it might be largely “out of sight, out of mind” to the arrogant, largely white, privileged, ruling elites and ivory tower “High Court” jurists doesn’t mean the harm isn’t real. Just that our society has enabled some in power to look away and avoid meaningful contact with the human wreckage and lasting pain and damage they have caused and or tolerated!
Already, we can see how the Biden-Harris Administration’s inexplicable failure to “take charge” at a broken DOJ is undermining the long-overdue and well-thought-out progressive immigration agenda they announced with such fanfare. Here’s what’s come to light in just the past few days at the broken and dysfunctional DOJ:
Seeking the illegal deportation to Haiti of a mentally ill individual denied due process by the EOIR kakistocracy;
Failure to repudiate scurrilous, misogynist attacks on well-known refugee woman “Ms. A-B-“ by unqualified then “acting” AG Jeffrey Rosen;
Issuance by the “EOIR Clown Show” of more false narratives and anti-migrant “precedents” — basically delivering the “big, public middle finger” to the new Administration and the AG-designate;
Release of a blockbuster investigative report on misogyny and misconduct within the Immigration Judiciary — with no response or plan for corrective action from the DOJ;
Appointment of a bunch of bureaucratic nobodies to “caretaker” duties at the DOJ — including one quickly found by reporters — but apparently missed by the incoming Administration — to have had ties to the grotesque child abuse program run by White Nationalist former AG “Gonzo” Sessions;
Release by the IG of a report showing the role of Sessions, Rosenstein, and other DOJ officials in “official child abuse” – without any promise of accountability for past or future misconduct;
A treasonous plot by the President, a GOP Congressman, and a corrupt DOJ political hack that, although thwarted, went unreported until uncovered by reporters from The NY Times!
To state the obvious, why weren’t folks with known integrity, courage, and ability — professional decision-makers with track records of upholding our Constitution — like Judge Ashley Tabaddor and her colleagues in the leadership of the National Association of Immigration Judges — put in charge of the DOJ debacle to “ride herd”on this mess, restore some integrity, and prevent any more damage until “Team Garland” arrives? Few folks at Justice know as much about the “inept DOJ bureaucracy and failure of justice at Justice” than the NAIJ leadership which has been “at war” with the kakistocracy for years!
The solutions are still out there. But, it will take boldness, courage, and some “quick thinking outside the box” by “Team Garland” to get this completely (and unnecessarily) unacceptable situation under control!
That begins with an immediate clean-up of the “immigration kakistocracy/bureaucracy” throughout Justice — starting with the “EOIR Clown Shown.” Bring in the immigration/human rights/due process experts and let them start fixing the problems!
Stop defending the unprofessional garbage being aimlessly tossed into the Federal Courts by the EOIR White Nationalist deportation factory still running under orders from Miller and Hamilton. Have all these cases reviewed by experts in immigration/human rights/due process and racial justice!
Fire anyone in the SG’s office who presents bogus arguments concerning fake “immigration emergencies” and illegally promulgated “regulations” to the Supremes. End the unethical practice of using one-sided “precedents” to develop anti-immigrant “litigating positions” for OIL.
Stop appointing unqualified individuals to precious Immigration Judgeships. Remove the entire BIA and replace it with real expert appellate judges unswervingly committed to fundamental fairness and due process for all. Replace “worst practices” with “best practices.” Stop the “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at EOIR. Cut the largely self-created Immigration Court “backlog.”
Bring in Professor Rodriguez, Professor Schrag, Professor Ingrid Eagly, Judge Dana Marks (who argued and won the landmark Cardoza-Fonseca case before the Supremes), Judge (and former BIA Judge and high-ranking DOJ official) Noel Brennan, Judge Amiena Khan, Judge Mimi Tsankov, Marielena Hincapie (NCIJ), Dean Kevin Johnson (UC Davis Law), and a “due process brain trust” of others like them! Let them start “kicking some tail,” fixing the problems, and restoring sanity, humanity, and due process to the broken immigration kakistocracy at DOJ. Now, before any more lives are lost or futures irrevocably ruined!
Let “practical scholars” like Rodriguez, Schrag, Eagly, and Johnson “turn their research and great thoughts into action.” “A little less talk, and a lot more action,” as Toby Keith would say!
The NDPA has already shown that it can out-litigate and out-strategize the Government immigration kakistocracy. In many ways, only the abject failure of the Supremes’ majority to stand up for the Constitution, rule of law, and human decency has prevented the NDPA from completely annihilating the kakistocracy, wiping out all of its misdeeds by judicial decree, and perhaps even holding criminals like Miller and Wolf accountable for their “crimes against humanity.”
Judge Garland is a smart person. The “smart thing” would be to get the “NDPA on the inside at Justice,” creating order from chaos and re-establishing justice @ Justice now!
Otherwise, smart or not, he’s likely to spend the bulk of his tenure as a “caption” on the never-ending avalanche of new legal actions filed against the deadly immigration bureaucracy by the NDPA. Because, I promise that the fight for due process in immigration and human rights isn’t over! It has just begun!
There is lots to be gained by working together to solve these problems. But if it takes litigation, continuing conflict, and a never-ending political and press crusade against an Administration I otherwise support to get the job done, so be it!
The battle isn’t over until the kakistocracy is removed, at every level, and due process, fundamental fairness, equal justice, and respect for human dignity — all both Constitutional and human rights — become a reality for all persons in America (including those physically present at our borders) rather than just the cruel, unfulfilled promises they have been to date.
Due Process Can’t And Won’t Wait! Due Process Forever!
PWS
01-24-22
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GO PACK GO!
Green Bay PackersAaron Rodgers Quarterback Green Bay PackersDevante Adams Wide Receiver Green Bay Packers
BIA Asylum Panel In Action Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons“She struggled madly in the torturing Ray” Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A Parting Shot At Women
As the Trump Administration comes to an end, let’s remember how it began. On the day following the inauguration, millions participated in Women’s Marches around the world. There is sadly no need to list the reasons why women in particular would feel the need to respond in such a way to a Trump presidency.
It was therefore no surprise that Trump’s first Attorney General issued a decision intended to strip protection under our asylum laws from women who are victims of domestic violence. That decision, Matter of A-B-, was so soundly rejected by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit relied on his reasoning to conclude that Sessions’s decision had been abrogated. The First and Ninth Circuits further rejected Sessions’s view that the particular social group relied upon in A-B- was legally unsound. The Eighth Circuit rejected Sessions’s description of the standard for proving a government’s inability or unwillingness to control an abusive spouse, for example, as requiring evidence that the government condones his actions, or is completely helpless to prevent them.
The administration tried to codify the views expressed in A-B- and in another case, Matter of L-E-A-, by issuing proposed regulation designed to completely rewrite our asylum laws, with the purpose of making it virtually impossible for domestic violence and gang violence victims to qualify for asylum protection. Those rules, which were rushed out with very little time for public comment, were blocked on January 8 by a U.S. District Court judge.
There are at least two important cases presently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit involving the issues raised in both A-B- and L-E-A-. Had these decisions been issued by, e.g., U.S. District Court judges, the Department of Justice would be representing the government (in the form of the Attorney General), but not the judge who issued the decision below. But as to A-B-, the government attorneys represent an Attorney General acting as judge, and a judge with extraordinary powers. As a result of those powers, the official presently filling the position on an acting basis (who had come to the job a few weeks earlier from the Department of Transportation with absolutely no background in immigration law) was able to unilaterally issue a new decision in the case, in an attempt to shore up issues of concern before the circuits.
So what does the new decision of the recent Deputy Transportation Secretary say? It addresses two issues: the “condone or complete helplessness” language used by Sessions, and the proper test for when persecution can be said to be “on account of” an asylum seeker’s gender, familial relationship, or other group membership.
As to the first issue, the Acting AG now states that Sessions did not change the preexisting legal standard for determining whether a government is unwilling or unable to provide protection. The Acting AG accomplishes this by explaining that “condone” doesn’t actually mean condone, and that “complete helplessness” doesn’t mean complete helplessness.
I’m not sure of the need for what follows on the topic. Perhaps there is an Attorney General Style Guide which advises to never be succinct when there are so many more exciting options available. Besides from sounding overly defensive in explaining why Sessions chose to use terms that sure sounded like they raised the standard in order to supposedly signal that he was doing no such thing, the decision also feels the need to remind us of what that preexisting standard is, in spite of the fact that no one other than perhaps a Deputy Transportation Secretary pretending to be an asylum law scholar is in need of such a recap. Yes, we understand there are no crime-free societies, and the failure to prevent every single crime from occurring is not “unwilling or unable.” No court has ever said that it was. Let’s move on.
The second part of this new A-B- decision addresses a conflict between the views of the Fourth Circuit and the BIA in regard to when a nexus is established. This issue arises in all asylum claims, but the BIA addressed it in a case, Matter of L-E-A-, in which an asylum applicant was threatened by a violent gang because it wished to sell drugs in a store owned by his father. The question was whether the asylum seeker’s fear of harm from the gang was “on account of” his familial relationship to his father.
Our laws recognize that persecution can arise for multiple reasons. A 2005 statute requires a showing that one of the five specific bases for a grant of asylum (i.e. race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion) must form “one central reason” for the harm. The BIA itself has defined this to mean that the reason was more than “incidental, tangential, superficial, or subordinate to another reason.”
In the context of family membership, the Fourth Circuit has repeatedly held that this “one central reason” test is satisfied where the family membership formed the reason why the asylum seeker, and not someone else, was targeted for harm. Using the L-E-A- example, the gang members were obviously motivated most of all by their desire for financial gain from the selling of the drugs in the store. But under the Fourth Circuit’s test, the family relationship would also be “one central reason” for the harm, because had the asylum seeker not been the son of the store owner, he wouldn’t have been the one targeted. This is known as a “but for” test, as in “but for” the familial relationship, the asylum seeker wouldn’t have been the one harmed
In L-E-A-, the BIA recognized the Fourth Circuit’s interpretation in a footnote, but added that the case it was deciding didn’t arise under that court’s jurisdiction. The BIA thus went on to create its own test, requiring evidence of an actual animus towards the family. The BIA provided as an example of its new test the assassination of the Romanov family in 1917 Russia, stating that while there were political reasons for the murders, it would be difficult to say that family membership was not one central reason for their persecution.
