Department of State – Page 7 – immigrationcourtside.com

HOW TRUMP, COMPLICIT COURTS, FECKLESS CONGRESS, AND DHS ARE KILLING MORE CHILDREN AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER WHILE HELPING HUMAN SMUGGLERS STRIKE IT RICH – “Malicious Incompetence” Fueled By Judicial Dereliction Of Duty & Congressional Malpractice Is A Boon to The Bad Guys! – “Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-19/a-smuggler-describes-how-children-die-and-he-gets-rich-on-border

Nacha Cattan reports for Bloomberg News:

Children Die at Record Speed on U.S. Border While Coyotes Get Rich

Deaths of women and children trying to cross into U.S. set record in first nine months of the year, UN research project finds

By

Nacha Cattan

October 19, 2019, 8:00 AM EDT

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Share

Tweet

Post

Email

Roberto the coyote can see a stretch of border fence from his ranch in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, about a mile south of El Paso. Smuggling drugs and people to “el otro lado,” the other side, has been his life’s work.

There’s always a way, he says, no matter how hard U.S. President Donald Trump tries to stop the flow. But this year’s crackdown has made it a tougher proposition. A deadlier one, too—especially for women and children, who are increasingly dying in the attempt.

Not much surprises Roberto, who asks not to be identified by his surname because he engages in illegal activity. Sitting on a creaky metal chair, shaded by quince trees and speaking above the din from a gaggle of fighting roosters, the 65-year-old grabs a twig and scratches lines in the sand to show how he stays a step ahead of U.S. and Mexican security forces.

Here’s a gap in the fence that migrants can dash through—onto land owned by American ranchers in his pay. There’s a spot U.S. patrols often pass, so he’s hiring more people to keep watch and cover any footprints with leaf-blowers.

Coyote Roberto, on Aug. 28.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Roberto says he was taken aback in July this year, when he was approached for the first time by parents with young children. For coyotes, as the people-smugglers are known in Mexico, that wasn’t the typical customer profile. Roberto asked around among his peers. “They were also receiving a lot of families,” he says. “Many, many families are crossing over.”

That helps explain one of the grimmer statistics to emerge from all the turmoil on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Even more than usual, the 2,000-mile frontier has turned into a kind of tectonic fault line this year. Poverty and violence—and the pull of the world’s richest economy—are driving people north. At the border, they’re met by a new regime of tightened security and laws, imposed by Trump in tandem with his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, also known as AMLO.

Some give up and go home; some wait and hope—and some try evermore dangerous ways to get through.

Nineteen children died during attempted crossings in the first nine months of 2019, by drowning, dehydration or illness, according to the UN’s “Missing Migrants” research project. That’s up from four reported through September 2018 and by far the most since the project began gathering data in 2014, when two died that entire year. Women are dying in greater numbers, too—44 in the year through September, versus 14 last year.

A 9 month-old baby sleeps inside El Buen Pastor migrant shelter, on Aug. 29. The baby had been in and out of hospitals due to respiratory illnesses during his shelter stay.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Many of those families are fleeing crime epidemics in Central America, as well as economic shocks. Prices of coffee—a key export—in the region plunged this year to the lowest in more than a decade, crushing farmers.

Making matters worse, climate change will produce more frequent crop failures for those growers that will, in turn, drive more migration, said Eleanor Paynter, a fellow at Ohio State University. “Asylum law does not currently recognize climate refugees,” she said, “but in the coming years we will see more and more.”

The demand side is equally fluid. When the Great Recession hit in 2007, a slumping U.S. economy led to a sharp drop in arrivals from Mexico and Central America. Today, the reverse is true: Record-low unemployment in the U.S. is attracting huge numbers from Central America.

Recession Factor

The U.S. economy’s slump a decade ago coincided with a sharp drop in migrant arrivals from Central America

Source: Estimates by Stephanie Leutert, director of Mexico Security Institute at University of Texas, based on model created for Lawfare blog

But none of those factors fully explains why so many families are now willing to take such great risks. To understand that, it’s necessary to go back to the birth of the “Remain in Mexico” policy in January, when new U.S. rules made it much harder to seek asylum on arrival—and its escalation in June, when Trump threatened to slap tariffs on Mexican goods, and AMLO agreed to deploy 26,000 National Guard troops to the border.

The crackdown was aimed at Central Americans—mostly from such poor, violent countries as El Salvador and Honduras—who’d been entering the U.S. through Mexico in growing numbers. Many would cross the border, turn themselves in and apply for asylum, then wait in the U.S. for a court hearing. That route was especially favored by migrants with young children, who were likely to be released from detention faster.

Under the new policy, they were sent back to Mexico by the tens of thousands and required to wait in dangerous border towns for a court date. They might wait in shelters for months for their number to be called, with only 10 or 20 families being interviewed each day. Word was getting back that applications weren’t being approved, anyway.

A white cross marks the death of a person near the border between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

That pushed thousands of families into making a tough decision. Juan Fierro, who runs the El Buen Pastor shelter for migrants in Ciudad Juarez, reckons that about 10% of the Central Americans who’ve stayed with him ended up going back home. In Tijuana, a border town hundreds of miles west, Jose Maria Garcia Lara—who also runs a shelter—says some 30% of families instead headed for the mountains outside the city on their way to the U.S. “They’re trying to cross,” he says, “in order to disappear.”

The family that approached Roberto in Ciudad Juarez wanted to take a less physically dangerous route: across the bridge into El Paso.

Roberto has infrastructure in place for both options. He says his people can run a pole across the Rio Grande when the river’s too high, and they have cameras on the bridge to spot when a guard’s back is turned. He has a sliding price scale, charging $7,500 for children and an extra $1,000 for Central Americans—fresh proof of studies that have shown smugglers’ prices rise with tighter border controls. “They pay a bundle to get their kids across,” he says. “Why don’t they just open a small grocery with that money?”

Typically, migrants don’t come from the very poorest communities in their home countries, where people struggle to cover such coyote costs, or from the middle class. Rather, they represent a range from $5,000 to $10,000 per capita in 2009 dollars, according to Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development in Washington. This happens to be the level that the economies of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have reached.

A mother and her 5-month-old baby has lived in a migrant shelter since July, waiting for their November court date, on Aug. 29.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez

For the family going across the bridge into El Paso, Roberto wanted to send the parents and children separately, to attract less attention. Ideally, the kids would be asleep, making the guards less likely to stop the car and ask questions. But that raised another problem. He resolved it by arranging for a woman on his team to visit the family and spend three days playing with the children. That way, they’d be used to her and wouldn’t cry out if they woke up while she was taking them across.

Roberto says the family made it safely into the U.S. with their false IDs, a claim that couldn’t be confirmed. He earned about $35,000 from the family, and soon after had another three children with their parents seek passage. “They want to cross, no matter what,” he says. “I don’t know where the idea comes from that you can stop this.”

But people are being stopped and turned back, and the number of migrants caught crossing the U.S. border has plunged from its peak in May. That has allowed Trump to portray the new policy as a success. (Mexican officials tend to agree, though the Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Yet it’s not that simple. Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, said the flow northward initially surged because Trump threatened to close the border, setting off a wave of migrant caravans and smuggling activity. Arrests rose 90% through September from a year earlier, but they’re now at the same levels they were before the surge.

Enrique Garcia was one of those arrested. A 36-year-old from Suchitepequez in Guatemala, he was struggling to feed his three children on the $150 a month he earned as a janitor. So he pawned a $17,000 plot of land to a coyote in exchange for passage to the U.S. for him and his son.

They slipped into Mexico in August on a boarded-up cattle truck, with eight other adults and children, and drove the length of the country, to Juarez. The coyotes dropped them by car at the nearby crossing point called Palomas, where they literally ran for it.

After 45 minutes in the summer heat, Garcia was getting worried about his son, who was falling behind and calling out for water. But they made it past the Mexican National Guard and gave themselves up to a U.S. border patrol, pleading to be allowed to stay. Instead, they were sent back to Mexico and given a January court date.

Children play outside a migrant shelter while a women hand washes clothing in a sink.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

Garcia, who recounted the story from a bunk bed in a Juarez shelter, said he was devastated. He couldn’t figure out what to do for five months in Mexico, with no prospect of work. His coyotes had managed to reestablish contact with the group, and most of them—with children in tow—had decided to try again. This time, they wouldn’t be relying on the asylum process. They’d try to make it past the border patrols and vanish into the U.S.

But Garcia decided he’d already put his son’s life at risk once, and wouldn’t do it again. He scrounged $250 to take the boy home to Guatemala. Then, he said, he’d head back up to the border alone. He wouldn’t need to pay the coyotes again. They’d given him a special offer when he signed away his land rights—two crossing attempts for the price of one.

Researchers say there’s a more effective deterrent to such schemes: opening more lawful channels. Clemens, at the Center for Global Development, noted that illegal immigration from Mexico dropped in recent years after U.S. authorities increased the supply of H-2 visas for temporary work, almost all of them going to Mexicans—a trend that’s continued under Trump.

The current debate in Washington assumes that “hardcore enforcement and security assistance in Central America will be enough, without any kind of expansion of lawful channels,” Clemens said. “That flies in the face of the lessons of history.”

The Legal Route

Illegal crossings by Mexicans have plunged. They’re now much more likely to enter the U.S. with temporary H-2 work visas

Source: Calculations by Cato Institute’s David Bier based on DHS, State Dept data

A hard-security-only approach deters some migrants, while channeling others into riskier routes where they’re more likely to die. That’s what happened after Europe’s crackdown on migration from across the Mediterranean, according to Paynter at Ohio State, who’s studied data from the UN’s “Missing Migrants” project. In 2019, “even though the total number of attempted crossings is lower, the rate of death is three times what it was,” she said.

A child plays outside a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juarez.

Photographer: Cesar Rodriguez/Bloomberg

As for Roberto, he expresses sadness at the children who’ve died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. He claims he would’ve tried to help them, even if they couldn’t pay.

Most of all, he sees no end to the ways he can make profits off the border crackdown. He makes a joke out of it.

“I’m hearing Trump wants to throw crocodiles in the river,” he says. “Guess what will happen? We’ll eat them.” And then: “Their skin is expensive. We’ll start a whole new business. It’ll bring in money, because we’ll make boots, belts and wallets. We’ll look real handsome.”

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

The “Trump Immigration Kakistocracy” is as evil and immoral as it is stupid and incompetent.

But, that shouldn’t lessen the responsibility of complicit Article III Appellate Judges (including the Supremes) and a sleazy and immoral GOP Senate who are failing to stand up for our Constitution, the rule of law, and human rights. They should not be allowed to escape accountability for their gross derelictions of duty which are killing kids with regularity and unconscionably abusing vulnerable asylum seekers on a daily basis.

America can’t afford to be governed by idiots abetted by the spineless. Join the “New Due Process Army” and fight to save our country, our Constitution, and humanity from evil, incompetence, and disgusting complicity.

PWS

10-31-19

INSIDE TRUMP’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” THERE IS NEITHER DUE PROCESS NOR JUSTICE! – So, What Happened To The Legislative & Judicial Branches Who Are Supposed To Protect Against Such Outrageous Executive Overreach? — “Whatever we call them, America’s immigration prisons are antithetical to the free society we claim to be. We must do all we can to dismantle this system.”

https://apple.news/AsyQuZEMeR0mXWpvWd19-Mg

By Naureen Shah:

opinion

At detention facilities, legal rights ‘in name only’

Whether we call them ‘concentration camps’ or detention centers, the lack of justice for those seeking refuge must end.

7:42 pm EDT Oct. 25, 2019

As President Donald Trump prepares to pick a new secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is preparing to appear in a Brooklyn court. She is being sued for blocking a man on Twitter who criticized her for calling immigration detention sites “concentration camps.” Her opponents seized on the comment. One of their talking points: America’s hardworking immigration officers should not be equated with Nazis.

To some extent, I can understand their perspective.

I recently visited four Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention sites across the country. I met many of their workers. They carried clear plastic backpacks and lunchboxes as they filed through security in the morning, looking weary and bored. As I left each site, some asked me whether I had had a “nice visit” and wished me safe travels.

These workers don’t bring to mind cinematic villains. Yet they are part of a system that, no matter its appearances, is inflicting the horror of trapping people inside.

I saw it in the eyes of the people I interviewed in detention. A 28-year-old Cuban woman told me about spending five days sleeping on the ground in an outdoor cage run by Border Patrol, the “perrera” — a place for dogs. That was followed by 17 days in the “hielera,” a frigid room. She had been denied a shower the entire time.

She recounted this months later, when I met her at an ICE detention site in Adams County, Mississippi. She had not seen or talked to her husband for months, since U.S. authorities separated and detained them. She said that last summer, an asylum officer interviewed her and determined that her fear of persecution if she returned to Cuba was credible — the first step in an asylum case. But she said she had never seen a judge, had no court date, no lawyer, no ICE officer assigned to her. She was alone and trapped: She had no idea of what would happen to her next, how to move her asylum case forward and whether she would ever be released.

COLUMN: In the hands of police, facial recognition software risks violating civil liberties

Adams County is part of the immigration detention boom. Detention levels have skyrocketed to a record high of about 50,000 people a day, at an annual cost of more than $2 billion. Counties are grabbing at detention contracts that provide jobs, although many will be filled by out-of-town residents. New detention sites are opening in the Deep South — hours from urban areas with networks of pro bono or low-cost attorneys. Even in big cities, the number of people detained far outpaces the number of attorneys available to help them. The result is that these immigration jails are effectively legal black holes, where legal rights often exist in name only.

“You come to this place and you can never win,” another woman told me. She had spent three months in an ICE detention center near Miami, separated from her then 5-month-old baby. Her husband, a U.S. citizen, was driving her to Walmart when local police questioned them during a random traffic stop. She was not accused of a crime, and she was in the process of petitioning for residency based on her marriage to a citizen. But police took her to a local jail and held her for ICE.