I’m going to create my own rule here: when you are proposing a particular legal standard, and the judge asks for an example, and all you can come up with is the Romanov family in 1917 Russia, you’re skating on thin ice. The other thing about legal standards is in order for judges to apply them and appeals courts to review them, they have to be understandable. I’m not a student of Russian history, but it would seem to me that (as the BIA acknowledged), the main motive in assassinating the Romanovs was political. I’m not sure what jumps out in that example as evidence of animus towards the family itself. How would one apply the Romanov test to anyone ever appearing in Immigration Court? By comparison, the Fourth Circuit’s test is a very clear one that is easy to apply and review on appeal.
Of course, this is just my humble opinion. The assistant Transportation czar feels differently. Drawing on his extensive minutes of experience in the complex field of asylum, he concluded: “I believe that the Fourth Circuit’s recent interpretation of ‘one central reason’ is not the best reading of the statutory language.”
I am guessing that by saying this in a precedent decision in the final days of this Administration, Transportation guy is hoping that the Fourth Circuit will feel compelled to accord his opinion Brand X deference. Legal scholar Geoffrey Hoffman has pointed out that no such deference is due, as the requirement that the statute be ambiguous is not satisfied. (Geoffrey’s excellent takedown of this same decision can be found here, and is well worth reading).
But the term in question, “on account of,” is also not one requiring agency expertise, which is of course a main justification for judicial deference. It is instead a legal standard not specific to asylum or immigration law.
For example, last June, the Supreme Court decided Bostock v. Clayton County, a case involving employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or identity. In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Gorsuch, the Court explained that the statutory term in question, “because of,” carries the same legal meaning as “on account of,” the relevant phrase for asylum purposes. In determining nexus, the Court stated:
It doesn’t matter if other factors besides the plaintiff’s sex contributed to the decision. And it doesn’t matter if the employer treated women as a group the same when compared to men as a group. If the employer intentionally relies in part on an individual employee’s sex when deciding to discharge the employee—put differently, if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer—a statutory violation has occurred.
That last sentence – “if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer” – is essentially the same “but for” standard applied by the Fourth Circuit in the asylum context. What would give an Acting Attorney General the authority to hold otherwise?
A conservative commentator observed a difference between the discrimination required in Bostock and the persecution required in L-E-A-, stating that discrimination can involve favoring one group without necessarily hating the group being passed over, whereas persecuting someone requires an animus towards them.
However, the BIA recognized nearly 25 years ago that persecution can be found in harm resulting from actions intended to overcome a characteristic of the victim, and that no subjective punitive or malignant intent is required. The BIA acknowledged this in L-E-A-, noting that a punitive intent is not required.
Furthermore, the legislative history of the REAL ID Act (which created the requirement in question) shows that Congress amended the original proposed requirement that the protected ground be “the central motive” for the harm, to the final language requiring that it be “one central reason.”1 While animus would fall under “motive,” “reason” covers the type of causation central to the Fourth Circuit’s “but for” test. The history seems to undermine the former Transportation official’s claim that under the Fourth Circuit’s test, the “one central reason” language would be “mere surplusage.” This is untrue, as that additional language serves to clarify that the reason can be one of many (as opposed to “the” reason), and that the relevant issue is reason and not motive. Perhaps the author required more than three weeks at the Department of Justice to understand this.
I write this on the last full day of the Trump presidency. Let’s hope that all of the decisions issued by this administration will be vacated shortly; that the BIA will soon be comprised of fair and independent immigration law scholars (preferably as part of an independent Article I Immigration Court), and that future posts will document a much more enlightened era of asylum adjudication.
Note:
1. See Deborah Anker, The Law of Asylum in the United States (Thomson Reuters) at § 5:12.See also Ndayshimiye v. Att’y Gen. of U.S., 557 F.3d 124 (3d Cir. 2009) (recounting the legislative history and rejecting a dominance test for determining “one central reason”).
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
Copyright 2021 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.
Republished by permission.
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Judge Garland and his team must address systemic failures at the dysfunctional DOJ well beyond the festering, unconstitutional mess @ EOIR (“The Clown Show” 🤡) that requires an immediate “remove and replace.” The ethical failings, bad lawyering, dilatory litigating tactics, anti-American attitudes, racism, misogyny, intellectual dishonesty, coddling of authoritarianism, and complicity in the face of tyranny are in every corner of the disgraced Department.
Withdrawal of every bogus, biased, unconstitutional, racist- motivated “precedent” issued during the Trump regime and turning the proper development and fair interpretation of immigration and asylum laws over to a “new BIA” — consisting of real judges who are widely recognized and respected experts in immigration, human rights, and due process — must be a “day one” priority for Judge Garland and his team.
The Clown Show🤡🦹🏿♂️ that has made mincemeat out of American justice — not to mention legal ethics and human morality — must go! And, the problem goes far beyond the “Falls Church Circus!”🎪🤹
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever! Institutionalized misogyny, 🤮☠️never! No more Jeffrey Rosens @ DOJ —ever!
And, firms like Kirkland & Ellis need to think twice about re-employing a sleazy “empty suit” like Rosen who represents everything that is wrong with American law in the 21st century! Public disgrace should not be mistaken for “public service.”
“Normalizing” political toadies, “senior executives,” government “lawyers,” and other “public officials” who carried the water and willingly (often, as in Rosen’s case, enthusiastically, gratuitously, and totally unnecessarily) advanced the objectives of a White Nationalist, anti-American regime whose disgraceful and toxic rule ended in a violent, unhinged, failed insurrection against our democracy encouraged by a Traitor-President, his supporters, and members of the GOP would be a HUGE, perhaps fatal, mistake!
Make no mistake about it! Brave, determined refugee women like Ms. A-B- and her lawyers (superstars like Professor Karen Musalo and Blaine Bookey of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies) are the true American heroes 🦸🏻 of the resistance to White Nationalist, racist, xenophobic policies of cruelty, hate, and disparaging of the rule of law. Toadies and traitors like Rosen are the eternal villains!🦹🏿♂️ Picking on refugees on the way out the door is an act of supreme cowardice that will live in infamy!🐓🤮
President-elect Joe Biden will roll out a sweeping overhaul of nation’s immigration laws the day he is inaugurated, including an eight-year pathway to citizenship for immigrants without legal status and an expansion of refugee admissions, along with an enforcement plan that deploys technology to patrol the border.
Biden’s legislative proposal, which will be sent to Congress on Wednesday, also includes a heavy focus on addressing the root causes of migration from Central America, a key part of Biden’s foreign policy portfolio when he served as vice president.
The centerpiece of the plan from Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris is the eight-year pathway, which would put millions of qualifying immigrants in a temporary status for five years and then grant them a green card once they meet certain requirements such as a background check and payment of taxes. They would be able to apply for citizenship three years later.
. . . .
The focus on Central America reflects the message that Biden has relayed to senior officials in the region: that he will advocate for policy changes aimed at what drives scores of migrants there to come to the United States illegally to seek safe harbor.
“Ultimately, you cannot solve problems of migration unless you attack the root causes of what causes that migration,” one official said, pointing to the various reasons — from economic to safety — that drive migrants to flee their home countries. “He knows that in particular is the case in Central America.”
Transition officials are aware of recent reports of the increased numbers of migrants at or heading to the border in anticipation of the end of Trump’s presidency, and urged them to stay in their home countries. They emphasized that newly arriving immigrants would not qualify for the legalization program that Biden proposes.
Biden wants to move the refugee and asylum systems “back to a more humane and orderly process,” the official said. But “it’s also been made clear that that isn’t a switch you flip overnight from the 19th to the 20th, especially when you’re working with agencies and processes that have been so gutted by the previous administration.”
Biden hopes to reinstate a program granting minors from Central America temporary legal residence in the United States. The Trump administration terminated the program in August 2017, officials said. The administration also wants to set up a reunification program for Central American relatives of U.S. citizens that would allow those who have been already approved for U.S. residency to be admitted into the country, rather than waiting at home for an opening. The program would be similar to ones that existed for Cubans and Haitians but also were ended by the Trump administration.
The Biden proposal also would put in place a refugee admissions program at multiple processing centers abroad that would better help identify and screen those who would qualify to be admitted as refugees into the United States.
As for border enforcement, the plan calls on the Department of Homeland Security to develop a proposal that uses technology and other similar infrastructure to implement new security measures along the border, both at and between ports of entry. Biden has long vowed not to expand the border wall Trump has marginally extended.
“This is not a wall; this is not taking money from [the Department of Defense],” a transition official said, referring to how Trump helped to finance his wall after pledging Mexico would pay for it. “It’s a very different approach.”
. . . .
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Read the complete article at the link.
This is a welcome change from the poorly conceived, often ill-informed approach to immigration by the Obama Administration. It appears that Biden and Harris have actually “listened to the experts” and acted a accordingly.
The concentration on addressing the reality of Central American migration and dealing honestly and constructively with its root causes in a sensible and humane way is also refreshing. Using intelligence and technology to address real border security issues (as opposed to squandering resources on politically manufactured ones) also shows promise.
Julia Edwards Ainsley NBC Correspondent Justice & DHS Outside Justice Dep’t Photo: Victoria Pickering https://www.flickr.com/photos/vpickering/
Many of the latter wereenergized by the Trump/DHS program of White Nationalist racist fear-mongering and intentionally false anti-immigrant, anti-due-process narratives. That’s what “applied malicious incompetence” looks like — DHS and EOIR are two of the most egregious examples in a regime that raised it to an “art form.” It will take an aggressive and far-reaching “house cleaning” to get these agencies that have abandoned the common good and now operate “on the dark side” back on track.
The immediate “knee-jerk opposition” to rational, practical, fact-based immigration reform by notorious White Nationalist racist Sen. Tom Cotton (R-ARK) shows that Team Biden is on the right track to disavow the toxic institutionalized racism and biased policies of the Trump regime and move America along the path to racial justice and realistic, progressive immigration policies that will further the national interest and lead to a better future for all!
It’s a great, if long overdue, start to getting beyond Jim Crow and “Dred Scottification” and saving and enhancing our democracy! But, the proof will be in the results!
Biden, of course, will also face the formidable challenges of dealing with the human carnage left behind by the Trump regime’s disastrous mis-handling of COVID-19, economic inequality, the environment, racial justice, and foreign policy where American “prestige” has plummeted to levels not seen since the days of the Barbary Pirates.