COLUMN: After terrifying ICE raid, Mississippi is still fighting back

“I haven’t seen my baby in three months,” she said, and asked me what would happen to her.

Without a lawyer, she is likely to remain in detention for months or years — and ultimately be deported away from her husband and child. Just 3% of detained individuals without a lawyer succeeded in their cases, compared with 74% of nondetained and represented individuals who won in theirs, according to a study that focused on New York immigration cases. For asylum-seekers, the stakes are often life or death.

Yet immigrants have been denied the right to a government-appointed lawyer in their deportation proceedings. I met many who didn’t have enough money to make a phone call from prison, let alone pay a lawyer. Even those who could afford it struggled to find one, since they are stuck on the inside without access to Google, email or a cellphone.

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

Our immigration system is set up for them to fail, with Kafka-esque limits on their ability to apply for legal relief and appeal to federal courts. Navigating this complex and unforgiving set of legal rules is hard for lawyers, let alone for detained individuals. Some are offered release on bond, but in unaffordable amounts like $25,000.

Many people I met had never seen a judge, several months into their detention. They had no idea how or when they might ever be free. They were confused, scared and, in some cases, suicidal. A woman from Cameroon who fled its ongoing civil war after her father was murdered told me she prayed that God would provide her a way out.

We have an obligation to respond.

Local governments should end ICE detention contracts, if they exist, and prohibit new ones. Cities and states should robustly fund free legal service providers and bond funds. Major law firms should send their lawyers to the Deep South to work with local pro bono providers to address the drastic shortfalls in legal services. Community groups should lobby Congress to cut funding for detention and pass comprehensive reform legislation like the Dignity For Detained Immigrants Act.

Trump’s new Homeland Security secretary is likely to ramp up immigration detention to even higher levels, using the specter of prison to deter people from coming here and the reality of it to punish those who do. We cannot afford to be divided by semantics.

Whatever we call them, America’s immigration prisons are antithetical to the free society we claim to be. We must do all we can to dismantle this system.

Naureen Shah is the senior advocacy and policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, working on immigrant rights.

get our free app

7:42 pm EDT Oct. 25, 2019

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

DHS’s “New American Gulag” – the “brainchild” of Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, and Steve Bannon – is an affront to our Constitution, the rule of law, and human decency. Remember that the next time Trump’s “Gulag Enablers” like Kelly, Nielsen, Sessions, and Barr try to “reinvent themselves” as something other than the sleazy human rights violators they are and will always remain.

PWS

10-29-19

FRESH CLAIMS OF CHILD ABUSE BY DHS IN YOUR “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – Ever Wonder Why YOUR Tax Dollars Are Being Used To Fund What Medical Professionals Say Is An Inherently Abusive & Potentially Permanently Damaging “Kiddie Gulag?” – And, In Cases Like This, The Alleged Abuse Is Actually Individualized & Beyond the “Regular Damage” Intentionally Inflicted By The Trump DHS, Abetted By Complicit Courts!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/25/texas-immigration-detention-guard-assault-child-claims?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

A private prison guard physically assaulted a five-year-old boy at an immigration detention center in Texas, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border

Read more

Advocates for the boy and his mother expect the family to be deported on Friday and asked the US government to halt the deportation to investigate the alleged assault. The advocates also said the family, who are anonymous for safety reasons, face imminent harm or death in their home country of Honduras.

The alleged assault occurred in late September, when the boy was playing with a guard employed by the private prison company CoreCivic who had played with the boy before.

The five-year-old tried to give the guard a high-five, but accidentally hit him instead, angering the guard, according to a complaint seen by the Guardian. The guard then allegedly grabbed the boy’s wrist “very hard” and would not let go.

“The boy’s mother told the guard to let go and tried to pull her son’s hand away, but the guard kept holding on,” according to the complaint. “He finally released the boy and threatened to punish him if he hit him again.”

The complaint said the boy’s hand was swollen and bruised and he was treated with pain medication and ice at the South Texas family residential center in Dilley, in a remote part of the state about 100 miles from the US-Mexico border.

The Dilley detention center has been controversial since it opened in 2014. Dilley can hold 2,400 people, the most of any family detention center in the country, and in March 2019 held at least 15 babies under one year old.

“Since the assault, the boy is afraid of male officials at the jail, goes to the bathroom in his pants, bites his nails until they bleed, and does not want to play, sleep, eat, or bathe,” the complaint said.

The Guardian contacted US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the homeland security agency which oversees immigration detention, and CoreCivic for comment, but they had not provided a response at the time of publication.

Katy Murdza, advocacy manager for the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which sends volunteers into the Dilley detention center to help families, met with the mother on Wednesday.

Murdza said the mother is fearful of her imminent deportation and is upset about what happened to her son because she had little power to protect him.

“She was unable to prevent someone from hurting her child and while she has tried to report it, she hasn’t received any information on what the results are, so she still does not have control of whether the detention center let that staff member back in,” Murdza said.

“When people are detained and it’s hidden from the public, these sorts of things happen and there are probably many other cases that we have never learned about that could be similar to this,” Murdza added.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said in March 2017 that no migrant child in the custody of their parent should ever be detained because the conditions could harm or retraumatize them.

The US government can release asylum-seeking families in the US while they wait for their cases to be heard in court, but Donald Trump’s administration favors expanding detention and has tried to extend how long children can be held in detention centers.

Katie Shepherd, national advocacy counsel with the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, filed the complaint on Thursday with the DHS watchdog, the office of the inspector general, and with its office for civil rights and civil liberties.

“The government has a long history demonstrating it’s not capable of holding people in their custody responsibly and certainly not children who require special protections and safeguards,” Shepherd said. “They require a different environment, not one where guards are going to be physically abusing them.”

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

Ever wonder how things might be different if Article III Judges’ children and grandchildren were being treated this way?

Please think about situations like this the next time you hear sleazy folks like Kelly, Nielsen, or “Big Mac With Lies,”and other former “Trump toadies” tout their “high-level executive experience” and how “proud” they were of their law enforcement initiatives at DHS and other parts of the Trump kakistocracy! What’s the relationship between abusing children and real law enforcement or protecting our national security? None!

Outrageously, these former Trump human rights abusers not only have escaped legal and moral accountability for their knowing and intentional human rights abuses, but they have the audacity to publicly attempt to “leverage” their experience as abusers into “big bucks gigs” in the private sector. How disgusting can it get.

Here’s Professor (and ImmigrationProf Blog guru) Bill O. Hing’s “spot on” description of the “despicable John Kelly:”

Despicable John Kelly – Profits from Detention of Children

By Immigration Prof

Share

I was recently reminded of how John Kelly, former DHS Secretary and former White House Chief of Staff, is now on the board of Caliburn International: the conglomerate that runs detention facilities for migrant children. He is despicable. This was reported in May:

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly can now count on a second line of income.

In addition to his attempt at scoring paid speaking gigs, Kelly has now joined the board of Caliburn International, the company has confirmed to CBS News. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates four massive for-profit shelters that have government contracts to house unaccompanied migrant children.

Kelly’s new job first became apparent when protesters gathered outside Comprehensive Health Services’ Homestead, Florida facility last month — it’s the biggest unaccompanied migrant child detention center in the country. They, along with a local TV station, spotted Kelly enter the facility, and CBS News later confirmed his affiliation. Read more..

When Kelly was DHS secretary, he began the implementation of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda in the early stages of the administration. Julianne Hing reported on Kelly’s record at DHS on the eve of becoming chief of staff for Trump.

Read here…

bh

October 20, 2019

Apparently, Kelly’s USG pension as a retired 4-star General wasn’t enough to support him in the style to which he aspired (perhaps after rubbing shoulders with the Trump family and its circle of grifters). So, he found it necessary to supplement his income off the misery of families and children in the “New American Gulag” he helped establish.

I had accurately predicted that Kelly wouldn’t leave his “service” to Trump with his reputation intact. Nobody does, except those with no reputation to start with.

Trump runs a kakistocracy. The private sector should treat the steady stream of spineless senior officials fleeing the Trump Circus accordingly.

Or compare the “achievements” of horrible frauds like these guys, who abused their time in the service of Trump by betraying our country’s most fundamental values, with that of a real American hero like the late Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) who was eulogized today. As President Obama said, “he was ‘honorable’ long before he was elected!”

PWS

10-25-19

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN’S “REINVENTION” AS A “POWERFUL WOMAN” SHOWS THAT CRUELTY, INHUMANITY, & INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY AREN’T “JUST FOR MEN ONLY” – Ambitious, Amoral “Girl” Shows How To Penetrate The “Good Ol’ Boys’ Network” @ DHS, Destroy Lots Of Innocent Lives, Get On TV!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/whats-the-point-of-a-most-powerful-women-summit-if-kirstjen-nielsen-is-one-of-them/2019/10/23/e3c5d80a-f5a6-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html

Monica Hesse writes in the Washington Post:

Oct. 23, 2019 at 4:58 p.m. EDT

Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit is the kind of event where you can’t walk 20 steps without being handed the business card of another Powerful Woman, who you know paid $13,500 to be there, because that is the membership fee you would have paid, too, if you were an attendee at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit.Hillary Clinton was supposed to be a featured speaker at the conference in Washington this week, but then she backed out, partly because former homeland security chief Kirstjen Nielsen, enforcer of the Trump administration’s loathsome child separation policy, was also speaking. Incidentally, so was Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii Democrat whom Clinton had just called a “favorite of Russians” in the 2020 race, prompting Gabbard to accuse Clinton of being “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

Anyway, I decided to go.

Held at the posh Mandarin Oriental hotel, Fortune’s conference is the kind of event where the seminars have titles like, “Co-Opetition: From Competition to Cooperation,” and where the hallways are lined with pressed-juice stands, and pop-up Dior counters providing mini-makeovers, and many, many advertisements for M.M. LaFleur, which is a clothing brand you never need know exists unless you reach a certain age and income level, at which point its logo will stalk you on Facebook. “M.M. LaFleur Live with Purpose. Dress with Ease.”

Wandering around on Monday and Tuesday (using a press pass, not my life savings), I caught sessions featuring congresswomen Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Old Navy CEO Sonia Syngal and feminist icon Anita Hill. The COO of Rothy’s shoes was there, talking about how to build a viral brand, and so were dozen of audience members wearing Rothy’s shoes — evidence that the COO knows of what she speaks — and I am not going to lie, I was wearing Rothy’s, too.

The summit is one of those why-the-hell-not events, is what I’m saying. As in, Icertainly wouldn’t pay for it, but if you want to, go ahead. It’s no weirder than many manly conferences with booths showcasing the latest golf club technology. It’s Goop, but with its feet rooted more on the ground.

Except then, abruptly, it wasn’t. Because Anita Hill finished her Q&A, and the audience members ate our fancy “Networking Lunch,” and then suddenly it was Kirstjen Nielsen on the brightly lit ballroom stage, determinedly dodging every question posed to her by “PBS NewsHour’s” Amna Nawaz.

“I don’t regret enforcing the law because I took an oath to do that,” she said, after Nawaz repeatedly pressed her on whether she regretted signing the memo that greenlighted removing children from their parents at the Mexican border.

Nielsen insisted that she “spoke truth to power from the very beginning” of her tenure, and resigned when it became clear that “saying no” wasn’t enough. But then when Nawaz pointed out that Nielsen had just accepted another position with the administration, on the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, Nielsen defended the move: “Are you telling every CEO in here that they should never advise the government?” she asked incredulously.

Nielsen’s interview was over within 15 minutes, and then an event moderator appeared onstage and solemnly addressed the audience: “I know that was intense, and I just want to acknowledge that.”

And then I left the auditorium to get a mango-citrus juice and a perfume spritz and think about Powerful Women.

There’s no doubt that Nielsen is powerful; even before joining Homeland Security, she’d been one of the highest-ranking women in the White House. There’s no doubt that she’s a woman; in public appearances she plays up a traditionally womanly appearance with makeup and high heels.

Those were the basic qualifications for an invitation — but should they have been the only ones? When we talk about “Powerful Women,” should we applaud a woman who used her considerable power to make life difficult for the most powerless among us?

Fortune had titled Nielsen’s session “Hard Questions,” and the questions were appropriately pointed: Nobody tossed her softballs about how she balances work and home life, or how she shoehorns in “me” time. Nobody could have grilled Nielsen harder than Nawaz did, or tried to.

But her presence was so incongruous to the rest of the event — an innocuous, if privileged brand of go-get-’em corporate feminism — that it called into question why we were in that hotel at all.

What, in 2019, is the purpose and organizing principle of an event like the Most Powerful Women Summit? Is it like the Hall of Presidents at Disney World — a non-editorializing showcase of every boldfaced woman Fortune could rustle up to prove that many women are powerful?

Are we saying that Powerful Women are just like powerful men — some good and some bad? Which is true, of course, but then why do we need a separate event for them?

Are we just saying that women like green juice and Rothy’s?

Kirstjen Nielsen deserved to be questioned, hard, for her role in an immensely controversial administration policy. And maybe she accepted this particular engagement, her first since leaving the White House, because she thought she could expect a welcoming audience. One who would embrace her as one of their own because being a lady is rough, am I right? Toward the end of her interview, Nielsen wanly said she thought she was going to be asked more about cybersecurity.

But still, there was something off about it. Here she was, making her reputation-washing debut in a ballroom event celebrating aspirational women, smiling grittily as she informed us that, no, we’d all misremembered the whole past three years.

And most of us had paid $13,500 to be there.

Monica Hesse is a columnist writing about gender and its impact on society. For more visit wapo.st/hesse.