He also must address a failing Federal Justice System that, particularly at its appellate levels, did not effectively stand up to the Trump regime’s unrelenting assault on human decency and American democracy. Indeed, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a consistently competent and courageous Justice among our failing Supremes, offered this final harsh but true assessment of her GOP colleagues’ malfeasance in a death penalty case: “This is not justice.”https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/not-justice-justice-sonia-sotomayor-offers-fierce-dissent-death-penalty-n1254554
You could say that about almost everything in the departing, defeated White Nationalist regime!
I’ll note for the record that among other things, the Supremes’ tone-deaf majority has been responsible for letting bona fide asylum seekers rot in squalor in camps in Mexico while waiting for non-existent “due process,” and also authorized the imposition of potential death sentences and torture on asylum seekers within our jurisdiction without any whit of due process.
The GOP majority’s disgraceful failure to stand up for voting rights of African Americans, Latinos, and other voters of color has also deepened racial injustice in America and helped usher in a horrible “Jim Crow Revival” pushed, incited, and enabled by the GOP, “The Party of the Failed Insurrection.”
Any competent first-year law student might ask “How could this happen in America?” That’s a question that Roberts and his gang of fellow Trump enablers and apologists will have to answer before the “court of history!”
Trump RegimeTrump’s Legacy Kiddie GulagJeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com Republished under licenseJeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions “Police Brutality? What Police Brutality?”Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com, Republished under licenseStephen Miller & Count Olaf Evil Twins, Notorious Child Abusers“Gauleiter Muller & Eva Braun” Yuck it Up In The Comfort Of “Public Welfare Dole” While Looking Forward to Planning Together for More “Crimes Against Humanity,” Abusing Children, Dehumanizing Persons of Color, Spreading Lies & False Narratives, & Targeting World’s Most Vulnerable Refugees 🤮☠️⚰️🦹🏿♂️ — Sure Looks Like “Welfare Fraud” to Me!
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon has called for the investigation and prosecution of current and former Trump administration officials afterthe Department of Justice Office of the Inspector Generalreleased “a disturbing report confirming that the Trump administration knew their zero tolerance policy would lead to family separations,” the Oregon Democrat said in a statement.
“We finally have more answers about how this diabolical plan came to be,” Merkley said. “It is crystal clear that Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Chad Wolf, Kirstjen Nielsen and other senior Trump administration officials were not only fully aware that their policy would have traumatizing impacts on families, but also that their intention was to inflict that trauma as a means to deter people from coming to America in search of a better life.”
The senator added “it’s now confirmed that they committed perjury by lying to Congress about their intentions and actions in order to avoid accountability for their monstrous initiative.”
“The intentional infliction of harm on innocent children is unforgivable and has no place on our soil,” Merkley said Thursday. “The architects should be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for any crimes connected with both the atrocities and the cover-up.”
Merkleyreturned to the border 6 more timesand advocated for families to be reunited – and for people seeking refuge “from gang violence, murder, rape, and extortion in their home countries” be allowed to make their case – something the senator alleges the Trump adminitration has not allowed in keeping with the law.
“America is at its strongest when we embrace our historic role as a beacon of hope for persecuted people from around the world,” Merkley said. “I am determined to work with the Biden administration to ensure that we turn that vision into a reality, and to hold the perpetrators of the Trump administration’s cruelty fully accountable.”
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Couldn’t have said it better myself, Senator! Right on! Remarkable how all it takes is an armed insurrection against our Capitol and our democracy generated by the Traitor Prez and supported by far, far too many cowardly, anti-American members of his “Party of Treason” to get folks “thinking like Courtside.”
Even if the criminals described by the IG escape prosecution for their crimes, the new IG Report and the additional documents that certainly will come to light once the Trump kakistocracy is removed should provide enough evidence to keep these wretched fascist creatures and their families tied up in civil litigation for the rest of their miserable and worthless lives!
To date, only Senator James Langford (R-OK) has had the decency to apologize for his role in supporting Trump’s beyond bogus, treasonous, insurrectionist claims of “election fraud” or a stolen election. Where are the apologies from the rest of the cowardly GOP traitors and toadies who supported and/or enabled Trump and his band of racist thugs over the past four years? Why is scumbag Rep. Jim Jordan walking around with a bogus “Medal of Freedom” for spreading lies and encouraging sedition, rather than sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial?
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
“Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. Child abuser and racist plotter remains at large, after having the shameless audacity to run for the U.S. Senate again, being defeated by Magamoron “Coach TubbyTraitorville” (a blithering idiot who obviously got hit by one too many flying tackling dummy).
“Gauleiter Stepan Muller.” Hiding out on the public dole in the seat of corruption and insurrection (formerly and soon again to be known as the “White House”) with his repulsive “Eva Braun substitute” and carrying out more “crimes against humanity” to the end.
Rod Rosenstein. Hiding out, hanging his head in (belated, fake)shame and making the big bucks at King & Spaulding. Will need them after he is dismissed from his law firm, disbarred, and has to pay legal fees and damages to the families he traumatized.
Gene (No Relation to Alex) Hamilton. Still grifting on public welfare at the DOJ until next Wednesday. First cowardly “Waffern SS Member” to publicly take the “Nuremberg defense:” “I was only following Der Fuhrer’s orders.”But, he won’t be the last.
Donald J. “Big Loser/Traitor” Trump. Hiding out in White House basement and planning flightfrom DC after initiating botched coup attempt against his own Government.
Victims of Failed Regime’s “Crimes Against Humanity.” Already sentenced to a lifetime of pain, suffering, and trauma by Large Banana Republic that shirked its legal and moral duties.
Accountability for this “gang of White Nationalist thugs” is important!
Also, Judge Garland needs to look into the conduct of the DOJ lawyers who defended the regime’s transparent lies and false claims that there was “no child separation policy.” These turkeys 🦃 took no responsibility for their clients’ ongoing crimes and cover ups. Indeed, outrageously, they got away with making it the burden of the plaintiffs’ lawyers to reunite families the Government intentionally and illegally separated without any plans for reunification.
The invidious racist, unconstitutional motives of criminals like Trump, Miller, Sessions, Hamilton, and Rosenstein was no secret. Except for the degree of Rosenstein’s involvement, it was widely reported at the time. Trump was a well-established liar whose public statements and rationales should have been assumed false until proven true. (Ask yourself what would happen to a corporate lawyer who took at face value and presented to a court as “facts” or a “defense” in a civil suit false statements by a corrupt CEO with a long-standing record of fraud, racism, and dishonesty.)
Also, what was the a racist hack like Sessions (the report also reveals that he was as totally incompetent as a lawyer as he was devoid of human decency) doing running border enforcement programs that had intentionally been removed from the AG’s portfolio by Congress when DHS was created? How does that fit with “Gonzo’s” transparently unethical and unconstitutional actions as a “quasi-judicial officer” in interfering with due process at the EOIR Clown Show🤡/Star Chamber🦹🏿♂️?
This IG report is just the “tip of the iceberg” of the institutionalized racism and systemic misconduct that polluted the immigration kakistocracy at DOJ and DHS during the Trump regime. The failings of the U.S. Justice system from top to bottom, starting with the Supremes’ consistent failure to critically examine the regime’s transparent pattern of unconstitutional, racist, biased behavior culminating in an insurrection can’t be “swept under the carpet.”
Nor can their enabling of the White Nationalist immigration agenda of “Dred Scottification” pushed by unethical SG Noel Francisco! In a well-functioning democracy, the Trumpist thugs’ child abuse should have been stopped in its tracks. Thanks to the failure of legal, ethical, and moral leadership by Roberts and his righty GOP buddies, it wasn’t!
The entire beyond disgraceful and patently illegal “zero tolerance program” instituted by Gonzo was a grotesque misuse of public funds and abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Real crimes (the Trump regime has been an absolute boon to serious criminals from the Oval Office on down) went un-prosecuted and un-investigated. The conduct of U.S. Attorneys, Federal Judges, and U.S. Magistrate Judges along the border who shirked their duties and participated in the legal farce taking place in our criminal justice system also needs to be examined.
Those of us who lived through Watergate can see that this time around, under extraordinarily poor leadership generated by an anti-American GOP, the response of all three branches of our Federal Government to the overt threats to our Constitution and democracy posed by a dishonest Executive fell disturbingly below the bipartisan levels that saved our nation from Nixon.
That’s why the critical democratic standard of a “peaceful and orderly transfer of power” has fallen by the wayside and the Biden-Harris Inauguration will take place in an armed camp. Ironically, the man administering the oath to President Biden, Chief Justice John Roberts and his GOP colleagues on the Supremes bear a major responsibility for democracy’s peril and the pain and suffering of those like separated families whom they failed to protect from Executive abuses!
As I’ve said before, although it won’t happen, the resignations of Roberts and his fellow GOP Justices should be on President Biden’s desk on the morning of January 21. That would be a real start on healing, restoring democracy, and reinstituting human decency and respect for human lives and the rule of law in America.
(Let’s not forget that ethics-challenged Justices Thomas and Coney Barrett showed up at what essentially was a “MAGA campaign rally” at the White House on the eve of the election that eventually resulted in impeachable acts of insurrection and sedition by a patently dishonest and dangerous Chief Executive whose unfitness to govern was more than clear by that time. Honestly, it’s going to take more than a black robe to cover the shame of these dudes who stand for protecting and enabling tyranny and against justice for the people. If nothing else, it’s high time for a Democrat-led Congress to impose at least some minimal ethical standards on the Supremes, since they appear to have none to mention. That’s, of course, after they come to grips with the treason of GOP guys like Cruz and Hawley who should be expelled and barred from public “service” (treason?) for life.)
🇺🇸⚖️🗽👎🏻Due Process Forever! Cowardly thugs, 🥷🏻magamorons, 🦹🏿♂️ and their enablers, never!
*Roto-Rooter is the registered trademark of Roto Rooter Co.🪠🚽🧻
“Eyore In Distress” Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”BIA Asylum Panel In Action Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons“Justice” Star Chamber StyleHon. Jeffrey S. Chase Jeffrey S. Chase Blog Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges
“Sir Jeffrey” Chase reports more good news for the NDPA, bad news for the EOIR kakistocracy🤡 🦹🏿♂️and the seedy DOJ lawyers 🦹🏿♂️clogging the Federal Courts with frivolous litigation engendered by the White Nationalist, nativist immigration agenda ☠️⚰️🏴☠️ at failed DOJ:
Hi all: The lesser asylum regs that were scheduled to take effect tomorrow were just blocked by a TRO and preliminary injunction granted in D.C. District Court (order to follow). These regs would have required certain respondents to file their I-589s within 15 days of the first Master Calendar hearing, and would have required EOIR to reject any I-589 which left even a single space blank, among other things.
Best, Jeff
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There needs to be a “day of reckoning” for DOJ lawyers who have “carried the water” for the racist kakistocracy @ the regime’s “Ministry of Nativist Propaganda & Crimes Against Humanity” (the Federal agency formerly known as the “Department of Justice”).
Illegal regulations, clogging the Federal Courts with frivolous positions, defending the actions of imposters impersonating Cabinet officers and other officials, inventing pretexts to cover invidious intent, targeting the most vulnerable among us have “real life” consequences.
There will be no “rebirth” at Justice unless “Team Garland”👨🏻⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸 deals with the xenophobia, racism, institutionalized cowardice, and criminal misuse of office and Government resources at the failed DOJ over the past four years.
That’s in addition to the “maliciously incompetent” mismanagement aspect of the unmitigated disaster @ EOIR which has (mis)used various illegal “gimmicks” to pour more mismanaged resources into creating astronomical, mostly unnecessary backlogs in our failed and beyond dysfunctional Immigration “Courts” (actually Star Chambers, masquerading as “courts”), in “partnership” with the out of control, White Nationalist enforcement kakistocracy @ ICE/DHS and violating the Constitution and human decency to boot! Really, could it be any worse?
The Trump/GOP insurrection🥷🏻 @ our Capitol is directly related to lack of accountability that let the Trump kakistocracy “get away with murder.” That’s why the Inauguration is being held in a city under military lockdown next week.
You can bet that the lies, “back-pedaling,” cover-ups, finger pointing, and avoidance of responsibility for the disintegration of democracy will be in full swing by the end of next week! Judge Garland will have to deal with it up front; he can’t “wait for Godot” as has been the problem with past Dem Administrations!
Today’s “DOJ” looks and “(mal)functions” like a Clown Show 🤡 repertory company playing “Theater of The Absurd” in a bad imitation of a Franz Kafka novel! If Judge Garland doesn’t want to become the “star” of this revolting exhibition, he’d better start cleaning 🧹 up and cleaning out 🪠on “Day 1.” And the EOIR “Tower of Babble” would be a great starting point for “Operation Clean Sweep”🧹!
There will be no real justice in America without a a “day of reckoning” @ Justice. It’s long, long, long, long overdue!
Elizabeth Gibson Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group Publisher of “The Gibson Report”
COVID-19
Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify information on the relevant government websites and with colleagues as best you can.
EOIR Status Overview & EOIR Court Status Map/List: Hearings in non-detained cases at courts without an announced date are postponed through, and including, February 5, 2021. NYC non-detained remains closed for hearings.
CBS: Another federal judge on Friday ruled that Chad Wolf was likely unlawfully appointed to his position at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), issuing a decision that blocked a set of broad asylum limits slated to take effect Monday.
WaPo: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the administration’s policy undermines the national resettlement program created four decades ago by Congress.
WaPo: President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate federal judge Merrick B. Garland, a Democratic casualty of the bitter partisan divide in Washington, to be the next attorney general, tasked with restoring the Justice Department’s independence and credibility, according to people familiar with the decision.
Law360: Democratic victories in Georgia’s heated Senate runoffs gave the party a slim majority in Congress, but without enough votes to end a filibuster.
WaPo: More than 2,500 detainees, most with no serious criminal history, have given up their cases since March, according to records from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group at Syracuse University. Those records also show that detainees put in deportation proceedings in July 2020 were twice as likely to opt for voluntary departure than those from a year before.
WaPo: Over 170 new applicants have become the first individuals in several years to win approval to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for immigrants brought to the U.S. as young people, the U.S. government revealed in a court filing Monday.
Guardian: US federal prosecutors have filed motions saying the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, took bribes from drug traffickers and had the country’s armed forces protect a cocaine laboratory and shipments to the US.
NY: This year, Governor Cuomo will continue to support the Liberty Defense Project to keep fighting for immigrants seeking a better life for themselves and their families. New York’s strength, character, and pride are found in the diversity and rich culture that makes us the Empire State.
A federal district court in California preliminarily enjoined the government from implementing, enforcing, or applying the 12/11/20 final rule, “Procedures for Asylum and Withholding of Removal; Credible Fear and Reasonable Fear Review.” (Pangea Legal Services, et al. v. DHS, et al., 1/8/21) AILA Doc. No. 21011107
EOIR issued a memo (PM 21-13) updating and replacing OPPM 17-01, Continuances, to account for legal and policy developments subsequent to its issuance. The memo provides a non-exhaustive list of legal and policy principles as an aid to adjudicators considering common types of continuance requests. AILA Doc. No. 21011101
Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a Ninth Circuit ruling that detained asylum seekers who clear an initial fear screening must be given a prompt bond hearing, sending the case back to the appeals court for reconsideration.
SCOTUSblog: The case asks whether a grant of Temporary Protected Status authorizes eligible noncitizens to obtain lawful-permanent-resident status if those noncitizens originally entered the United States without being “inspected and admitted” – a term of art referring to lawful entry and authorization by an immigration officer.
ImmProf: There are four immigration related cases set to be considered, with three being petitions by the government (more SG petitions on distinct immigration issues than one would usually expect in the course of an entire year), and the other involving a case in which the SG is agreeing that certiorari is appropriate (also a rare position for the SG). The SG’s position in each of these cases shows an unusual aggressiveness towards the role of the Supreme Court.
The BIA found that IJs may find a document to be fraudulent without forensic analysis if it contains obvious defects or readily identifiable hallmarks of fraud, and the party submitting the document is given an opportunity to explain the defects. Matter of O-M-O-, 28 I&N Dec. 191 (BIA 2021) AILA Doc. No. 21010801
The court held that a conspiracy or attempt to commit fraud or deceit involving over $10,000 in intended losses is an aggravated felony, and remanded to determine whether petitioner’s convictions under 18 USC §1037(a) reflected over $10,000 in intended losses. (Rad v. Att’y Gen., 12/21/20) AILA Doc. No. 21010500
The court reversed the district court opinion and disagreed with CA6 and CA9 interpretations of the statute, by holding that a grant of TPS does not constitute an “admission” into the United States under INA §1255. (Sanchez v. Wolf, 7/22/20) AILA Doc. No. 21011100
The court upheld the BIA’s denial of petitioner’s motion to reopen based on changed country conditions in Somalia, finding that the BIA did not fail to consider al-Shabaab’s increase in power or ISIS-Somalia’s emergence and growing violence from 2011 to 2018. (Mohamed v. Barr, 12/23/20) AILA Doc. No. 21010502
The court held that the Vietnamese petitioner had waived review of the BIA’s discretionary denial of asylum relief, and that his proposed social group comprised of “known drug users” was not legally cognizable because it lacked particularity. (Nguyen v. Barr, 12/21/20) AILA Doc. No. 21010503
The court reversed an injunction of PP 9945, which requires IV applicants to demonstrate acquisition of health insurance or ability to pay for future healthcare costs. The court found the proclamation within the president’s executive authority. (Doe, et al., v. Trump, et al., 12/31/20) AILA Doc. No. 21010436
President Trump issued a memorandum directing the Secretary of State to assess whether to classify Antifa as a terrorist organization under 8 USC §1182(a)(3)(B)(vi), and to take steps to consider listing Antifa in 9 FAM 302.5-4(B)(2)(U), Aliens Who Are Members of an Identified Criminal Organization. AILA Doc. No. 21010635
USCIS provided additional updates about lockbox operations, noting that applicants may face delays of four to six weeks in receiving receipt notices for some applications and petitions filed at a USCIS lockbox facility. Delays may vary among form types and lockbox locations. AILA Doc. No. 20121534
I sure hope that Judge Garland and Secretary-Designate Mayorkas are paying close attention!
Because unless they take some immediate forceful action to disable the “regime’s immigration kakistocracy” and make the radical bureaucratic changes necessary to regain control, their “dream jobs” are going to turn into “Nightmare on Elm Street” overnight!
Human rights are being violated and taxpayer funds (in an already “over budget” USG) are being poured down thetoilet 🚽by the minute by the out of control, maliciously incompetent kakistocrats at EOIR, DHS, and in the SG’s Office to name just a few of the most obvious “national disgraces” that need an immediate fix!
The defeated anti-American, neo-Nazi regime was “not normal” and neither Garland nor Mayorkas can afford to treat the wreckage of democracy and human decency and those who did the regime’s bidding at DOJ and DHS as “acceptable” for another minute!
“[W]e conclude that the BIA abused its discretion by denying E.A.’s motion to reopen. E.A.’s mother’s recent childbirth is a serious medical event, which coupled with E.A.’s minor age, her difficulty obtaining transportation, and her difficulty navigating the immigration system without assistance, constitute “exceptional circumstances” necessitating rescission of the in absentia removal order. … The BIA’s decision was also contrary to law, and therefore an abuse of discretion. … First, the BIA improperly considered E.A.’s age separately, rather than considering age alongside other factors, when determining that she had not shown that exceptional circumstances justified her failure to appear. Second, the BIA erred when it dismissed without adequate explanation E.A.’s evidence that she is eligible for SIJS. Finally, the BIA improperly stated that E.A. was required to present prima facie evidence that she was eligible for immigration relief as part of her motion to reopen. … For the foregoing reasons, we GRANT the petition for review, VACATE the removal order, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
[Hats way off to Rachel Naggar! Here is a link to the audio of the oral argument.]
“Salim Al Amiri, an Iraqi citizen, seeks relief from removal on the grounds of asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). He premises his requests for such relief on the harm that he fears that he would be subjected to in Iraq at the hands of members of Iraq’s military or civilian insurgents operating in that country. Al Amiri contends that he has reason to fear he would be subjected to that harm on account of his work as a paid contractor for the United States Army during the war in Iraq, as in that role he educated U.S. soldiers about Iraqi customs and practices as they prepared for their deployment. We vacate and remand the ruling of the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) denying his claims for asylum and withholding of removal, but we deny his petition insofar as it challenges the BIA’s ruling rejecting his CAT claim.”