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

Perhaps cruelty, nastiness, dishonesty, illegality, and inhumanity know no gender bounds. Certainly, Nielsen proved to be every bit as bad and every bit the sycophant as her male counterparts, Kelly & “Big Mac with Lies.” The relatives of the dead and those who have suffered unnecessarily and continue to suffer because of her lack of integrity are out there to reflect on the true nature and consequences of her “power” and “legacy.”

One of Nielsen’s most notable “achievements,” in addition to child separation and “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico,” was assisting Sessions & Barr in stripping battered, abused, and tortured women of their ability to gain protection under our asylum laws. Indeed, Nielsen went one better: she was a key player in Trump’s scheme to make women, children, and everybody else fleeing the Northern Triangle of Central America ineligible to apply for asylum at all, thus reversing decades of U.S. commitment to human rights and fundamental fairness. Wow, that’s like “Superwoman” stuff!

Monica Hesse is a well-known author and talented storyteller in addition to being a great journalist. I hope that one of her future projects will be to tell the stories of those whose lives were turned into living hell just because they had the audacity to seek protection under our laws in an attempt to save or better their lives and those of their families. Survival, asserting rights, evincing humanity, expecting kindness, fairness, and compassion: what greater “crimes” could there be in Trump’s America?

Sure, Nielsen might not have quite gotten down to the moral depravity of neo-Nazis like Miller and “Cooch Cooch,” the “custom designers” of Trump’s cowardly attacks on migrants, refugees, and human dignity. That’s a low bar to get under. But, that makes her neither a good person nor an appropriate role model for women (or men) seeking to possess power and engage in true leadership.

It’s incredible to me that with all the brave, courageous, talented, and powerful women involved in leadership positions in the field of immigration and human rights – legislators, journalists, jurists, lawyers, artists, professors, ministers, social workers, NGO executives and managers, teachers, medical professionals, etc., — Nielsen was the best “role model” they could find!

Next year, the folks over at Fortune Maggie should give me a ring. I could give them the names of dozens of brilliant, talented, committed women who are “leading by example” – putting themselves and their values “on the line” every day to save lives and tend to the most vulnerable among us. And, of course, in doing so they actually are saving all of us. Because, to paraphrase MLK, Jr., harm to the most vulnerable among is harm to all of us.

I also have lots of suggestions as to where Fortune could donate the proceeds of the “Most Powerful Women Summit” to actually promote the responsible use of power for women and men: to actually make the world a better place, not just to “jack up” resumes or collect impressive, but largely meaningless, titles and accolades.

DUE PROCESS FOREVER, CORRUPT FORMER PUBLIC OFFICIALS NEVER!

PWS

10-24-19

RACE TO THE BOTTOM: Trump’s Cowardly, Racist War On The Most Vulnerable Humans Could Collapse International Refugee Protection System, Putting Millions Of Lives In Jeopardy!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/refugees-trump-third-country-refoulement.html

Stephanie Schwartz @ Slate:

Last month, the Trump administration announced the latest in a trio of bilateral agreements effectively barring refugees coming through Central America from seeking asylum in the United Sates. These agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and now Honduras, known as “safe third country” agreements, allow the U.S. to send back asylum-seekers who pass these countries on their way to the U.S. but do not apply for asylum there first. At first glance, this may seem like just one more way that the Trump administration is trying to keep refugees out—a diplomatic version of the president’s tactical snake fantasy. Nor do the agreements seem that different from how the EU tries to prevent refugees from seeking asylum. Indeed, a year ago I wrote about how Donald Trump sending troops to the Southern broader was consistent with a broader global trend of hollowing out asylum norms.

But this is different. These new agreements flout global asylum norms in a way others have not dared: They send refugees directly back into the danger they were fleeing in the first place.

A safe third country agreement is meant to be just that: safe. It provides a way for states to send refugees to an alternative (third) destination without sending them home, a practice that is prohibited under international law. While they have yet to be implemented, in the past three months, the United States has strong-armed Central America’s Northern Triangle countries into signing third-country agreements. Under the terms of these agreements asylum-seekers who pass through Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras on their way to the U.S. (which anyone traveling by land has to do) could be sent back from the U.S. border to one of those countries, so long as they are not a citizen of that country. So, while Honduran asylum-seekers would not be sent back to Honduras, they could be sent to Guatemala or El Salvador. Mexico has refused to sign a similar agreement, however the Trump administration has already begun implementing a new set of rules with regard to Mexico called the Migrant Protection Protocols. One of the stipulations of the MPP requires asylum-seekers who make it to the U.S. Southern border to stay in Mexico while they wait for the U.S. to process their claims.

On the surface, these policies look rather similar to the EU’s approach to asylum. Like the agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, the EU’s Dublin Regulation requires that all asylum-seekers entering the EU apply for asylum in the first country they reach in the union. The 2016 EU-Turkey deal also has a “safe third country” component, such that certain migrants passing through Turkey on their way to Greece can be sent back (though migrants are still allowed to apply for asylum when they reach the EU). Similar to the MPP, the EU has also said it is going to explore the use of “regional disembarkation platforms” such that refugees would have to wait in another country while their claims for asylum in Europe are evaluated.

The Trump approach, however, is much worse. First, the Dublin Regulation dictates which countries in the EU will provide asylum to those with valid claims; the new arrangements between the U.S. and the Northern Triangle countries dictate that U.S. will not provide asylum to certain individuals with valid claims. Put another way, in many ways the EU’s Schengen zone operates as a single governing body—there are common laws, a single currency, and freedom of mobility across states. Once you cross the border into one Schengen zone country, you are free to travel to the others without showing a passport. The Dublin Regulation, then, lets asylum-seekers into the European Union, but it cuts people off from arriving in one member state, for example Greece, and continuing on to apply for asylum in another, say Germany.

But there is no North American Union. The U.S. cedes its sovereignty to no one. And the administration is not saying refugees can enter the U.S., but they must stay in Arizona rather than go to New York. Instead, the agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras allow the U.S. to say that it will not provide asylum to certain people. If you can’t afford a plane ticket and show up at the Southern border, the United States does not have to hear your case. This is in direct contravention to the 1951 convention on refugees that requires states to provide asylum to those who qualify without discrimination. Refugee rights activists claim that the third safe country agreement between the U.S. and Canada is in breach of international asylum law for the same reason. The difference, though, is that asylum-seekers enjoy equally safe haven in the U.S. as the do in Canada (though some in Canada are questioning how safe the U.S. really is).

This brings us to the second, and most important issue, with the Trump administration’s policies.

Both the MPP and the agreements with Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala send asylum-seekers to places where their lives remain in danger. In some cases, it is precisely the same danger they were trying to flee. The violence from which people in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are fleeing stems from transnational criminal organizations, like MS-13 and MS-18. Per the United States’ own 2018 human rights report on Honduras, these transnational gangs “committed killings, extortion, kidnappings, human trafficking, and intimidation of police, prosecutors, journalists, women, and human rights defenders.” These organizations are not limited by borders. They operate throughout the Northern Triangle region. Gangs targeting someone in Honduras could easily get to that person if they were sent to Guatemala. Therefore, sending someone fleeing violence in Honduras to apply for asylum in Guatemala or El Salvador keeps them in harm’s way—the same harm.

While the MPP, which forces migrants to remain in Mexico, might not keep asylum-seekers from the Northern Triangle directly in the grasp of gangs like MS-13 and MS-18 that operate in the Northern Triangle, it does place them into a highly dangerous context. As has been extensively reported, gangs local to Mexico are targeting asylum-seekers with kidnapping, extortion, and violence. The U.S. knows how unsafe these places are, having issued its highest level of security warnings against travel to some of the cities in

Mexico where migrants are being kept.

Sending refugees back into the line of fire attacks the foundation of the international asylum regime: the norm of non-refoulement. Non-refoulement is the prohibition against states sending individuals to any territory in which there is threat of persecution or torture—country of origin or otherwise. Per the 1951 Refugee Convention, non-refoulement prohibits states from expelling or returning a refugee “in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” The 1984 Convention Against Torture also prohibits refoulement, in some ways expanding its strength and application, stating that states cannot “expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Such grounds include a “consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.”

Without non-refoulement, asylum is moot.

There are any number of things wrong with the Dublin Regulation and the EU-Turkey agreement, but the one line neither of these arrangements cross directly is defying non-refoulement. Requiring refugees to apply for asylum in Greece rather than proceeding on to Germany impinges on the spirit of refugee law and endangers refugees, but it doesn’t refoule them. With the EU-Turkey agreement, many observers have challenged the designation of Turkey as a safe third country given that the Turkish government has been accused of imprisoning migrants and sending refugees back to Syria. Turkey has outright stated that one of the goals of its military incursion into Syria is to send refugees back to recaptured territory. The veil of non-refoulement in this case is whisper thin. But at least in sending refugees to Turkey, the EU is not forcing Syrian refugees directly back into the line of fire from which they originally fled. Neither Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces nor the myriad rebel groups active in Syria are equally active in Turkey.

The Trump administration’s new policies, on the other hand, outright deny that non-refoulement is a rule the U.S. needs to follow—at least for a particular class of people. There is no pretending that Mexico is safe when migrants are being attacked left and right. By flouting non-refoulement, the U.S. threatens the principle on which the entire asylum system rests.

And the world is watching. If the United States can send asylum-seekers back into danger, why can’t other countries do the same? While the Trump administration’s policies are likely illegal, and are currently being challenged in court, there is reason to fear the administration will be allowed to proceed unchecked. A recent order from the U.S. Supreme Court allows the administration to continue implementing these policies until a final decision on their legality is reached. In the meantime, many asylum-seekers are living in danger.

Finding a way to deal with displacement crises requires political leadership. For once, the U.S. is taking on this leadership role, setting a road map for how countries can respond to asylum claims. It just so happens that the proposal is to pull the one thread that could unravel the asylum system as we know it.

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

Someday, Trump and his toadies will be classified as the notorious human rights violators that they are. And, his racist, fascist reign will be remembered as one of the low-points in U.S. history.

But, we shouldn’t forget that “MPP” a/k/a “Remain in Mexico,” a/k/a “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico” is only in force because of a complicit Ninth Circuit. See Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan (incoherent order vacating proper injunction against statutory and Constitutional abuses of “Remain in Mexico” policy). The judges responsible for this travesty and for continuing to “sit on” this clear case of illegal and unconstitutional policies should also be considered human rights violators.

PWS

10-22-19

ARBITRARY & CAPRICIOUS: In An Asylum System Designed To Abuse & Discourage Legitimate Asylum Seekers, U.S. Immigration Judge Robert Hough’s Persistence Saves Two Lives, At Least For Now

https://apple.news/ALbbeLJpzTOWr1LCa2mcLQg

Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports for the LA Times:

Identical twins. Identical asylum claims. Very different luck at the border

The system gives enormous power to U.S. customs officers, Border Patrol agents and asylum officers, whose whims and judgment calls decide the fate of many migrants.

The 12-year-old identical twins entered Texas from Mexico days apart in the foothills of Mt. Cristo Rey. One came with their father. The other arrived with their mother.

It was June. The family’s plan was to get caught by Border Patrol agents as quickly as possible, then claim asylum so they could stay in the U.S. legally while awaiting immigration court hearings.

The parents had hoped that crossing the border separately, each with one son, would improve the chance that they all would be allowed into the country legally.

But that’s not what U.S. immigration officials decided. They released Nostier Leiva Sabillon and his father in Texas, and sent Anthony Leiva Sabillon and his mother back to Mexico.

The difference in treatment shows how arbitrary the U.S. immigration system has become as the Trump administration tries to stem the flow of migrants from Central America.

More than 54,000 migrants have been subjected to the controversial policy known as “Remain in Mexico,” which took effect this year and requires most asylum seekers who are not from Mexico to wait there while the U.S. weighs their cases.

Homeland Security Department leaders credit the program — along with a new requirement that migrants apply for asylum first in the countries they travel through before reaching the U.S. — with dramatically reducing apprehensions at the southern border.

Migrant advocates say the new policies give enormous power to U.S. customs officers, Border Patrol agents and asylum officers, whose whims and judgment calls decide the fate of many migrants.

Things looked grim for Nostier and his 39-year-old father, Carlos Leiva Membreño, when they were picked up by the Border Patrol.

“The good news is that you are already in the United States,” an agent told them, according to Leiva. “The bad news is that you are going back to Juarez.”

The pair was detained.

But days later their luck changed. With minimal questioning, they were released with instructions to appear in immigration court in Maryland, where they planned to join relatives.

The decision remains a mystery to them. Leiva described it as a miracle.

“God had his angels protect me and my son,” he said.

They appeared in court in Baltimore, then moved in with Nostier’s great aunt in Houston and had their case transferred there this fall. They are not scheduled to appear in court until Aug. 21, 2020, giving them at least a year of freedom.

Through relatives, Leiva found a construction job in Idaho and left Nostier in Houston.

After some trouble getting vaccinated — parental consent is usually required — his aunt managed to register him for school.

He had been the chubbier twin, outgoing and older by a minute, with dreams of becoming a military commander to protect his family.

Having never been without his brother, he grew shy, quiet and brooding.

Anthony and their mother were 740 miles away in the Mexican city of Juarez.

Dilcia Sabillon Aceituno, 40, told immigration officials that the family had fled Naco, Honduras, because members of the 18th Street gang — an organization that she said had killed two of her cousins — were pressuring her to put her twins to work for them dealing drugs.

She didn’t want her sons to become criminals.

Border Patrol agents listened, but it didn’t seem to matter. Sent back to Mexico, she and Anthony moved into a migrant shelter in the dangerous Anapra neighborhood to await an Aug. 15 court appearance in El Paso.

They and four other migrants shared a room without electricity or a lock on the door. There was a school next door, but Anthony’s mother couldn’t afford to send him.

On the dirt streets, boys bullied him, and men shouted threats, beat his mother and cursed her for being Honduran.