Think how much better this system would function with expertjudges who treated asylum applicants fairly from the “git go,” granted protection wherever possible in accordance with the the Refugee Act of 1980 and the (more “woke”) Supremes’ precedent in Cardoza-Fonseca, provided clear, positive guidance on how valid claims could be documented and granted, and promoted and consistently applied best practices to achieve efficiency with maximum due process.
At first glance, although the issue is reopening rather than a continuance, E.A.C.A. undercuts McHenry’s nativist, insanely wasteful, and totally dishonest attempt to “raise the bar” for routine continuances for asylum applicants who need time to properly document and prepare their cases.
The “Deny – Deny Program” — deny due process, deny relief — that infects EOIR’s “Star Chambers” (impersonating “courts”) is a huge backlog builder that kills people and screws up Court of Appeals dockets in the process.
Reopening cases that should be reopened, getting to the merits, and getting the many properly grantable asylum cases represented, documented, and prioritized would be a huge step in reducing EOIR’s largely self-created and unnecessary “bogus backlog.”
Ultimately, many of the clearly grantable asylum cases being mishandled and wrongly denied at EOIR, at great waste of time and resources, not to mention unnecessary human trauma, could, with real expert judges at EOIR setting and consistently enforcing the precedents, be granted more efficiently and expeditiously at the Asylum Office and ultimately shifted to a more robust and properly run Refugee Program.
In the longer run, once EOIR is redesigned and rebuilt as a proper court with real, independent, expert judges, it might be appropriate to place the Asylum Offices under judicial supervision, given the grotesque abuses and corrupt, perhaps criminal, mismanagement of the Asylum Offices by USCIS toadies carrying out the regime’s racist, White Nationalist, unconstitutional agenda of hate and waste.
NOTE TO JUDGE GARLAND👨🏻⚖️:Please fix the EOIR mess, Your Honor, before it brings you and the entire US justice system crashing down with it! This is a national emergency, and a damaging national disgrace, NOT a “back burner” issue!
Here’s some additional E.A.C.A. analysis by my good friend and NDPA “warrior queen” 👸🏽Michelle Mendez @ CLINIC!
Michelle Mendez Defending Vulnerable Populations Director Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”)
Subject: CLINIC MTR In Absentia Win at the CA6 on behalf of SIJS-Seeking UC (E. A. C. A. v. Jeffrey Rosen)
Greetings,
Sharing this win, E. A. C. A. v. Jeffrey Rosen, out of the CA6 by my amazing colleague Rachel Naggar who manages our BIA Pro Bono Project. This was an appeal of an IJ (Memphis) denial of an in absentia motion to reopen for a 13-year old unaccompanied child.
Interestingly, after oral argument, OIL filed a motion to remand the case (which Rachel opposed) and the CA6 denied that motion. Seems the CA6 really wanted to issue a decision on the merits and we are grateful for the decision. Here are some highlights from the decision:
SIJS
· “Notably, the IJ’s decision does not mention E.A.’s claims that she was eligible for SIJS.”
· FN 1: “As of the December 2020 Visa Bulletin, visas are available for special immigrants (category EB4) from El Salvador to adjust their status if their priority date is prior to February 2018. If DHS removes E.A. prior to approving her visa, she will be unable to apply for adjustment of status. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(27)(J).”
Totality of the Circumstances
· “Based on the totality of the circumstances, including E.A. mother’s recent childbirth, E.A.’s young age, E.A.’s mother’s failed attempts to obtain counsel to help change the address of E.A.’s hearing, and E.A.’s inability to travel from New York to Memphis for the hearing, we hold that E.A. established exceptional circumstances.”
· “Under the totality of the circumstances, E.A.’s young age is an important factor in determining whether exceptional circumstances exist.”
Exceptional Circumstances
· “E.A.’s mother’s recent childbirth is a serious medical condition that supports reopening. The statute defining ‘exceptional circumstances’ that justify reopening an immigration proceeding lists the ‘serious illness of the alien, or serious illness or death of the spouse, child, or parent of the alien’ as an example. 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(e)(1). Childbirth is a serious medical event that necessitates a recovery period.”
· “Instead of recognizing that childbirth is a serious medical condition, the BIA minimized the seriousness of childbirth and its impact on E.A.’s mother’s ability to bring E.A. to Memphis. […] Recovery from childbirth is exactly the type of circumstance that § 1229a(e)(1) was intended to cover.”
Prima Facie Eligibility
· “Finally, the BIA erred by stating that E.A. was required to prove prima facie eligibility for immigration relief. The BIA’s decision improperly states that E.A. is required to show at this stage prima facie eligibility for relief. The statute governing motions to reopen removal orders entered in absentia provides that the petitioner must ‘demonstrate[] that the failure to appear was because of exceptional circumstances.’ 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(b)(5)(C). In general, we have stated that ‘[a] prima facie showing of eligibility for relief is required in motions to reopen.’ Alizoti, 477 F.3d at 451–52. In the case of a motion to rescind a removal order entered in absentia, however, the BIA has held that ‘an alien is not required to show prejudice in order to rescind an order of deportation” or removal. In re Grijalva-Barrera, 21 I. & N. Dec. 472, 473 n.2 (BIA 1996); see also In re Rivera-Claros, 21 I. & N. Dec. 599, 603 n.1 (BIA 1996). This is consistent with the statute governing motions to rescind removal orders entered in absentia, 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(b)(5)(C), which does not list a showing of prima facie eligibility for relief from removal as a requirement to rescind in absentia removal orders. Rivera-Claros, 21 I. & N. Dec. at 603 n.1; see also Galvez-Vergara v. Gonzales, 484 F.3d 798, 803 n.6 (5th Cir. 2007) (declining ‘to affirm the IJ’s decision on the grounds that [the petitioner] has not shown that he was prejudiced by his counsel’s performance’ because ‘In re Grijalva-Barrera, 21 I. & N. Dec. at 473 n.2, provides that an alien need not demonstrate prejudice for his counsel’s erroneous advice to constitute an ‘exceptional circumstance’ justifying rescission of an in absentia removal order’); Lo v. Ashcroft, 341 F.3d 934, 939 n.6 (9th Cir. 2003) (‘follow[ing] the BIA’s usual practice of not requiring a showing of prejudice’ to rescind an in absentia order of removal). We now join our sister circuits and hold that E.A. is not required to make a prima facie showing of eligibility for relief in order to obtain rescission under 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(b)(5) of the in absentia order of removal.”
Thanks to our entire Defending Vulnerable Populations team for supporting Rachel on the briefing, oral argument, and negotiations with OIL.
Gratefully,
Michelle N. Mendez | she/her/ella/elle
Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)
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In addition to the “normal” overall White Nationalist, racist agenda that EOIR “management” has carried out under the defeated regime, there was a good deal of misogyny 🤮 involved in the BIA’s gross mishandling of the “pregnancy issue,” as described by the Sixth Circuit. This misogynistic trend can be traced back directly to the unconstitutional and unethical actions of mysogynist White Nationalist AG Jeff Sessions 🤮 🦹🏿♂️🤡in the “Matter of A-B- Abomination.” ☠️⚰️🏴☠️👎🏻
Biased, anti-migrant decision-making in support of bogus enforcement gimmicks and White Nationalist anti-democracy agendas builds backlogs and kills, maims, and tortures “real” people! Migrants are people and persons, not “threats” and “bogus statistics.”
The “dehumanization” and “de-personification” of migrants, with the connivance of the tone-deaf and spineless GOP Supremes’ majority, is a serious, continuing threat to American democracy! It must stop! Justices who won’t treat migrants physically present in the U.S. or at our borders as “persons” under our Constitution — which they clearly are — do not belong on the Supremes! ⚖️🗽🇺🇸
I can also draw the lines connecting George Floyd, institutionalized racial injustice, voter suppression, riots at the Capitol, and the “Dred Scottification” of asylum seekers and other migrants by EOIR!
HINT TO JUDGE GARLAND:Michelle Mendez would be an outstanding choice to lead the “clean up and rebuild” program at EOIR and the BIA once the “Clown Show” 🤡🦹🏿♂️ is removed!🪠🧹 Put experts with practical experience like Rachel Nagger and Christopher Linas onto the bench, on the BIA, the Immigration Courts, and the Article III Judiciary to get the American Justice system functioning again!
The “judicial selection system” for the Immigration Courts and the Article III Judiciary has failed American democracy — big time — over the past four years. Fixing it must be part of your legacy!
The folks who preserved due process and our Constitution in the face of tyranny are mostly “on the outside looking in.” You need to get them “inside Government” — on the bench and in other key policy positions — and empower them to start cleaning up the ungodly mess left by four years of regime kakistocracy🤮☠️🤡⚰️👎🏻. “Same old, same old” (sadly, a tradition of Dem Administrations) won’t get the job done, now any more than it has in the past! New faces for a new start!
And, it starts with better judges @ EOIR, which is entirely under YOUR control!An EOIR that actually fulfills its noble, one-time vision of “Through teamwork and innovation being the world’s best tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all” will be a model for fixing our failing Federal Courts — all the way up to the leaderless and complicit Supremes who failed, particularly in immigration, human rights, voting rights, and racial justice, to effectively and courageously stand up to the Trump-Miller White Nationalist agenda of hate and tyranny!
We are where we are today as a nation, to a large extent, because of the Supremes’ majority’s gross mishandling of the “Muslim Ban” cases which set a sorry standard for complicity and total lack of accountability for unconstitutional actions, racism, dishonesty, cowardly official bullying, and abandonment of ethics by the Executive that has brought our nation to the precipice! Life tenure was actually supposed to protect us from judges who wouldn’t protect our individual rights. In this case, it hasn’t gotten the job done! Better judges for a better America!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever! The EOIR Clown Show🤡🦹🏿♂️ ☠️⚰️Never!
From my friends over at the Legal Aid and Justice Center of Virginia:
Dear Paul,
Today marks a milestone for the Legal Aid Justice Center.
This morning at 10 A.M., the U.S. Supreme Court will begin oral arguments in Pham v. Chavez, LAJC’s first case before the high court in our 54-year history. It is also the last immigration case to be heard by the Supreme Court during Trump’s presidency, a fitting way to cap the past four years of fighting this administration’s harmful policies, which we kicked off with our 2017 lawsuit Aziz v. Trump challenging Trump’s Muslim ban, filed one week after his inauguration.
It is not uncommon for people who have been previously deported to eventually return to the U.S. seeking protection from new threats to their lives or liberty in their home countries. Today’s case is to decide whether immigrants who illegally reenter the United States after a prior deportation and seek an asylum-like form of protection called “withholding of removal” have the right to ask a judge for release from detention while they fight their cases, which routinely take over a year.
This case will affect more than 3,000 people every year nationwide —a number that will likely grow as those who have been turned away at the border through the current administration’s unjust policies return in desperation to seek help once again.
We thank our pro bono co-counsel Paul Hughes, an experienced Supreme Court practitioner arguing the case for us today, and the team at McDermott Will & Emery and the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic who assisted with the briefing. Paul has partnered with us on many of our legal challenges to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, dating back to Aziz v. Trump.
This case began in summer 2017 when we won the release of five individuals being held without bond at the Farmville Detention Center. We quickly recognized that the system needed to be reformed. Our subsequent class action lawsuit has beaten back every challenge to date, and no matter the outcome of today’s hearing, has already won the release of more than 100 people from detention.
We hope the highest court in the land will also acknowledge that these immigrants should have the chance to seek freedom.
Angela Ciolfi
Executive Director
Legal Aid Justice Center
Many, many thanks to the Legal Aid & Justice Center, pro bono co-counsel Paul Hughes, the team at McDermott Will & Emery, and the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic for making this happen. The Round Table 🛡⚔️also filed an amicus brief in this important case:
As noted in my previous posting, this case is also a good example of the false and misleading narratives pushed by unethical former SolicitorGeneral and leading “Trump Toady” Noel Francisco in defending the regime’s “crimes against humanity” and racist agenda targeting asylum seekers and other migrants.
In fact, as anybody actually familiar with the Immigration Court system knows, holding bond hearings for 3,000 seekers of protection would not be a major burden on the Immigraton Courts. It’s an example of critical, yet routine, duties that should be performed easily, efficiently, fairly, and frequently by any qualified U.S. Immigration Judge.
What has been a “burden on the system” and a fiscal, due process, and management disaster is the improper “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” engaged in by DOJ politicos and their “maliciously incompetent” toadies at EOIR. This mismanagement and total failure of competent judicial leadership and administration has pushed the backlog to over an astounding 1.1 million cases (with many others likely MIA or lost in space in the EOIR mess).
To accomplish this dysfunctional disaster, EOIR has doubled the number of Immigration Judges. This often involves hiring judicial candidates from prosecutorial backgrounds who lack the human rights and immigration expertise, and in some cases the backbone to comply with their oaths to uphold the Constitution, necessary to restore due process to the system, issue prompt bonds to those seeking protection, establish precedents for expeditious granting of asylum and other protection, and, most of all, hold an out of control DHS enforcement kakistocracy accountable.
Judge Garland👨🏻⚖️ take note! As of the date of your confirmation, your name will start appearing on the grossly deficient work product churned out by EOIR and the scofflaw nonsense being presented to the Supremes and other Federal Courts by the SG’s Office and other DOJ lawyers who have forgotten or abandoned their ethical obligations.
I can’t believe that any Federal Judge highly respected enough to be nominated to the Supreme Court by a real President would want his name and legacy tarnished by association with the White Nationalist due process disaster and misuse of public funds currently going on at EOIR.
The “EOIR Clown Show”🤡🦹🏿♂️ must go! And, while you’re at it, the SG’s Office and other litigating components who have “carried the water” for a regime out to bury truth and dismember our Constitution and our democratic institutions also are in dire need of a “thorough housecleaning!”🧹🪠
🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼Due Process Forever! The “New American Gulag” ☠️⚰️🤮 Never!
Dean Kevin Johnson reports @ ImmigrationProf Blog:
Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Sanchez v. Wolf, which presents the question under the Immigration and Nationality Act whether a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipient may adjust his or her status to that of a lawful permanent resident. The Third Circuit held that TPS recipients were not entitled to adjust their status because TPS status was not an “admission,” under 8 U.S.C. § 1255. The Third Circuit decision in Sanchez conflicts with the rulings of the Sixth and Ninth Circuits.
********************
Here’s the government’s position in a nutshell: Notwithstanding the “plain language” of section 244(f)(4) which makes holders of TPS status eligible to adjust status in the U.S. if they meet all of the requirements for legal immigration (usually an an approved visa petition based on family ties or job skills), we have employed legal gobbledygook to refuse to adjust them. Thereby, we mindlessly keep them in “suspended animation” in the U.S. although they are long-time productive members of our society who have resided here with permission and work authorization and now meet our criteria for permanent immigration.
Sound pretty stupid?That’s because it is! I actually had this issue argued before me at the Arlington Immigration Court. Not surprisingly, the ICE Assistant Chief Counsel was unable to come up with any rational reason for circumventing the statutory language to achieve a nonsensical result that actually unnecessarily inflated the case backlog and served no legitimate government purpose. Needless to say, I ruled in the respondent’s favor.
This isn’t “rocket science.” The new SG should join the petitioner’s counsel, JAIME W. APARISI (who regularly appeared before me in Arlington) and LISA S. BLATT (Williams & Connolly LLP) in agreeing that this issue was correctly resolved in the respondents’ favor by the Sixth & Ninth Circuits.
Then, ICE should ask the “new BIA” (real judges with immigration and human rights backgrounds appointed by AG Garland) to adopt this view nationwide.
Presto!
No more bogus, contrived “circuit split;”
TPSers with adjustment eligibility can be taken out of EOIR’s ridiculous 1.1 – 1.5 million case backlog and returned to USCIS for routine adjustment of status;
Productive, long-time members of our society can become green card holders, get on the path to citizenship, and reach their full productive potential for both their benefit and the benefit of our society;
A win, win, win, instead of wasting time attempting to achieve an illegal, undesirable, yet fundamentally stupid, irrational, and counterproductive result;
And, unlike the stupidity going on now, it actually doesn’t require expenditure of funds (actually will save and perhaps even generate money from adjustment filing fees), major regulatory changes, new legislation, or protracted litigation. It’s “low hanging fruit” that the Trump immigration kakistocracy has let rot on the tree! Rational administration of the immigration laws can actually be quite efficient.
Is it any wonder that the EOIR bogus “court,” whose “guiding principle” is “always construe the law against the individual and in favor of DHS” is building uncontrollable backlog hand over fist, even with double the number of “judges?” This is “fraud, waste, and abuse” in action! 💸🤮 Not something I’d want to “own” if I were Judge Garland (which, of course, I’m not, and never will be)!
That’s how “practical scholarship” @ EOIR, DOJ, and ICE; smarter, better, more ethical progressive leadership at the DOJ; and the private/NGO/academic bar can work together to solve legal problems and stop wasting the time of the Federal Courts and the Supremes. Perhaps, with the time saved, the Williams Connolly LLP team can even take some more pro bono asylum cases, make the system work better at the “retail level,” and save some deserving lives of vulnerable individuals who have been mistreated by Miller and his neo-Nazi gang of thugs and the malicious incompetents now “running” EOIR (into the ground) in the process.
Not rocket science! But, it will require Judge Garland to bring in some members of the NDPA who actually understand the interrelated issues of immigration, human rights, due process, civil rights, equal justice, and practical problem solving to replace the current “Clown Show” 🤡🦹🏿♂️ at EOIR and the DOJ. (Not to mention, a comprehensive “de-clownification” 🦹🏿♂️🤡 of DHS by Secretary-designate Mayorkas and his team). All of those skills have been conspicuously absent from the Executive branch during the last four years of kakistocracy.
⚖️🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Let the De-Clownifying 🤡🦹🏿♂️ Of Government Begin!
Pangea Legal Services v. DHS (“Pangea II”), N.D. CA (USD Judge James Donato), 01-08-21
KEY QUOTE:
Wolf has not spent his time idly at DHS. During his relatively brief tenure, he has attempted to suspend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and impose administrative fees for immigration services and eliminate fee waivers, among other actions. These efforts resulted in several lawsuits in federal courts across the United States, each of which challenged Wolf’s rulemaking authority on the same grounds presented by plaintiffs here. In all of these cases, the district courts have concluded that Wolf was not a duly authorized Acting Secretary, and that his actions were a legal nullity. See Batalla Vidal v. Wolf, No. 16-CV-4756 (NGG) (VMS), 2020 WL 6695076, at *9 (E.D.N.Y. Nov. 14, 2020); Nw. Immigrant Rights Project v. United States Citizenship & Immigration Servs., No. CV 19-3283 (RDM), 2020 WL 5995206, at *24 (D.D.C. Oct. 8, 2020); Immigrant Legal Res. Ctr. v. Wolf, No. 20-CV-05883-
United States District Court Northern District of California
Case 3:20-cv-09253-JD Document 66 Filed 01/08/21 Page 7 of 14
JSW, 2020 WL 5798269, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 29, 2020); Casa de Maryland, Inc. v. Chad F. Wolf, Case No. 8:20-cv-02118-PX, 2020 WL 5500165, at *23 (D. Md. Sept. 11, 2020).3
This Court is now the fifth federal court to be asked to plow the same ground about Wolf’s authority vel non to change the immigration regulations. If the government had proffered new facts or law with respect to that question, or a hitherto unconsidered argument, this might have been a worthwhile exercise. It did not. The government has recycled exactly the same legal and factual claims made in the prior cases, as if they had not been soundly rejected in well-reasoned opinions by several courts. The government initially appealed two of these decisions, both of which it later voluntarily dismissed, and appears to have only one appeal pending. In the main, the government contents itself simply with saying the prior courts were wrong, with scant explanation. See, e.g., Pangea Dkt. No. 48 at ECF p. 11 (“the various courts that have embraced this argument are mistaken”); Immigration Equality Dkt. No. 37 at 14 (same).
This is a troubling litigation strategy. In effect, the government keeps crashing the same car into a gate, hoping that someday it might break through. To be sure, one court decision alone does not necessarily close the door to any further cases or arguments along similar lines. Our common law system contemplates that more than one judicial examination of facts and issues is often merited. But our system has no room for relitigating the same facts and law in successive district court cases ad infinitum. That is what the government is doing here. The Court took pains at oral argument to discuss this with counsel for the government, and specifically asked how their arguments here are in any way different from the ones made and rejected in the preceding cases.4 Counsel responded mainly with a disparaging comment to the effect that the other district courts had shirked from working their way through the record. That is untrue. Each of the prior decisions conducted a painstaking analysis of the facts with respect to the Acting Secretary
3 The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has also found that Wolf’s appointment was invalid under the Homeland Security Act. See Matter of Dep’t of Homeland Security, Gov’t Accountability Office (Aug. 14, 2020), https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/708830.pdf, at 2.