Hiding in their room, Anthony, who wanted to be a doctor, helped his mother with daily blood tests and insulin for her diabetes. She noticed he was losing weight, growing pale and depressed.

“I tell him not to be sad, he will be with his twin soon,” she said as they sat in their room at the shelter last month.

She filled out an asylum application in English with the help of an American immigration lawyer from Minnesota who visited the shelter to provide free legal assistance. It was a lucky break: Most migrants in the Remain in Mexico program have no lawyers.

At the August court hearing, Sabillon told the judge she was afraid of returning to Mexico. Anthony said he wanted to be with his brother.

The judge sent them to be interviewed by an asylum officer by phone, a common arrangement over the last year as the government has struggled to keep up with the flood of new cases.

The officer rejected their claim, returning them to Mexico days later.

“They don’t listen,” she said.

There was nothing to do but wait a month for their next immigration hearing.

Anthony traded daily audio messages with his brother in Houston. Nostier was enjoying school, where he made friends who spoke Spanish and began learning English. An older cousin helped him with his homework.

He had also started playing soccer with other Honduran boys at his great aunt’s apartment complex.

“Don’t worry,” he told Anthony. “You will be playing with us here soon.”

His mother wasn’t so sure.

The lawyer who had helped them was moving to Washington and could no longer represent them. Sabillon would have to represent herself.

On Sept. 26, Sabillon woke her son at 3:30 a.m. so they could dress by flashlight at the shelter, gather their paperwork and board a shelter van to the bridge. She slipped a wooden rosary around her neck.

“We’re going to our destiny,” she said as she hugged fellow asylum seekers goodbye.

After she and Anthony crossed the border bridge, U.S. officials collected their belongings to place in storage, then drove the pair and 23 other asylum seekers to their 8:30 a.m. hearing.

They were among the last to appear before the judge at 12:45 p.m. When he asked for their asylum application, Sabillon said she didn’t have it: It was in a bag Border Patrol agents had taken.

“Do you want more time to fill out an application?” Judge Robert Hough asked through a court interpreter.

“No,” she said.

“You understand if you don’t submit an application, you can be removed to Honduras. Is that what you want?” the judge said.

Sabillon began to cry.

“No, I have it over there, I just need to find someone to help me,” she said in Spanish between sobs as Anthony looked on. “Please, for his twin!”

The court interpreter said he couldn’t understand her. The judge referred her to be interviewed by an asylum officer, just like she was after her last hearing, and reset her case for Dec. 12. Mother and son were led from court looking stunned. It appeared they would be returned to Mexico.

But their luck was about to change. This time, the asylum officer who interviewed Sabillon by phone was sympathetic.

She told her story, the same one she had already been over with other immigration officials. But this time the officer decided to release her and Anthony until their asylum case was decided.

They spent a week in detention before being freed on Oct. 4. They arrived in Houston by bus the next day.

The twins have been inseparable since, clambering around the yard of the apartment complex where they’re staying and making TikTok videos with their cousins.

By last week, Nostier had grown talkative, preparing his brother to attend school next week. Anthony showed off Band-Aids to his cousins where he had received the required vaccinations.

He has also gained weight — along with a taste for spicy chicken wings. His mother predicted his cheeks would fill out soon and make the twins look identical again.

Neither had learned the details of why their family fled Honduras, and Sabillon was proud of that.

“They’re still innocent,” she said as she watched them roughhouse.

Sabillon wasn’t sure how to change her next court appearance from El Paso to Houston. She wondered if she should ask the court to combine her case with that of her husband, who was due to return from Idaho this weekend.

She was determined to find a lawyer. Without one, she figured their immigration case would be left to chance. She didn’t want to get sent back to Mexico again.

“My sons’ future is here,” she said.

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

The key to this outcome was Judge Hough’s asking questions and sending the case back to the Asylum Office for a second look. Unfortunately, many Immigration Judges, pushed to crank out numbers, not justice, and falsely told by their “superiors” that all asylum claims are fraudulent anyway, would merely have ordered deportation.

The problem of arbitrary and capricious decision making in “life or death” asylum cases is hardly a new one. Indeed, it was well documented and publicly exposed by my colleagues Professors Andy Schoenholtz, Phil Schrag, and Jaya Ramji-Nogales in their seminal 2007 book Refugee Roulette.

Despite some stabs at addressing the problem in subsequent years, it has remained a persistent feature of a broken system and is worse now that ever. That’s because this Administration actually views cruel, arbitrary, and capricious adjudication as both a demonstration of absolute Executive Power and a way of punishing and discouraging legal asylum seekers.

Some favorable precedents correctly applying asylum law, particularly in the area of domestic violence and family-based “particular social groups,” were moving the system slowly toward “consensus grants” on a significant number of clearly deserving Central American cases. They could eventually have been used to act favorably on perhaps one-third of the Northern Triangle Asylum cases without resorting to the Immigration Court system. These precedents could also have formed a basis for establishing a robust refugee program in the Northern Triangle itself, thus eliminating the need for the dangerous overland journey to the U.S. and reducing the influence of smugglers.

Instead of building on these modest, yet important, human rights successes, unethical Trump Administration politicos, including Sessions and Barr, illegally and maliciously removed them and replaced them with the idea, again unethically communicated to adjudicators, that denial should be the “preferred result” in every case.

The corrupt system now encourages arbitrary and capricious decision-making on asylum cases and elimination or manipulation of judicial review as as a tool for discouraging those who should get our protection from daring to use our legal system.

Perhaps worse yet, with very transparent evidence of what is going on (the Administration largely admits that they are using the asylum system as a “deterrent” to asylum seekers) the Article III Courts, starting with the Supremes, have failed in their duty to require an asylum adjudication system that meets both the Due Process and Equal Protection requirements of our Constitution.

Every life saved is a life saved. That’s why the “little things” like Judge Hough is doing matter. With lawyers and a chance to document and present their asylum cases, and to seek review before the Article III Courts, Dilcia and Anthony at least have a fighting chance to gain protection.

(Unfortunately, neither the El Paso nor Houston Immigration Courts nor the Fifth Circuit have reputations for fair and impartial treatment of asylum seekers. Indeed, some of the most grotesque and legally unjustifiable abuses of Due Process and fundamental fairness have taken place right under the noises of 5th Circuit judges. That probably explains the unusual eagerness of DHS and DOJ to locate many branches of the “New American Gulag,” and their embedded “Kangaroo Courts” including absurdly unjust “Tent Courts” within the Fifth Circuit. How else would you explain places like Jena, Louisiana and many other obscure locations within that state where counsel is often unavailable and access to clients is often illegally restricted or cut off. Indeed, complicity breeds contempt for human life and the legal system, something that smug Article III Judges refusing to do their Constitutional duties might live to regret. Without “regime change” in 2020, the reprieve for this family might be only temporary.)

But the fact that there are pockets of fairness, caring, and impartiality in a clearly unconstitutional system merely demonstrates the arbitrary and capricious way in which this system deals with life or death decisions and the complicity of both Congress and the Article IIIs in allowing this disgraceful, outrageous mockery of justice to continue!

Those who have weaponized the asylum system against the most deserving and vulnerable among us and the life-tenured judges who are unethically allowing this to happen on their watch should not escape accountability.

PWS

10-20-19

ROUNDTABLE MEMBER HON. PAUL GUSSENDORF IN BALTIMORE SUN: “Trump abandons U.S. leadership role regarding refugees”

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-1016-immigration-policy-20191015-qnkp7gdtfre3zbh5iqkqv3iwnq-story.html

Trump abandons U.S. leadership role regarding refugees

By PAUL GRUSSENDORF

BALTIMORE SUN |

OCT 15, 2019 | 11:04 AM

Ever since Donald Trump assumed the presidency on a tide of vile hatred and racist attacks upon Mexican migrants, the administration has been chipping away at our asylum laws and protections for refugees. As someone who has been part of this system for decades as an immigration judge and refugee officer and most recently a supervisory asylum officer, I have an up-close view of just how destructive Mr. Trump’s chipping away at the system has been — and how despicably dishonest and mendacious his stated rationales for it really are.

It is most disturbing to see our great nation surrendering its historic commitment to refugee protection during a period of the greatest world-wide refugee crisis since World War II. The Refugee Act of 1980 was the U.S.’s domestic response to our treaty obligation under the U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees. Congress declared at that time that “the historic policy of the United States was to respond to the urgent needs of persons subject to persecution in their homelands.”

inRead invented by Teads

ADVERTISING

This administration’s family separations policy — ripping children from their parents to serve as a deterrent to asylum seekers, and detention of children in unsanitary cages without adequate supervision — reached levels of cruelty unmatched in modern history. Multiple attempts to block refugees from even reaching our southern border have been implemented. The white nationalist cabal that is running the president’s immigration policy is pulling all the stops in turning a system of humanitarian protection into one of rejection.

The director of the asylum division in the Department of Homeland Security, one of the most respected managers in the agency, has been replaced because he was an experienced advocate for the rights of asylum seekers. The so-called Third Country Transit Rule bars practically all asylum seekers arriving at our southern border who haven’t first sought asylum in hyper-violent countries such as Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala, even though none of those countries can provide safety for their own citizens, let alone for refugees, and even though none of them have an adequately functioning asylum administration that would make the rule meaningful.

Where are the days when Ronald Reagan welcomed refugees to our shores? Mr. Trump continues to claim that the entire asylum system is fraudulent, that it is a “big, fat con job.”

A man sells candy as pedestrian commuters make their way across the Paso del Norte Bridge at the Mexico-US border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on September 12, 2019. – The US Supreme Court on September 11, 2019, allowed asylum restrictions by President Donald Trump’s administration to take effect, preventing most Central American migrants from applying at the US border. (PAUL RATJE/Getty)

When I was interviewing Salvadorian minors in San Salvador in 2016, as part of our government’s Central American Minor (CAM) program, I heard hundreds of painfully credible cases of teenage kids who had been given the ultimatum of either joining criminal gangs or being killed; of parents who had been told that they could either turn over their daughters to an ultra-violent gang or see the eradication of their whole family; of children who had witnessed the violent deaths of parents or siblings, and been informed that they would be next if they didn’t agree to sell drugs or serve as look-outs for gangs.

The so-called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which requires that asylum seekers at the southern border be warehoused in Mexico pending their scheduled appearance in immigration court, has resulted in the return of some 50,000 migrants to border cities where they are subject to assaults, kidnappings and murder.

During the last year of the Obama administration the U.S. refugee admissions ceiling was increased to 110,000 for 2017. However, on the heels of Mr. Trump’s Muslim ban the administration has whittled down refugee admissions to a ceiling of 18,000 in 2020. The U.S. has effectively withdrawn from the field, sending the signal that we no longer consider ourselves as leaders in the world for refugee interests.

Mr. Trump’s remarks about migrants from “s***hole countries” have resonated around the world. The question posed — Why has the U.S. abandoned its leadership role in refugee protection? — can perhaps best be answered with another question. Earlier this year I had the privilege of visiting schools in Lome, Togo, in West Africa to discuss with the students the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the significance of his humanitarian message internationally. At one school, when I took questions, a 10-year-old boy asked, “Why does Donald Trump hate Africans?”

Paul Grussendorf (pauldgrussendorf@hotmail.com) has been an immigration judge, a refugee officer for the UN Refugee Agency and a refugee officer for the U.S. government. He just retired from his position as supervisory asylum officer for the U.S. government. His book is, “My Trials: Inside America’s Deportation Factories.”

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

Thanks, Paul, for all you are doing for America. Paul’s next assignment will be as a UNHCR contractor in Rwanda.

PWS

10-15-19

HUMANITY REVILED: THE HUMAN COSTS OF TRUMP’S INTENTIONALLY CRUEL & INHUMAN POLICIES CARRIED OUT BY DHS – Mica Rosenberg @ Reuters & Friends With Three Timely Reports!

I wanted to share our latest exclusive reporting that found some 16,000 children, nearly 500 of them infants under 1 year old, have been sent back to Mexico under the “Migrant Protection Protocols” to wait out their U.S. court hearings in often precarious living conditions. The government would not share a demographic breakdown of who was being sent back under the program so we sought the answers ourselves:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-babies-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-migrant-policy-sends-thousands-of-babies-and-toddlers-back-to-mexico-idUSKBN1WQ1H1

Separately, we just completed a multimedia project that took months of work and lots of cross-border collaboration to follow the diverging fates of several migrants who travelled with the caravans last year:

https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-IMMIGRATION-PROFILE/0100B2FK1NP/index.html

I am also following the developments in the U.S. refugee resettlement program:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-refugees/all-i-can-do-is-pray-a-family-in-limbo-as-us-slows-refugee-admissions-idUSKBN1WI0XV

Please read and share and stay in touch with more story ideas!

All the best,

Mica

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.com

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

Thanks Mica & team for the great in-depth reporting highlighting the human costs of the Trump Administration’s scofflaw policies.

It’s also what “Big Mac With Lies” actually stood for and went along with during his tenure at DHS. Things to remember when, somewhere down the line, Big Mac inevitably tries to “reinvent himself” as “the voice of reason” or an “internal resistor” to Trump’s grotesque anti-human rights campaign and his “political weaponization” of DHS.

DHS actually has a duty to insure that refugee laws are fairly and generously applied, as intended, to protect those fleeing persecution and torture. Not only did Big Mac fail to carry out that responsibility, but he actively undermined, mocked, and further endangered those needing protection under our laws. And, it was all part of a blatantly racist, White Nationalist, restrictionist Trump agenda that Big Mac fully understood and willfully advanced. He presided over a highly corrupt, unprofessional, politicized, weaponization of DHS. By this time, the damage appears to be irreparable.