4 Attorney August Flentje at DOJ handled this portion of the government’s argument at the hearing.
United States District Court Northern District of California
Case 3:20-cv-09253-JD Document 66 Filed 01/08/21 Page 8 of 14
position at DHS, with full attention to the unprecedented efforts to validate Wolf’s claim to the job, irrespective of governing law and procedures.
A good argument might be made that, at this point in time, the government’s arguments lack a good-faith basis in law or fact. But the Court need not reach that conclusion to reject those arguments yet again. The Court’s independent review of the record indicates that Batalla Vidal, 2020 WL 6695076, which is the latest decision before this order, correctly identified and analyzed the salient points vitiating Wolf’s claim of rulemaking authority, and the Court agrees with it in full.
********************
Wolf’s continuing impersonation of a Cabinet Officer and Barr’s knowingly illegal, ultra vires approval of clearly unlawfully promulgated regulations that actually threaten the lives of bona fide asylum seekers should be dealt with as criminal offenses after Jan. 20, 2021. Every Government official who participated in this travesty, as well as the unethical DOJ officials and their supervisors who were involved in the frivolous and unethical “defense” of this clearly unlawful, and invidiously motivated, action should be removed from Federal Service. Clearly, prosecutions should be explored against racist mastermind “human rights criminal” Stephen Miller.
As the regime of treason and insurrection comes to an end, those who knowingly helped further its gross illegalities should be held fully accountable under the law. Criminals have no right to government lawyers to defend their scofflaw behavior in civil actions like this!
The EOIR Clown Show 🦹🏿♂️🤡 must go! But, there also must be some accountability for those who abused their government positions and violated their oaths of office to illegally inflict harm and suffering on the most vulnerable among us.
We have seen a serious breakdown of legal ethics and bar policing responsibility at all levels of the Federal Government during the regime. That breakdown extends to Federal Judges all the way up to the indolent Supremes who have consistently failed to hold U.S. Government attorneys (including, specifically, the highly unethical former Solicitor General and his staff) accountable for their unethical behavior in engaging in frivolous civil litigation, advancing “bad faith” defenses for clearly illegal actions, seeking unjustified stays, manufacturing and arguing clear “pretexts” for unconstitutionally discriminatory Executive actions, failing to do even minimal “due diligence,” putting forth factually erroneous and misleading arguments, and allowing the government to abuse, harass, and waste the time of private counsel for improper purposes.
This case also reinforces the absolute necessity of nationwide injunctive relief against Government abuses like this. The “solicitation” of cases challenging and improperly narrowing this necessary form of relief, a corrupt project of the Federalist Society and the former Solicitor General, should raise serious questions of the judicial qualifications of the two “GOP Justices” who recently engaged in this form of rancid, immoral, and legally defective political pandering in their “separate opinion.” Better Justices for a Better America!
What really held the American legal system together for the last four perilous years was the tenacity of lawyers, many of them arguing Immigration or human rights cases pro bono, and the legal scholarship and courage of some U.S. District Judges who stood tall even in the face of a spineless and complicit Supremes’ majority that all too often failed to support them and could barely move fast enough to give a patently lawless, corrupt, racist, treasonous, and clearly unqualified President and his neo-Nazi minions carte blanch to abuse humanity and “Dred Scottify” persons of color. Leadership, moral courage, and integrity count. But for Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer, and the late RBG, the Supremes came up disastrously short of fulfilling their Constitutional rule in far, far too many cases, and innocent people suffered and died because of it. This is simply unacceptable in our highest level judges.
It’s high time for law schools to reexamine and beef up obviously inadequate ethical training, for a review of the failure of basic ethics throughout Government, and for review and reform of the scurrilous and unacceptable abdication of ethical norms and responsibilities by Federal Judges at every level of our floundering and failing Federal legal system. Criminals like Wolf and Miller and clowns like EOIR officials violate the laws and degrade humanity because they have every reason to believe they will get away with it. They must be held accountable if we want the abuses that came close to destroying our democracy this week to be stopped!
President-elect Joe Biden is reportedly set to name Merrick Garland as his nominee for attorney general. If confirmed, Garland will take over a demoralized Justice Department that has abandoned bedrock principles and priorities, and come under withering attack from President Donald Trump’s administration.
Garland, a former federal prosector who lead the investigation into the Oklahoma City bomber, was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Barack Obama following Antonin Scalia’s 2016 death. The Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold a hearing on his nomination for months, citing the presidential election. His pending nomination died in early 2017, after 293 days.
Garland will take over a Justice Department that Trump sought to weaponize against his political opponents and use as his personal law firm. Trump has fired or pushed out a number of key department officials, most famously former FBI Director James Comey. Trump appointees have used the Justice Department’s power in an overtly political fashion, even if they’ve resisted Trump’s desire to wield the department’s prosecutorial power as a blunt political weapon.
The nominee will face the challenge of determining how the Justice Department will approach potential criminal investigations into Trump and members of his administration. They will also face the prospect of rebuilding components like the Civil Rights Division, which abandoned key issues like police reform and focused on controversial religious liberty cases and attacks on college affirmative action programs. They’ll also have to deal with the long-term consequences of Trump’s attacks on the FBI, which has gutted Republicans’ confidence in the nation’s premier law enforcement organization. Biden’s nominee may also have to figure out how to combat a rise in right-wing domestic terrorism cases, some of which have been directly inspired by the outgoing president’s rhetoric against his political enemies and Muslims.
In addition, Biden’s nominee will have to deal with the delicate question of how to handle the ongoing tax investigation into the new president’s son, Hunter Biden, which is being led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware. The nominee will have to reassure the American public that there won’t be political interference in the probe, perhaps by walling off the investigation. Republicans, the vast majority of whom were unconcerned with Trump’s repeated attempts to improperly interfere in Justice Department matters, might even call for a special counsel to assure the probe’s independence.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who had to rebuild the Justice Department after controversies during the George W. Bush administration, told HuffPost that Biden understands that he needs to give the attorney general “the space that he or she needs to restore integrity and the independence” of the Justice Department.
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Reread the rest of the article at the link.
I knew Judge Garland a little bit from the DOJ in the Carter Administration, eons ago.He’s obviously in a totally different class than his sleazy, White Nationalist enabling predecessors in the defeated regime. It should be a welcome breath of professionalism, re-infusion of ethics, and re-establishment of due process, the rule of law, and simple common sense and human decency at the “disaster zone” DOJ.
I just hope that fixing the totally broken and dysfunctional Immigration Courts and restoring fairness, due process, and independence by bringing in immigration and human rights experts from the NDPA is high on his “to do” list! Only time will tell. But, potentially, he appears to be the right person to rebuild and transition the existing EOIR mess into an independent Article I Immigration Court.
Obviously, unlike most of his predecessors, he understands what a “real court” should look like and how it should operate.
With the results from Georgia coming in, today the long-sought objective of Article I seems closer than it has ever been.
⚖️🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Time for Judge Garland 👨🏻⚖️ to end the “EOIR Clown Show”🤡!
The Next-Level Shamelessness of the COVID Security Regs
On December 23, EOIR and USCIS published final rules designed to brand most people a “security risk,” and thus ineligible for asylum. The rules won’t become effective until January 22 (i.e. after the Biden Administration is in office), so will presumably be pulled back before they hurt anyone other than the reputations and careers of those responsible for their publication. Nevertheless, it seems worthwhile to refute the present administration’s claimed justification for such a rule. First, there will certainly be other bad administrations in our future, and as we’ve seen with the present one, they might look to the past for inspiration.
Furthermore, even without the rule going into effect, individual immigration judges will still be faced with interpreting the clause it invokes on a case-by-case basis. I’m hoping the following analysis will prove useful, as I’m pretty sure it wasn’t covered in the judges’ training.
But most importantly, the assaults of the past four years on facts and reason have taught us the need to constantly reinforce what those presently in charge hope to make us forget: that there are laws passed by Congress; that the Judiciary has created strict rules governing their interpretation, and that executive agencies are not free to simply ignore or reinvent the meaning of those laws to their own liking.
The regulations in question seek to take advantage of the present pandemic to render any asylum seeker who either exhibits symptoms of the virus, has come in contact with it, or has traveled from or through a country or region where the disease is prevalent ineligible for asylum. The administration seeks to justify this by claiming that there are reasonable grounds for regarding the above a danger to the security of the United States.
The “danger to the security of the United States” bar to asylum1 which the new regulations reference derives from Article 33(2) of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which serves as the international law basis for our asylum laws. That treaty (which is binding on the U.S.) states that the prohibition against returning refugees shall not apply to those “whom there are reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country in which he is, or who, having been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to the community of that country.”
However, Article 33(2) applies to those who have already been recognized as refugees, and have then committed crimes in the country of refuge, which is not the class to whom the new regulations would apply. The bases for excluding those seeking refugee status for reasons arising prior to their arrival are found under Article 1D through 1F of the 1951 Convention. The prohibitions found there cover three groups: those who are already receiving protection or assistance (Article 1D); those who are not considered to be in need of protection (Article 1E); and those “categories of persons who are not considered to be deserving of international protection (Article 1F).2 Individuals posing a danger to the community fall into the final category.
No ground contained in the 1951 Convention excludes those in need of protection for health-related purposes. To understand why, let’s look closer at the Convention’s use of the word “deserving” as it relates to refugee protection. In 1997, UNHCR published a note providing additional insight into the Article 1F “exclusion grounds.” Explaining that “the idea of an individual ‘not deserving’ protection as a refugee is related to the intrinsic links between ideas of humanity, equity, and the concept of refuge,” the note explains that the primary purpose of the clauses “are to deprive the perpetrators of heinous acts and serious common crimes, of such protection.” The note explains that to do otherwise “would be in direct conflict with national and international law, and would contradict the humanitarian and peaceful nature of the concept of asylum.”
The European Council on Refugees and Exiles covered this same issue in its 2004 position paper on Exclusion from Refugee Status. At page 8, the ECRE stated that the “main aim” of Article 1F was not “to protect the host community from serious criminals,” but rather to preserve the integrity of the international refugee system by preventing it from being used to “shelter serious criminals from justice.” These sources make it extremely clear that the intent was certainly not to exclude someone who might have been exposed to a virus.
In including six exceptions to eligibility in our asylum statute,3 Congress followed the lead of the 1951 Convention, as all six domestic clauses fall within the three categories listed in paragraph 140 of the UNHCR Handbook as listed above. Of the six grounds listed under U.S. law, the last one, regarding persons firmly resettled in another country prior to arrival in the U.S., is covered by the Convention categories of those already receiving assistance or not in need of assistance.
The remaining five exceptions under U.S. law fall within the category of those not considered to be deserving of protection (Article 1F). The statute lists those categories as: (i) persecutors of others; (ii) persons posing a danger to the community of the U.S. by virtue of having been convicted of a particularly serious crime; (iii) persons whom there are serious reasons to believe committed serious nonpolitical crimes prior to their arrival in the U.S.; (iv) persons whom “there are reasonable grounds for regarding…as a danger to the security of the United States,” and (v) persons engaged in terrorist activity.
Agencies may only apply their own interpretation to the term “as a danger to the security of the United States” to the extent such term is ambiguous. But the courts have instructed that in determining whether a statute is in fact ambiguous, traditional tools of construction must be employed, including canons.4 The Supreme Court has recently applied one such canon, ejusdem generis, for this purpose.5 In its decision, the Court explained that “where, as here, a more general term follows more specific terms in a list, the general term is usually understood to ‘ “embrace only objects similar in nature to those objects enumerated by the preceding specific words.”’”6
Former Attorney General Barr himself recently applied the ejusdem generis canon to the term “particular social group,” stating that pursuant to the canon, the term “must be read in conjunction with the terms preceding it, which cabin its reach…rather than as an “omnibus catch-all” for everyone who does not qualify under one of the other grounds for asylum.”7
A very similar canon to ejusdem generis is noscitur a sociis (the “associated words” canon). Whereas ejusdem generis requires a term to be interpreted similarly to more specific terms surrounding it in a list, noscitur a sociis applies the same concept to more specific terms across the same statute.8
In 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(2)(A), the more general term “danger to the security of the United States” is surrounded by the more specific terminology describing the accompanying grounds of asylum ineligibility. When thus “cabined” by the more specific classes of persecutors of others, those convicted of serious crimes, and those engaged in terrorist activities, it is clear that Congress intended a “risk to security” to relate to similar types of criminal activity, and not to health grounds. As the intent of Congress is clear, the term “threat to the security of the United States” is not open to any interpretation the agencies might wish to apply to it. Yet in its published rule, EOIR and USCIS here create the type of “omnibus catch-all” that the Attorney General himself has elsewhere declared to be impermissible.
The rule is further at odds with circuit case law in its application to those who simply “may” pose a risk. The Third Circuit has found the statutory language of the clause in question to unambiguously require that the asylum-seeker pose an actual, rather than merely a possible, threat to national security.9 Even if it were assumed that COVID could somehow fit into the category of security risk, simply having traveled from or through an area where the virus is prevalent doesn’t establish that the individual presents an actual risk.
There is also the issue of the transient nature of the risk. In the same decision referenced above, the Third Circuit relied on the Refugee Act’s legislative history to conclude “that Congress intended to protect refugees to the fullest extent of our Nation’s international obligations,” allowing for exceptions “only in a narrow set of circumstances.”10 This is obviously a correct reading where exclusion can lead to death, rape, or indefinite imprisonment. The other classes deemed undeserving of asylum are defined by more permanent characteristics. In other words, the attribute of being a terrorist, a persecutor, or a serious criminal will not wear off in two weeks time. To the contrary, any risk posed by one exposed to COVID-19 is likely to pass within that same time frame. Wouldn’t the “fullest extent” of our obligations call for simple quarantining for the brief period in question?
These issues were all raised in comments to the proposed regs. And of course, dubious reasons were employed to dismiss these arguments. For example, the agencies acknowledged the need for the danger posed be an actual rather than a merely possible one. But somehow, that requirement was dismissed by the inadequate excuse that the danger posed by a pandemic is “unique.”
The rule stands as one of the final examples of the extremes this administration will go to in order to circumvent our asylum laws and turn away those entitled to avail themselves of our immigration courts in order to determine if they are entitled to protection. As demonstrated here, the degree to which this administration veered from the actual intent of the statute in interpreting the security bar wouldn’t have been much greater if it attempted to deny asylum to those wearing white after Labor Day.11 The law must not be twisted or ignored by executive branch agencies when it conflicts with an administration’s policy objectives.
Notes:
8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(2)(A).
UNHCR Handbook at ❡ 140.
8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(2)(A).
See, e.g., Arangure Jasso v. Whitaker, 911 F.3d 333, 338-39 (6th Cir. 2018).
See Epic Sys. Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612, 1625 (2018).
Ibid (citing Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 121 S.Ct. 1302, 149 (2001); National Assn. of Mfrs. v. Department of Defense,138 S.Ct. 617, 628–629 (2018)).
Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 581, 592 (A.G. 2019).
Thanks to Prof. Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer for sharing her expertise on these terms. See Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer and Hillary Rich, “A Step Too Far: Matter of A-B-, Particular Social Group, and Chevron,” 29 Cornell J. of Law and Public Policy 345, 373 (2019).
Yusupov v. Att’y Gen. of U.S., 518 F.3d 185, 201 (3d Cir. 2008).
Id. at 203-204.
If it had done so, EOIR would undoubtedly have defended the move through the traditional, completely acceptable, totally normal method of issuing a “Myths vs. Facts” sheet. The document might contain the following entry: “Myth: EOIR issued a rule banning asylum to anyone wearing any color at any time. Fact: That’s completely absurd! Only those wearing white (which technically might not even be a color) are banned, and even then, only after Labor Day. As Pantone lists 1,867 colors, white consists of .05 percent of all colors one could wear. And that’s only if white is in fact a color. And, again, only after Labor Day.”
Copyright 2021 Jeffrey S. Chase. All rights reserved.
Republished by permission.
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Jeffrey’s article points out how deeply the corruption and racism of the regime have penetrated into the Federal Bureaucracy, even infecting supposedly “professional and apolitical” agencies like CDC. Fixing this will be a formidable task for the Biden-Harris Administration.
But, there is a larger issue here: Why has the Supremes’ GOP majority “lapped up” the transparent pretexts for unconstitutional actions presented by the regime’s ethics-challenged DOJ lawyers?While an impressive array of U.S. District Court Judges, from both parties, have generally courageously stood tall for the rule of law against White Nationalist abuses, not so the GOP majority of the Supremes!
Let’s go back to the beginning of the regime. After a string of lower Federal Court defeats, “ethics-free” DOJ lawyers massaged and slightly watered down Trump’s “Muslim Ban” and repackaged it as a bogus “national security” measure. But, even as these disingenuous lawyers were advancing this bogus pretext in court, Trump was reassuring his White Nationalist base that this was indeed the “Muslim Ban” he had promised to his supporters.
Nevertheless, the Supremes’ GOP majority “bought into” the patently (and demonstrably) bogus “national security” pretext, hook, line, and sinker:
Of the Supreme Court’s decision on Muslim ban 3.0, Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said, “This ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures. It repeats the mistakes of the Korematsu decision upholding Japanese-American imprisonment and swallows wholesale government lawyers’ flimsy national security excuse for the ban instead of taking seriously the president’s own explanation for his action.”
“It is ultimately the people of this country who will determine its character and future. The court failed today, and so the public is needed more than ever. We must make it crystal clear to our elected representatives: If you are not taking actions to rescind and dismantle Trump’s Muslim ban, you are not upholding this country’s most basic principles of freedom and equality.”
In doing so, the GOP Supremes’ associated themselves with a long line of racially biased pretexts used by courts to uphold invidious discrimination that violated our Constitution
Internment of Japanese-Americans (but not German-Americans) is about national security.
Truth: Dehumanize, punish, and dispossess Japanese Americans on the West Coast;
Poll taxes are about raising revenue.
Truth: Preventing African-Americans from voting;
Literacy tests (“grandfathering” ignorant White guys) are about insuring an informed electorate.
Truth: Excluding African-American voters;
Separate is equal.
Truth: Insuring that African-Americans will be educationally disadvantaged;
Voter ID laws are about election integrity.
Truth: Designed by a primarily White GOP ruling class to suppress African American, Latino, and other minority voters who tend to support Democrats;
Gerrymandering to favor the GOP can be solved through the political process.
Truth: Gerrymandering is intended by the GOP to rig the political process so that voters of color will never achieve political representation proportional to their numbers.
These are just a few of the obvious examples of how the “legal power structure” has often been on the “wrong side of history.” Sadly, it continues with today’s GOP Supremes’ majority which often embraces obvious pretexts and bogus “right wing legal gobbledygook” to systematically dump on vulnerable minorities and others whose political power and humanity they refuse to recognize.
Finally, to reinforce what Jeffrey and others have said, we have a legal obligation to protect refugees.Article 33 of the Convention to which we are party, now incorporated into the INA, is mandatory, not “optional” or “discretionary.”
As I pointed out before, refugees more often than not arrive in times of international crisis and turmoil. “Tough times” or internal problems (in this case aggravated and magnified by a maliciously incompetent regime) are NOT a legal (not to mention moral) basis for us to jettison our legal obligation to offer them protection.
Had the Supremes courageously and unanimously stood up for the Constitution, rule of law, and simple human decency against the regime’s obvious lies, false narratives, overt racism, religious bigotry, and general disregard for the rule of law (now in full, foul bloom every day), the last four years might have been very different. Lives lost forever could have been saved.
Folks, here we are, two decades into the 21st Century. Yet, we have a highly “un-representative” Supremes’ GOP majority that has willingly promoted the anti-democracy antics of, and carried water for, a patently corrupt White Nationalist regime seeking to “Dred Scottify” tens of millions of persons of color, religious minorities, and those “suspected” of not supporting the GOP.
Even if many would like to, this is not something that can simply be swept under the table (again). Failure of the Supremes majority to stand up for the individual rights and human dignity of all persons in America is something that will haunt us until it is fixed or we disappear as a nation!
Lousy judging has a huge cost for humanity and democracy. We need and deserve better from the highest levels of our privileged, yet too often ineffective andfeckless in the face of tyranny, life-tenured judges!
Better Judges for a Better, Fairer America.🇺🇸 Make Equal Justice Under Law ⚖️ A Reality Rather Than an Ongoing, Judicially-Enabled, Charade!