PWS

10-13-19

MAX BOOT @ WASHPOST: Trump’s Not the Only Grossly Corrupt Public Official – The “Sleazy Three,” Pence, Pompeo, & Barr, Have Also Betrayed Our Nation & Should Go Down!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/09/pence-pompeo-barr-deserve-be-impeached-too/

President Trump has no one but himself to blame for the fact that he is on the verge of being impeached. He recognizes no legal or moral limits on his “absolute right” to do whatever he pleases — including pressuring a foreign country to intervene in U.S. politics on his behalf. But his most senior aides have done him no favors by acting as accelerators rather than brakes on his unconscionable conduct.

Three senior officials, in particular, could have tried to dissuade the president from misusing his office for personal gain, but there is no evidence that they ever attempted to do so. History will record their names along with Trump’s in the annals of ignominy. The president’s principal accomplices in his brazen assault on the rule of law are Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William P. Barr.

Pence has been Trump’s most prominent proxy in his attempts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cough up dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and to absolve Russia of hacking the 2016 election. Trump told Pence not to attend Zelensky’s inauguration in May so as to turn the screws on the Ukrainian president. When they finally met in Warsaw on Sept. 1, Pence again pressured Zelensky to take action on “corruption,” a code word for investigating Biden and the former vice president’s son Hunter.

Pence has adopted the Sergeant Schultz defense: I know nothing! His protestations of innocence are unconvincing, given that the president’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, publicly proclaimed his desire to get dirt on the Bidens from Ukraine. Moreover, Pence’s national security adviser listened in on the now-infamous July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky that another participant described as “crazy” and “frightening.” Pence himself was given a readout of the call, yet he claims to have seen nothing wrong and is still sticking to the discredited cover story that Trump was pursuing a legitimate investigation of corruption. Pence will be saved from being remembered as the worst vice president in history only because Spiro Agnew had to resign after being charged with tax evasion and bribery.

Pompeo is now officially the worst secretary of state in history — wresting that uncoveted title from his predecessor, Rex Tillerson. As former secretary of state Colin Powell notes, “Our foreign policy is a shambles right now,” and Pompeo bears part of the blame for failing to stand up to Trump. He did not offer his resignation when the president proclaimed himself “in love” with the dictator of North Korea or when he abandoned the United States’ Kurdish allies. Pompeo subordinates the United States’ national interest to his own political interests; he is said to be interested in succeeding Trump.

Pompeo was fully aware of how unlawful Trump was acting — he was also on the July 25 call, though he pretended during interviews that he had no idea what had transpired. There is no evidence he did anything to stop Trump. Instead, he has endorsed the crazy conspiracy theory that it was the Ukrainians, not the Russians, who interfered in the 2016 election. Pompeo is now leading Trump’s coverup: He has refused to allow State Department employees to testify to Congress, denouncing Congress’s request as “an attempt to intimidate” and “bully” the career professionals. If anyone is bullying Foreign Service officers, it is Trump; witness the president’s firing of a respected ambassador in Ukraine because she wouldn’t help Giuliani frame Biden. Pompeo stood by as this happened.

No wonder State Department employees are so disgusted and demoralized. “The mood is low and getting lower,” Thomas Pickering, a distinguished former ambassador, told the New York Times.

But wait. If you think that’s bad, Barr says “hold my beer.” The attorney general has already misled the country about the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation by falsely claiming that the president had been absolved of collusion and obstruction of justice. Barr then refused to investigate complaints that a crime had been committed during Trump’s call with Zelensky. Now, he is flying around the world to pressure allies to cooperate with his politically motivated probe designed to show that the investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia was actually a “witch hunt” by the so-called deep state — just as Trump claims. Barr’s highly improper requests have stirred a backlash in Italy, Australia and Britain — close allies that have no desire to be thrust into U.S. domestic politics.

By waging war on the dedicated professionals in his own department at the behest of a law-breaking president, Barr is ensuring that he will be remembered as the worst attorney general ever. He has even eclipsed in awfulness his immediate predecessor, acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker, a political hack who was previously a hawker of toilets for “well-endowed” men.

Impeaching Pence, Pompeo and Barr would be an unneeded distraction from the necessary impeachment of their boss but, on the merits, all three richly deserve to join Trump in the dock. They have betrayed the country and their oaths of office. They have even failed Trump by not acting to save the worst person ever to occupy the White House from his worst instincts.

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

Yup. Public service doesn’t get any worse than this, although “Big Mac” could easily be included (and Stephen Miller, but he’d be part of the “Trump package.”) Unlikely to happen, of course. But, it should!

PWS

10-09-19

SYCOPHANT SEN. L. GRAHAM (R-SC) WAKES UP AFTER TWO-YEAR SLUMBER, SHOCKED THAT TRUMP HAS BETRAYED OUR ALLIES!

From USA Today:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/10/07/trump-defends-syria-withdrawal/3896039002/

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

Here’s Trump’s brilliant plan. Allow notorious Turkish strongman Erdogan, who happened to show up at a Trump Hotel opening in Turkey, to annihilate our loyal allies against ISIS (and before that Saddam), the Kurds. Then, destroy the Turkish economy because they annihilated the Kurds like they said they would do. That way, we wipe out two of our dwindling number of allies in the Middle East and insure the re-emergence of ISIS. We also should be able to guarantee the death of many refugees in Syria and cruel and inhuman abuse of others. What could possibly go wrong?

As for GOP bottom-feeder Graham, Trump’s betrayal of American institutions, illegal attacks on his American political opponents, insult to the memory of John McCain, taunting of Congress, dehumanization of immigrants and asylum seekers, his overt racism, and his 10,000+ documented lies, “No problemo.”

But, betray an ally halfway around the world, that’s “crossing the line.”

LG’s learning the “downside” of enabling a kakistocracy led by a dangerous, deranged clown. But, I’m sure that won’t stop him from serving as Trump’s caddy on their next golf outing, while Kurds are being slaughtered by Turks.

PWS

10-08-19

NICOLE NAREA @ VOX NEWS: Trump Brings Ignominious End To Six Decades Of U.S. Global Leadership On Refugees – Functionally Ends One Of America’s Most Successful, Beneficial, & Enriching Programs!

https://apple.news/AIdY3RXXGRp2vAq_TNEIM1w

Trump’s cuts to the refugee program signal the end of an era.

By Nicole Narea | October 1, 2019 7:30 am

The United States’ refugee program once served as a global model of how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. But under President Donald Trump, America is now accepting fewer refugees than ever, signaling that not even they are immune to the president’s restrictionist immigration policies.

On Thursday, the administration announced that the US will accept 18,000 refugees at most over the next year, the fewest in history and down from a cap of 110,000 just two years ago. A new executive order from Trump will allow state and local authorities to block refugees from settling in their areas.

The Trump administration claims that lowering refugee admissions would allow the US to take in more asylum seekers: people fleeing violence and persecution who apply for protection when they are already in the US, unlike refugees, who are processed by international organizations.

But the administration is also doing everything it can to keep asylum seekers out of the US. Migrants can be returned to Mexico to await decisions on their asylum applications, barred from obtaining asylum if they passed through another country before arriving in the US, or sent back to the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to seek protections there.

During his campaign, Trump painted refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war as national security threats. In office, his administration hasn’t distinguished among asylum-seekers, refugees, and other migrants. It’s painted them all as a threat to or drain on American society and has crafted policies that try to keep as many people out of the US as possible.

The Trump administration is setting up the admission of refugees and asylum seekers as a “zero-sum game.” But in reality, it’s just trying to block immigration across the board, said Elizabeth Foydel, deputy police director at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

The US has the capacity to take in both more refugees and more asylum seekers. But the Trump administration is sending a message: The US is no longer the same safe haven it once was. The policies are in line with acting US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli’s amendment to Emma Lazarus’s famous poem on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet.”

During the campaign, Trump helped stoke anti-refugee sentiment

The refugee program has historically flourished under Republican presidents. Even in previous Republican administrations seeking to curtail immigration, no one has ever set the cap on refugee admissions as low as Trump has. Former President George W. Bush briefly cut the number of refugees admitted after the 9/11 attacks, but even then the limit was set at 70,000.

But the bipartisan consensus on maintaining a robust refugee resettlement program began to unravel after the Paris terror attacks in late 2015, said Yael Schacher, senior US advocate for Refugees International, when suicide bombers — reportedly sanctioned by the Islamic State — killed 130 civilians in explosions and mass shootings throughout the city.

There was speculation that one of the attackers was a refugee, one of 5.6 million Syrians who have been displaced since 2011 by the still-ongoing civil war. It was later confirmed that all of the perpetrators were citizens of the European Union. But the rumors were enough to spark a panic about Syrian refugees and start a movement among governors, mostly Republicans, to cut back US admissions of Syrian refugees and resettlement efforts more broadly.

Governors from 31 states, all Republican but for New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, said they no longer wanted their state to take in Syrian refugees. In 2016, Mike Pence, then governor of Indiana, also tried to prevent refugee resettlement agencies in his state from getting reimbursed for the cost of providing social services to Syrian refugees.

But states didn’t have the legal authority to simply refuse refugees; that’s the prerogative of the federal government. Pence ultimately had to back down after a federal court ruled against his decision to withhold the reimbursements.

Trump, then campaigning for president, stirred up more fear, suggesting that Syrian refugees were raising an army to launch an attack on the US and promising that all of them would be “going back” if he won the election. He said that he would tell Syrian children to their faces that they could not come to the US, speculating that they could be a “Trojan horse.”

“Military tactics are very interesting,” Trump said. “This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army, maybe. Or if they sent 50,000 or 80,000 or 100,000 … That could be possible. I don’t know that it is, but it could be possible.”

When Trump eventually took office, he delivered on his promise to slash refugee admissions from Syria, suspending refugee admissions altogether from January to October 2017. From October 2017 to October 2018, the US admitted only 62.

State leaders lined up behind him: The Tennessee legislature, for instance, filed a lawsuit in March 2017 claiming that the federal government was infringing on states’ rights by forcing them to take in refugees (a court challenge that also failed).

Trump’s executive order Thursday may vindicate the states that wanted to turn refugees away. (The International Refugee Assistance Project said it is contemplating challenging the order in court.) Under the executive order, local governments that do not have the resources to support refugees in becoming “self-sufficient and free from long-term dependence on public assistance” will be able to turn them away.

It’s not clear how it will play out in practice. States won’t just be able to refuse refugees from certain nations, such as Syria, Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell Law, said. Immigration law provides that state and local governments must provide aid “without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex or political opinion.”

But it could prove complicated when states and municipalities disagree over whether to accept refugees. It’s possible that states will be able to override local governments. Take, for example, cities like Dallas, which has historically taken in many refugees but is located in Texas, which has previously sought to prohibit them.

The executive order would also create inconsistent refugee policies across the country, making it next to impossible for the federal government to properly plan for refugee settlement, Schacher said.

“We are one nation,” she said. “The idea that governors can direct where refugees can first resettle not only undermines federalism but divides us on a policy which is fundamentally a national one.”

Trump’s refugee policy reflects his broader attitude toward immigrants

The Center of Immigration Studies (CIS), which advocates for lowering immigration levels overall, has influenced many of the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies. The refugee cap is no exception.

The organization has gained influence in the Trump era, with some of its former researchers assuming senior positions in the administration. CIS threw support behind the movement to block Syrian refugees in 2016, casting doubt on whether the United Nations’ refugee office could actually vet them for security threats before they arrive in the US.

The organization has also claimed that the current system allows the federal government to impose too much financial burden on states to carry out refugee resettlement. And it has called into question why the US should dedicate resources to resettling refugees rather than focusing on the southern border.

Trump’s most recent refugee policy moves are “long overdue,” in particular his executive order allowing states the opportunity to refuse refugees, CIS senior researcher Nayla Rush writes.

“Refugees are not just parachuted into a void,” she said. “Positive reception and orientation are, therefore, necessary for a successful integration.”

It all fits in with one of the broader ideas guiding Trump’s immigration policy: that immigrants “exploit public assistance” without offering the US anything in return, Foydel said.

In the same vein, the Trump administration has published a rule, set to go into effect October 15, that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to weigh certain immigrants’ use of Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Section 8 housing assistance, and federally subsidized housing against them in their applications for green cards or visas. The rule will primarily affect a small proportion of family-based green card applicants, but immigrants are already disenrolling from public benefits out of fear that they will be penalized.

Trump has justified it as a means of ensuring that immigrants are “financially self-sufficient” and to “protect benefits for American citizens.”

“I am tired of seeing our taxpayer paying for people to come into the country and immediately go onto welfare and various other things,” Trump said when announcing the rule. “So I think we’re doing it right.”

Foydel said that Trump is trying to abdicate federal responsibility for the most vulnerable immigrants, forcing states that already serve as immigrant “sanctuaries” to step up. He threatened to release detained immigrants into sanctuary cities in April, and Thursday’s executive order also requires states that agree to receive refugees to publish their “consent letters” publicly, which some have questioned as a means of politically targeting immigrant-friendly areas.

“The positions of different states might be politicized and used to foment anti-refugee sentiment,” Schacher said.

It’s a mischaracterization to say that immigrants take advantage of welfare programs, Foydel said.

In her experience, refugees have no desire to be on public assistance for any longer than necessary and start working as soon as they can. She also pointed to research that refugees end up contributing more in taxes than what it costs to resettle them: on average, $21,000 among refugees who entered the US as adults between 2010 and 2014, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“I think that there are a number of policies we’ve seen that have this language of economic self-sufficiency,” Foydel said. “It’s part of a false narrative about refugees and also immigrants more broadly exploiting public assistance when the data says it’s not true.”

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

Trump‘s cowardly attacks upon the world’s most vulnerable, aided and abetted by morally corrupt GOP policitos, and “masterminded” by neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Miller (taxpayers are actually supporting this evil clown — talk about abuse of public assistance!), ends what had been one of our most important and long-lasting bipartisan policy successes.

And, since much of the expertise and hard work that made the program so successful were contributed by NGOs and (real, not Trumpian) religious organizations, those programs are now being dismantled and the expertise and resources directed elsewhere. Literally decades of irreplaceable knowledge, expertise, and organizational talent has been lost almost overnight.

Even when a wiser, more humane, decent Administration finally wants to “restart” these critically important programs, it will be no easy task. It basically took nearly half a century to build up the current expertise. Once dissipated, it won’t be easily re-created – certainly not overnight. Obviously, there are serious, long-term consequences to allowing a kakistocracy to take over the government of our nation.

PWS

10-08-19

WELCOME TO A NEW BRIGADE OF THE NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY: Justice Action Center! — Litigate, Litigate, Litigate — Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

Karen Tumlin
Founder
Justice Action Center

Karen Tumlin, Founder

Karen Tumlin is a nationally recognized impact litigator focusing on immigrants’ rights. She successfully litigated numerous cases of national significance, including a challenge to the Trump Administration’s effort to end the DACA program and the Muslim Ban, as well as the constitutional challenge to Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. She formerly served as the Director of Legal Strategy and Legal Director for the National Immigration Law Center, where she built a legal department of over 15 staff who developed and led cases of national impact.

Contact Karen: karen.tumlin@justiceactioncenter.org

https://justiceactioncenter.org/

A Brief Description of JAC

Justice Action Center is a new nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting for greater justice for immigrant communities by combining litigation and storytelling. There is tremendous unmet need in the litigation landscape for immigrant communities. JAC is committed to bringing additional litigation resources to bear to address unmet needs in currently underserved areas. There is also untapped potential in how litigation can be combined with digital strategies to empower clients and change the corrosive narrative around immigrants. Communications content around litigation that focuses primarily on putting forward legal voices to talk about immigrants does not have the same authentic voice as putting forward immigrants as the protagonists. JAC will focus on the creation of original content that amplifies immigrant voices. We believe that real change will come only when a larger base of supporters are activated on immigration issues—only then will courthouse wins pave the way for lasting change. JAC will partner with direct service providers and organizers to leverage the power of the existing landscape of immigrants’ rights organizations and also to fill in holes where impact litigation should be brought (but currently isn’t), or where communications and digital expertise could help reshape the narrative around immigration and immigrants.

The Problem

Urgent, Unmet Legal Need in the Immigrants’ Rights Field

Impact litigation has been an essential tool in blunting the Trump administration’s abuses against immigrants—but capacities are stretched thin and deployed unevenly. As a result, important civil rights abuses are going unchallenged.

Lawsuits attract media attention at key moments, but little planning is done to drive the narrative. Deliberate, client-driven communications plans are needed to maximize these moments to engage new audiences on immigration

Unequal Treatment

Precious impact litigation resources are currently being spread unevenly. While there is a deep bench of attorneys ready to take on high-profile issues, such as the termination of DACA or the latest asylum ban, other issues appear to have no legal advocacy. Examples include the massive worksite raids in underserved states such as Ohio and Texas or the severe abuses immigrants face in the nation’s vast detention system.

Underrepresented in Digital Media

There is a paucity of original, immigrant-centered digital content. The nation’s narrative no longer has to be set only by policymakers—it can be shaped by everyday people, including immigrants. We have not harnessed the power of the current digital landscape to promote pro-immigrant messages and engage new audiences.

JAC’s Solutions

1. Litigate on topics and in locations of unmet need.

2. Create original, immigrant-centered content designed to activate new audiences

3. Partner with direct services providers and organizers to elevate movement impact.

Get Involved

You can be part of helping build Justice Action Center.

Donate to Justice Action Center’s first year now.

Donate

Home
About

Who
Donate
Contact Us

Subscribe for JAC Updates

First Name

Last Name

Email (required) *

Constant Contact Use.

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

Welcome Karen and the JAC to the fight for Due Process, fundamental fairness, and human decency! Nothing less than the survival of our nation, and perhaps civilization, is at stake here!

The litigation angle is so critically important to this all-out war! The Federal Appellate Courts, and particularly the Supremes, have been largely complicit in Trump’s White Nationalist attack on the Rule of Law. There is no excuse whatsoever for the continuing unconstitutional outrages against individuals being committed by a biased Immigration Court System unlawfully controlled by biased and corrupt politicos.

Would a Federal Appellate Court Judge or a Supreme Court Justice agree to be tried for his or her life in a “court” before “judges” controlled by their prosecutor? Of course not! So why is it “Constitutionally OK” for asylum seekers and other vulnerable individuals to be “tried” (often without lawyers or even “in absentia”) by “judges” controlled by Trump, Barr, and indirectly McAleenan? Why it “Constitutionally OK” for individuals whose only “crime” is asserting their legal rights to be detained indefinitely (sometimes until death) in conditions that would be held unconstitutional in an eyeblink if applied to convicted criminals?

Think I’m making this up? Check out he dissent by Justice Sotomayor (joined by Justice Ginsburg) in Barr v. East Side Sanctuary Covenant. There, seven of her spineless colleagues didn’t even bother to justify their decision lifting a lower court stay of a grotesque attack by the Trump Administration on the legal rights (and lives) of asylum seekers that violated the Constitution, a host of statutes and regulations, and international standards. Not only that, but it also enables a lawless Solicitor General to continue to cynically “short-circuit” the legal system and go directly to what Trump and his followers (contemptuously, but apparently correctly) believe to be a thoroughly compromised Supreme Court. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/09/11/supreme-tank-complicit-court-ends-u-s-asylum-protections-by-7-2-vote-endorses-trumps-white-nationalist-racist-attack-on-human-rights-eradication-of-refugee-act-of-1980/

These consequences aren’t “academic.” Innocent individuals, including children, will die, be tortured, or have their lives ruined by the Supremes’ abdication of duty and abandonment of human decency. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/09/20/profile-in-judicial-cowardice-article-iiis-dereliction-of-duty-leaves-brave-asylum-applicants-and-their-courageous-attorneys-defenseless-against-racist-onslaught-by-trump-administration/.

Undoubtedly energized by this exercise in “Supreme Complicity,” the Trump Administration has released a dizzying barrage of new attacks on the legal rights and humanity of migrants of all types, from asylum seekers to green card holders and immigrant visa applicants, in the weeks following East Side Sanctuary.

Or, check out this dissenting statement of Eleventh Circuit Judge Adelberto Jose Jordan in Diaz-Rivas v. U.S. Att’y Gen.:

In my view, Ms. Diaz-Rivas’ statistics—showing that from 2014 through 2016 asylum applicants outside of Atlanta’s immigration court were approximately 23 times more likely to succeed than asylum applicants in Atlanta—are disquieting and merit further inquiry by the BIA. See City of Miami, 614 F.2d at 1339. If these statistics pertained to a federal district court, the Administrative Office would begin an investigation in a heartbeat.

So what’s the result of the Eleventh Circuit majority’s cowardly abandonment of the Fifth Amendment? In a spectacular “in your face” move undoubtedly meant to play on the spineless response of the Eleventh Circuit to the “Asylum Free Zone” created in the Atlanta Immigration Court, Billy Barr actually promoted two of the Atlanta judges with the highest asylum denial rates, renowned for their rude and disrespectful treatment of asylum applicants and their lawyers, to the Board of Immigration Appeals as part of his “court packing scheme” to promote worst practices and anti-asylum bias.

In other words, as a consequence of the Eleventh Circuit’s spineless complicity in the face of clear Due Process violations, these unqualified judges have now been empowered to abuse and refuse asylum applicants from coast to coast. Judicial corruption and complicity has real human life consequences for those trying to just survive below the “radar screen” of exalted overprivileged Ivory Tower Federal Appellate Judges.

The Ninth Circuit’s illegal “greenlighting” of the deadly “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico” program in Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan is another egregious example of U.S. Court of Appeals Judges abandoning their oaths of office (and writing complete legal gibberish, to boot).https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/05/07/fractured-9th-gives-go-ahead-to-remain-in-mexico-program-immigration-law-lab-v-mcaleenan/.

Every time an Appellate Judge signs off on a removal order produced without a fair and impartial adjudication in the unconstitutional Immigration Courts he or she is violating their oath of office. We’ve had enough! Why have life-tenured judges if they won’t stand up for our individual rights? It’s time to put an end to this cowardly judicial complicity in violation of our fundamental Constitutional rights (not to mention a host of statutory and regulatory violations that go unchecked in Immigration Courts every day).

That’s where the “5 C’s” come into play: Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

At the same time, make an historical record of those judges who “stood small” in the face of Trump’s vicious and corrupt assault on our Constitution and our democratic institutions, not to mention the lives and well-being of vulnerable migrants!

PWS

10-05-19

“DUH” OF THE DAY — THREE ARTICLES EXPLAIN HOW SLEAZY SYCOPHANT BILLY BARR PUT HIMSELF AT THE CENTER OF TRUMP’S CORRUPTION — It’s No Surprise To Those Of Us Who Have Watched Barr’s “Ethics Free Zone” @ DOJ — Why Are Article IIIs Allowing This Biased “Political Hack” To Trash Justice In The U.S. Immigration Courts?

https://apple.news/AbSuy-8PHRYa0vX1p8I-F5Q

Sonam Sheth writes at Business Insider:

‘Pure insanity’: Intelligence veterans are floored by Barr’s ‘off the books’ overtures to foreign officials about the Russia probe

Intelligence veterans were puzzled by reports that Attorney General William Barr personally urged foreign officials to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. “This is unheard of,” one former senior Justice Department official who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was FBI director, told Insider. The Washington Post reported that Barr had already made overtures to British intelligence officials about the

Read in Business Insider: https://apple.news/AbSuy-8PHRYa0vX1p8I-F5Q

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

Harry Litman in the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/01/did-william-barr-break-any-rules-only-most-important-one/

Did William Barr break any rules? Only the most important one.

Add to list

By Harry Litman

Contributing columnist

October 1 at 11:35 AM

Multiple news agencies reported Monday that Attorney General William P. Barr has had extensive personal involvement in the Justice Department’s investigations into the origins of the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

That involvement — including trips abroad for personal meetings with foreign officials — is certainly “fairly unorthodox,” in the words of a former Justice Department official. Is it also inappropriate?

After all, part of an attorney general’s job is to liaise with foreign counterparts. It’s not unusual to have in-person meetings, especially at the beginning of an attorney general’s tenure, both to meet and greet and to discuss mutual priorities.

Moreover, Barr is the head of the Justice Department. No department business is beyond his concern. Unlike, say, the barriers that are supposed to stand between the White House and the Justice Department, there is no out-of-bounds area for the department’s political appointees, much less the attorney general.

Thus, during Barr’s first tenure as attorney general, he personally argued a case in the Supreme Court, a task normally reserved to the solicitor general and his or her assistants. No one took him to task for weeding in the solicitor general’s garden.

So what, if anything, might be worrisome about Barr’s conduct now?

Well, plenty. For starters, while attorneys general do meet with foreign officials to cement working relationships and even communicate shared general priorities, transatlantic trips to ask for help on an individual investigation are beyond rare. It would even be unusual for an attorney general to pick up the phone to call a counterpart about an individual case.

Barr’s personal globe-trotting mission necessarily communicates that this one matter — of all the ongoing business of the Justice Department — is an unsurpassed priority of the department.

Second and relatedly, Barr already has appointed a respected U.S. attorney, John Durham, to undertake the investigation. Many Justice Department investigations require cooperation with our most important foreign friends, and there are established channels of communication for Durham to work through if he needs help from intelligence agencies of other countries.

Third, the attorney general’s personal involvement compromises the whole idea of Durham’s independence. How is Durham supposed to ignore the bear riding piggyback on his shoulders?

That would be so even if the attorney general had no particular prejudice or bias with respect to the investigation. But the next problem, larger still, is that this attorney general brings strongly held preconceptions into an investigation that is supposed to be free of them.

Barr has repeatedly expressed suspicions of impropriety in the initiation of the Russia probe, including his inflammatory suggestion that the probe constituted “spying” on the Trump campaign.

It is hard not to conclude that Barr’s driving motivation is to turn up some nefarious aspect to the probe’s origins, backed by the imprimatur of a foreign government. And of course, nothing would please President Trump more.

Which brings us to the next big problem with Barr’s unusual campaign. Its animating idea, in fact obsession, is simply wacky. No one has ever shown any satisfactory basis for the various conspiracy theories that Trump defenders have trotted out to argue that the investigation into Russian meddling was rotten at the core.

Indeed, the whole enterprise of trying to discredit the probe is half-cocked. The revelations in the Mueller report of extensive efforts by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election are beyond dispute and extraordinarily grave. It is fortunate that the FBI undertook the probe with the seriousness it merited.

Finally, the attorney general has not simply inserted himself into Durham’s probe. He has entered into a working partnership with Trump. Thus, we learned that the president’s recent call to the Australian prime minister to urge him to assist Barr apparently came at Barr’s urging. And again, that Barr asked Trump to contact other countries to ask them to introduce the attorney general and Durham to appropriate officials.

The president should not be within a million miles of this probe. Barr’s improper tag-team approach links the attorney general to Trump’s goal of smearing anyone involved in investigating him and can only further undermine public confidence in the department’s evenhandedness.

The overall rule that Barr has broken isn’t found in so many words in the Code of Federal Regulations or the Department of Justice Manual. But it’s the first rule for any attorney general: the rule of sound judgment and impartial apolitical administration of justice.

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

Barr’s enabling of Trump’s corruption just got more dangerous

Add to list

By Greg Sargent

Opinion writer

October 1 at 10:42 AM

We are now learning extraordinary new details about the lengths to which William P. Barr is going in service of President Trump’s corrupt and all-consuming goal of making core truths about his 2016 election victory disappear.

But this isn’t a story that only looks backward. It also looks forward. And we need to ask whether these new efforts by Trump’s attorney general are aimed at the 2020 election as well.

Barr appears determined to discredit the special counsel investigation’s finding that Russia engaged in “sweeping and systematic” interference in our election on Trump’s behalf.

Which raises the question: What if Barr’s activities — whether by coincidence or design — end up chilling how intelligence officials respond to the next foreign effort to sabotage a U.S. presidential election on Trump’s behalf?

The Post has some major new reporting that documents Barr’s efforts to enlist foreign governments in his campaign to discredit the origins of Robert S. Mueller III’s probe. Barr has made overtures to British and Italian officials, and Trump himself pressed the Australian president to assist in undermining the investigation’s genesis.

[Harry Litman: Did William Barr break any rules? Only the most important one.]

Barr has already claimed “spying” on Trump’s campaign occurred, feeding Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory of a “deep state” plot to block him from getting elected. The goal now appears to be to use the government’s investigative machinery to create the impression that the real crime was not Russian interference, for which a whole bunch of Russians were indicted, but rather the investigation itself — perpetrated by U.S. law enforcement.Current and former officials are alarmed by Barr’s direct involvement in the investigation into the probe’s origins currently being run by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut. As one former official tells The Post, this is “fairly unorthodox” and undercuts any hopes that Durham will be permitted to settle this in a “professional, nonpartisan manner.”

Another worry about Barr’s involvement

In an interview with me, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), raised another worrisome prospect.

“This is designed to validate a conspiracy theory — that Russia didn’t interfere, and that the whole Mueller probe was a ‘witch hunt,’” Malinowski, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told me. The goal, he said, is to paint the intelligence community and FBI as the “villains in that conspiracy theory.”

Malinowski argued that intelligence officials eyeing how to respond to foreign interference in 2020 might take cues from the aggressiveness of Barr’s ongoing investigation of the investigators.

“There’s a message to our intelligence community, which is, ‘Don’t go there,’” Malinowski told me. “They’re being investigated for doing their jobs the last time.”

What’s more, Malinowski pointed out, foreign intelligence officials and governments might take a similar message from Barr’s efforts to enlist them in his current internal review.

“Are you going to share intelligence with this administration next year if you pick up evidence of Russian interference?” Malinowski noted, referring to foreign officials, who will ask themselves: “How will such information be received by the Trump administration? Do you pass along something that is clearly unwanted?”

Making that point more salient, The Post reports that Barr has taken a “sustained interest” in a conspiracy theory holding that the European academic who originally alerted Trump adviser George Papadopoulos to dirt Russia gathered on Hillary Clinton — which led to the FBI probe — was actually a plant hoping to falsely entrap the Trump campaign.

And one source tells The Post that in his conversations with British officials, Barr “expressed a belief” that the investigation of Russian interference “stemmed from some corrupt origin.”

A second source denies that characterization. But it simply cannot be dismissed as a very real possibility.

No end to Barr’s enabling of Trump

After all, we already saw Barr publicly legitimize Trump’s corrupt attacks on law enforcement by validating the “spying” and “witch hunt” language. Barr has even appealed to us to take into account how victimized Trump felt by Mueller’s witch-hunting in evaluating Trump’s corrupt efforts to obstruct it.

What’s more, Barr’s initial summary of the Mueller report misled the country by dishonestly downplaying what it actually determined about Trump officials’ efforts to conspire and benefit from Russian interference, and by minimizing the findings on obstruction of justice.

[Sign up to receive Opinions pieces in your inbox six days a week]

All this feeds into the ballooning Ukraine scandal as well. One key thing that Trump demanded of the Ukrainian president in the July 25 call is help validating a whackjob conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 email hacks. This, too, would magically make the truth about 2016 disappear — and in the call, Trump directed the Ukrainian president to work with Barr to make it true.

The Justice Department has denied any such Barr involvement. But here again, we already know that Barr’s Justice Department helped direct efforts to keep Congress from learning of the whistleblower complaint detailing that corrupt pressure on a foreign leader to interfere in the next U.S. election. Barr didn’t recuse himself from that, despite being personally named in the complaint.

Barr’s efforts in that regard are now being scrutinized by House Democrats as part of their impeachment inquiry. Which raises the question of whether these latest activities abroad will also come under House Democratic scrutiny.

Such efforts by Democrats, Malinowski suggested to me, would show that Democrats have the “back” of the intelligence community, so it isn’t dissuaded from investigating the next foreign attacks on our political system. After all, as Malinowski bluntly put it, this dissuasion appears in part to be Barr’s “goal.”

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

Barr’s political bias and his gross failure to provide asylum applicants and other migrants with the “fair and impartial” quasi-judicial hearings guaranteed by our Constitution has become painfully obvious, just as it was under unqualified White Nationalist AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions. The conflicts of interest, bogus legal rulings, ethical violations, and anti-immigrant bias simply scream out.

Yet, complicit Article IIIs continue to mindlessly accept the skewed and systemically unfair results of this corrupt and politicized “court” system largely without critical examination. Why aren’t life tenured Federal Judges performing their Constitutional duty to protect our individual Due Process?

PWS

10-01-19

DON KERWIN @ CMS: The Darkness Of Trump’s White Nationalist Xenophobia Descends Over Ronald Reagan’s “City On The Hill!”

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

https://cmsny.org/publications/assault-on-refugee-protection-kerwin-9-30-19/

The Darkening City on the Hill: The Trump Administration Heightens Its Assault on Refugee Protection

NEW ESSAY | CMS Executive Director Donald Kerwin

In 2018, the global population of forcibly displaced persons reached a record 70.8 million, including 25.9 million refugees and 3.5 million asylum-seekers. The United States led the response to past refugee crises of a similar magnitude, as, for example, in the aftermath of World War II and the Vietnam conflict. Yet although the United States remains the largest donor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,[1] the Trump administration has sought to steer the country in a different direction. The United States now seems poised to become the global leader in refugee responsibility shunning and of exclusionary nationalist states, whose leaders the president regularly praises, fetes and seems to emulate. The administration’s recent actions have been particularly damaging to the nation’s identity, to the millions of forcibly displaced in search of safety and a permanent home, and to the ethic of responsibility sharing set forth in the Global Compact on Refugees, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly last December.

On September 26, 2019, the White House released two long-anticipated decrees. Its Executive Order on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement requires that both states and localities consent to the resettlement of refugees in a particular locality. If either refuses to consent, the Order provides that “refugees should not be resettled within that State or locality,” except in very narrow circumstances that include prior notification of the president. States could bar refugee resettlement, for example, in cities that have been renewed by refugees and that badly want and need them. The Order purports to ensure that “refugees are resettled in communities that are eager and equipped to support their successful integration into American society and the labor force.” Yet significant coordination already occurs, and it can be strengthened without creating a state and local veto that would hamstring the federal government’s administration of this program. For many years, media sources and politicians, including the president, have railed against the refugee program’s putative insecurity and the burdens it imposes on communities. If implemented, the Order would further politicize refugee protection and diminish resettlement opportunities. Evisceration of the refugee program (not integration) seems to be the Order’s purpose, and would certainly be its result.

In addition, the Order seems to require states and localities to take an affirmative step – as part of a yet-determined process – to consent to refugee placement. In other words, they must “opt in” to the program. If they do not, then the federal government would deem the jurisdiction unacceptable for resettlement. In these circumstances, the enhanced federal consultation with states and localities and their “greater involvement in the process” of refugee placement would consist of nothing at all.

Also on September 26, the administration released the President’s annual Report to Congress on Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. This document announced the administration’s decision to limit refugee admissions to 18,000 in FY 2020, the lowest number in the 40-year history of the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), lower even that the two years following the 9/11 attacks.[2] The Refugee Council USA explained the implications of this decision as follows:

This decision is unprecedented, cruel, and contrary to American humanitarian values and strategic interests. Historically, the United States has been the global leader on refugee resettlement, setting an average refugee admissions goal of 95,000 people annually. To slam the door on persecuted people while the number of refugees displaced globally continues to rise to historic levels upends decades of bipartisan tradition. It also abandons thousands of refugees in need of resettlement, leaving them in precarious, often life-threatening situations.

The Refugee Council USA also pointed out that the forthcoming Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for FY 2020 – which constitutes formal notice of the refugee ceiling – will further dismantle “the community-based infrastructure in the US, which has long welcomed the most in-need refugees and provided them the opportunity to rebuild their lives in safety.” This infrastructure – which has been decades in the making – will take years to rebuild.

The administration’s rationale for historically low admissions are specious. The Report to Congress makes the obvious point that it would be more impactful to “resolve” refugee-producing conditions, than to resettle large numbers of refugees. Yet there is no reason why the United States cannot administer a robust resettlement program and address the causes of displacement through diplomacy. These two strategies complement each other. Resettlement is typically available for a relatively small number of particularly vulnerable refugees. UNHCR reports that 68 percent of its refugee submissions for 2018 “were for survivors of violence and torture, those with legal and physical protection needs, and particularly vulnerable women and girls. Just over half of all resettlement submissions concerned children.”

Moreover, the Trump administration has failed to wield US “[d]iplomatic tools – for example, foreign assistance, economic and political engagement, and alliance-building” to resolve refugee-producing conditions or to create the conditions that would allow refugees to return home safely and voluntarily. To the contrary, it has been consistently dismissive of these tools and has failed to create any new legal avenues for desperate persons to migrate. Instead, it has cut foreign aid to states that have generated the largest numbers of asylum-seekers in recent years, and it terminated the Obama-era Central American Minors program, which allowed qualifying children from Central America’s Northern Triangle states to enter the United States legally as refugees or parolees in order to join their legally present parents.

The Report to Congress also lauds the US commitment to asylum and to other protection programs, which it argues make the United States “the most compassionate and generous nation in history.” Yet the administration has systematically sought to weaken the US asylum system and its “temporary and permanent protection” programs for “victims of trafficking, humanitarian parole, temporary protected status, and special immigrant juvenile status.”

In particular, it has sought to rescind Temporary Protected Status for the overwhelming majority of its beneficiaries. It has used the cruelty of family separation and detention to deter asylum-seekers from coming. It has reduced due process protections by expanding the expedited removal process. It has also corrupted the expedited removal process by allowing Border Patrol agents – who lack sufficient training in refugee protection and who tend to be deeply suspicious of asylum claims – to assume the role of Asylum Officers and to determine whether asylum-seekers possess a “credible fear” and thus can pursue their claims. It has adopted numerous strategies to prevent and deter asylum-seekers from reaching US territory such as criminally prosecuting and detaining them, and limiting access to the system, including through interception in transit, crude turn-backs at the border, and metering (scheduling) requirements in Mexico for insufficient interview slots in the United States.

Other administrative initiatives will force asylum-seekers to abandon their claims. Under the Return to Mexico program (misnamed the “Migrant Protection Protocols”), for example, US asylum seekers need to wait in dangerous Mexican border communities, while their cases slowly wind through the US immigration system. Early reports indicate that the United States has returned some asylum-seekers to Southern Mexico, making it impossible for them to pursue their claims. The Trump-era Attorneys General have also tried to reject, by fiat, certain common asylum claims (such as those based on gang violence) and have sought to diminish the independence and rigor of the immigration court system. The administration has also sought to weaken protections based on child welfare principles – which it sees as enforcement “loopholes” – for unaccompanied refugee and migrant minors, and for other vulnerable groups.

As it did in announcing its (then) record low admission ceiling for FY 2019, the Report to Congress for FY 2020 argues that the “current burdens on the U.S. immigration system must be alleviated before it is again possible to resettle large number of refugees.” It is true that asylum applications to the United States have spiked in recent years. Yet as Susan Martin has argued, the United States has historically been able to meet significant demands on its asylum system and to resettle substantial numbers of refugees. In the early 1980s, for example, it received and settled 125,000 Cubans and many thousands of Haitians who had reached Florida’s shores. It also resettled more than 207,000 refugees in 1980 and nearly 160,000 in 1981. By FY 1994, it faced a backlog of more than 425,000 pending asylum applications, but it still resettled 113,000 refugees in 1994 and nearly 100,000 in 1995. Martin concludes that the Trump administration either is “far less competent than its predecessors in managing complex movements of people so it must make a tradeoff between resettlement and asylum” or, more likely, “it is using asylum as a thinly veiled excuse to reduce overall immigration admissions.”

Finally, the Report to Congress claims that the president “is taking new steps to make sure that the refugees that the United States welcomes are set up to succeed.” In support of this claim, it references the Executive Order on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement, which (as discussed) effectively bars resettlement in states and localities that object or do not affirmatively consent to it. This measure, combined with the administration’s pitifully low admissions ceiling, will deny the possibility of admission and, thus, integration to countless refugees. The Order allows for the resettlement of “spouses and children” following to join refugees. However, the admissions cap will keep many resettled refugees indefinitely separated from their families and, in this way, will impede their integration.

As it stands, refugees have been remarkably successful in the United States without the administration’s “reforms.” A 2018 study by the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) compared 1.1 million resettled refugees who arrived between 1987 and 2016, with non-refugees, the foreign born, and the total US population. It found that the labor force participation (68 percent) and employment rates (64 percent) of the 1.1 million refugees exceeded those of the total US population (63 and 60 percent), which consists mostly of US citizens. Refugees with the longest tenure (who arrived between 1987 and 1996) had integrated more fully than recent arrivals (from 2007-2016), as measured by: households with mortgages (41 to 19 percent); English language proficiency (75 to 55 percent); naturalization rates (89 to 24 percent); college education (66 to 32 percent); labor force participation (68 to 61 percent); employment (66 to 55 percent); and, self-employment (14 to 4 percent). Finally, the study found that refugees who arrived between 1987 and 1996 exceeded the total US population in median personal income ($28,000 to $23,000), homeownership (41 to 37 percent) and many other metrics.

To cap off the worst month in the 40-year history of the US refugee protection system, the US Supreme granted a stay on September 11, 2019 that ensured that the United States would, at least temporarily, reject most asylum claims from migrants who have passed through a third country (not their own) on their way to the US-Mexico border. It stayed a lower court order that enjoined the implementation of an interim final rule that will allow claims from such asylum-seekers to proceed only if they can show that they first sought and failed to receive asylum or Torture Convention protection in a third country.[3]

In the best of circumstances, the US asylum process is arduous and uncertain, and many persons who have fled violence and other dangerous conditions ultimately do not prevail in their claims. However, the rule would make it far more difficult even to access this system. It would bar most asylum claims to the United States, including almost all from Central America and other nations that have been the source of most US asylum applications in recent years. Although described as a “safe third country” measure, the rule evinces no concern for the safety of asylum-seekers, for their aspirations, or for the ability of refugee-producing states such as Guatemala or El Salvador to accommodate additional asylum requests. It also violates international law. The stay means that the rule will now go into effect, while the underlying legal challenges to it run their course. If upheld, the rule would eviscerate the US asylum system. In fact, this seems to be its purpose.

The administration’s policies raise the question: Why does the United States offer protection to refugees and asylum-seekers at all? In passing the Refugee Act of 1980, which established USRAP and harmonized US asylum standards with international law, Congress recognized “the historic policy of the United States to respond to the urgent needs of persons subject to persecution in their homelands,” and it encouraged “all nations to provide assistance and resettlement opportunities to refugees to the fullest extent possible.” For decades, there has been a bipartisan consensus that saving lives – as the US refugee program undeniably does – reflects and projects US ideals to the world. Moreover, refugees do not threaten or burden the nation: They renew it by exemplifying core US values, such as courage, endurance, and a love of freedom. Most refugees passionately identify with the United States, having found in it the security, opportunity and freedom denied them elsewhere. Robust refugee protection policies, the consensus held, serves the nation’s interests in global stability, diminished irregular migration, and increased cooperation on US diplomatic, military and security priorities. The program has also saved countless persons who risked their lives to work for and on behalf of the US government.

In his July 30, 1981 statement on US immigration and refugee policy, President Ronald Reagan committed to continuing “America’s tradition as a land that welcomes peoples from other countries” and that shares “the responsibility of welcoming and resettling those who flee oppression.” He also acknowledged the importance of these policies to the nation’s interests. In his January 11, 1989 farewell address to the nation, Reagan spoke of the United States as a nation that had always stood as a beacon of freedom to the world’s refugees, but that this identity needed to be “rediscovered.” It needs to be rediscovered now as well, and before the Trump administration succeeds in fully dismantling one of the nation’s defining and proudest programs.

[1] The lion’s share of the UNHCR’s budget – more than three-quarters – goes to its refugee program.

[2] As is its wont, the administration skirted the law in setting the refugee ceiling prior to its statutorily mandated consultation with Congress on admissions. It insists that it still plans to consult with Congress, but to what substantive end is not clear.

[3] The administration misused the previously rare procedure of issuing an “interim final rule” to allow the asylum rule to go into effect prior to formal notice and comment rulemaking, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act.

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

Thanks, Don, for shedding light on what will go down as one of the darkest chapters in modern U.S. history.

Also, as Don so cogently points out, support for refugee admissions used to be a bipartisan issue. Now, the ugliness and counter-productivity of Trump’s racist xenophobia has overtaken the GOP and made it an anathema to America’s future.

What would RR think? His optimism and braver view of America’s role in the world stands in sharp contrast to the darkness of Trump’s White Nationalist cowardice, ignorance, and weakness.

PWS

10-01-19

COURTS OF INJUSTICE: How Systemic Bias, Bad Precedents, Gross Mismanagement, & Poor Decision-Making Threaten Lives In Immigration Court — What Should Be “Slam Dunk” Grants Of Protection Are Literally “Litigated To Death” Adding To Backlogs While Mocking Justice! — Featuring Quotes From “Roundtable” Leader Hon. Jeffrey Chase!

Beth Fertig
Senior Reporter
Immigration, Courts, Legal
WNYC & The Gothamist

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog

https://gothamist.com/news/they-fled-gang-violence-and-domestic-abuse-nyc-immigration-judge-denied-them-asylum

Beth Fertig reports for WNYC:

They Fled Gang Violence And Domestic Abuse. An NYC Immigration Judge Denied Them Asylum

BY BETH FERTIG, WNYC

SEPT. 26, 2019 5:00 A.M.

Seventeen year-old Josue and his mom, Esperanza, were visibly drained. They had just spent more than four hours at their asylum trial inside an immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, answering questions from their attorney and a government lawyer. We are withholding their full names to protect their identities because they’re afraid.

“It was exhausting,” said Josue, whose angular haircut was neatly combed for the occasion. In Spanish, he told us the judge seemed nice but, “you feel bad if you don’t know if you are going to be allowed to stay or if you have to go.”

The teen and his mother crossed the U.S. border in California in the summer of 2018. At the time, a rising number of families were entering the country, and the Trump administration wanted to send a message to them by swiftly deporting those who don’t qualify for asylum. But immigration judges are so busy, they can take up to four years to rule on a case. In November, judges in New York and nine other cities were ordered to fast track family cases and complete them within a year.

This is how Esperanza and Josue wound up going to trial just 10 months after they arrived in the U.S. and moved to Brooklyn. They were lucky to find attorneys with Central American Legal Assistance, a nonprofit in Williamsburg that’s been representing people fleeing the troubled region since 1985.

Listen to reporter Beth Fertig’s WNYC story on Josue and Esperanza’s cases.

Play/Pause

Volume

EMBED

Winning asylum was never easy. But in 2018, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions made it tougher for people like Josue and Esperanza when he issued his own ruling on an immigration case involving a woman from El Salvador who was a victim of domestic violence. He wrote: “The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes—such as domestic violence or gang violence—or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”

Immigration judges were bound to give heavy weight to that ruling. Their courts are run by the Department of Justice, whose boss is the Attorney General. And the AG’s boss, President Trump, frequently asserts that too many migrants lie about being threatened by gangs when they’re just coming for jobs. “It’s a big fat con job, folks,” he said at a Michigan rally this year.

Esperanza and Josue went to court soon after Sessions’ decision. She was fighting for asylum as a victim of domestic abuse; Josue claimed a gang threatened his life. Both would eventually lose their cases.

Josue’s case

Esperanza and Josue are typical of the Central American families seeking asylum these days, who say they’re escaping vicious drug gangs, violence and grinding poverty. The two of them came from a town outside San Pedro Sula, one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

During their trial, Josue testified under oath about how gang members repeatedly approached him outside his high school, asking him to sell drugs to the other students. He tried to ignore them, and gave different excuses for resisting, until one day when they spotted him playing soccer and became more aggressive. That’s when he said the gang leader put a gun in his face.

“He told me that if I didn’t accept what he wanted he was going to kill my whole family, my mother and sister,” he said, through a Spanish interpreter.

“I was in shock,” he said. “I had no other choice to accept and said yes.”

He told his mother and they left Honduras the next day. When Josue’s lawyer, Katherine Madison, asked if he ever reported the threat to the police he said no. “That was practically a suicide,” he said, explaining that the police are tied to the gang, because it has so much power.

Josue said his older sister later moved to Mexico because she was so afraid of the gang.

Winning asylum is a two-step process. You have to prove that you were persecuted, and that this persecution was on account of your race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion. Madison, Josue’s attorney, argued that in Honduras, defying gangs is a risky political statement.

“They function in many ways as the de facto government of the areas where people like Josue lived,” she told WNYC/Gothamist, summing up the arguments she submitted to the judge. “They make rules. They charge basically taxes, they say who can live there and who can’t.”

And they’re known to kill people who don’t obey.

In her ruling, issued in August, Immigration Judge Oshea Spencer found Josue did experience persecution. But she denied his application for asylum. She said much of what he described “were threats and harm that exist as part of the larger criminal enterprise of the gangs in Honduras and not on the basis of any actual or perceived opposition to the gangs.”

Esperanza’s case

Esperanza’s attorney argued that her life was at risk because the gang member threatened Josue’s family. But Spencer didn’t find that specific enough. She wrote that the gang members “were motivated by their efforts to expand their drug trade, not the family relationship.” Among other cases, she referred to a recent decision by the current Attorney General, William Barr, that makes it harder for the relatives of someone who’s been threatened to win asylum.

Esperanza also lost on a separate claim that she deserved asylum because she was repeatedly beaten by Josue’s father. In court, she testified about years of abuse culminating in an incident in which he chased her with a machete. She said she couldn’t get the police to issue a restraining order, and said he kept threatening her after she moved to another town to stay with relatives.

Madison argued that women like Esperanza belong to a persecuted social group: they can’t get help from the authorities in Honduras because they’re viewed as a man’s property. The country is one of the deadliest places to be a woman; police are known to ignore complaints; and it’s extremely hard for women to get justice.

But Spencer ruled that there is no persecuted social group made up of “Honduran women who are viewed as property” for being in a domestic relationship.

Echoing the Sessions’ ruling, the judge said these categories “all lack sufficient particularity,” and called them “amorphous” because they could be made up of a “potentially large and diffuse segment of society.”

She also cited evidence submitted by the government that showed conditions in Honduras are improving for women. This evidence came from a 2018 State Department report on human rights in Honduras. Immigration advocates claim it’s been watered down from the much harsher conditions described in the last report from 2016. It’s also much shorter in length.

Jeffrey Chase, an immigration lawyer and former New York immigration judge, said it’s not surprising that Esperanza and Josue would each lose asylum. Judge Spencer only started last fall and is on probation for her first two years in the job.

“This was decided by a brand new judge who didn’t have any immigration experience prior to becoming an immigration judge,” he said, referring to the fact that Spencer was previously an attorney with the Public Utility Commission of Texas. He said she went through training which, “These days, includes being told that we don’t consider these to be really good cases.”

Sitting judges don’t talk to the media but Chase noted that they must consider the facts of each individual case, meaning the former Attorney General’s ruling doesn’t apply to all cases. He noted that some women who were victims of abuse are still winning asylum. He pointed to a case involving a Guatemalan woman who was raped by her boss. A Texas immigration judge found she did fit into a particular social group as a woman who defied gender norms, by taking a job normally held by a man.

During Josue and Esperanza’s trial, there was a lot of back and forth over their individual claims. A trial attorney from Immigration and Customs Enforcement questioned why Esperanza didn’t contact the police again after moving to another town, where she said her former partner continued to threaten her. Esperanza said it was because her brother chased him away and the police “don’t pay attention to you.”

The ICE attorney also asked Josue if his father was physically violent with anyone besides Esperanza. Josue said he did fight with other men. San Diego immigration lawyer Anna Hysell, who was previously an ICE trial attorney, said that could have hurt Esperanza’s case.

“The government was able to make the arguments that he didn’t target her because of being a woman that was in his relationship,” she explained. “He just was probably a terrible person and targeted many people.”

Hysell added that this was just her analysis and she wasn’t agreeing with the decision.

Attorney Anne Pilsbury said she believes Esperanza would have won her case, prior to the asylum ruling by Sessions, because she suffered years of abuse. But she said Josue would have had a more difficult time because gang cases were always tough. And like a lot of migrants, Josue had no evidence — he was too afraid to go to the cops. Pilsbury said immigration judges are even more skeptical now of gang cases.

“They’re getting so that they won’t even think about them,” she said. “They aren’t wrestling with the facts. They’re hearing gang violence and that’s it.”

She said Judge Spencer does sometimes grant asylum, and isn’t as harsh as other new judges. New York City’s immigration court used to be one of the most favorable places for asylum seekers. In 2016, 84 percent of asylum cases were granted. Today, that figure has fallen to 57 percent, according to TRAC at Syracuse University. Meanwhile, the government is forcing migrants to wait in Mexico for their immigration court cases or seek asylum in other countries before applying in the U.S., as the national backlog of cases exceeds one million.

Pilsbury, who founded Central American Legal Assistance in 1985, said immigration courts are now dealing with the result of a regional crisis south of the border that’s never been properly addressed since the wars of the 1980s.

“The anti-immigrant people feel it’s broken because people get to come here and ask for asylum and we feel it’s broken because people’s asylum applications aren’t seriously considered,” she explained. “We should be doing more to understand what’s going on in those countries and what we can do to help them address the chronic problems.”

Esperanza and Josue’s cases will now be appealed. Madison said she believes the judge ignored some of her evidence about gangs. She’s now turning to the Board of Immigration Appeals. However, it’s also controlled by the Justice Department — meaning the odds of getting a reversal are slim. If they lose again, the family can go to a federal circuit court which may have a broader definition of who’s eligible for asylum.

But Esperanza and Josue won’t be deported as long as their case is being appealed. On a late summer day, they seemed relaxed while sitting in a Brooklyn park. Esperanza talked about how happy she is that Josue is safe at his public high school, and can even ride a bike at night with his friends.

“He goes out and I’m always trusting the Father that just as he goes out, he comes back,” she said.

Even if they knew they would lose their asylum case, both said they still would have come to the U.S. because the risk of staying in Honduras was too great. Josue said the gang would definitely find him if he ever returned because their networks are so deep throughout the country. He’s now taking the long view. He knows there will be a Presidential election next year.

“It’s like a game of chess,” Josue said. “Any mindset can change at any moment. Maybe Trump changes his mind or maybe not. But I would have always made the decision to come.”

With translation assistance from Alexandra Feldhausen, Lidia Hernández-Tapia and Andrés O’Hara.

Beth Fertig is a senior reporter covering immigration, courts and legal affairs at WNYC. You can follow her on Twitter at @bethfertig.

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

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this posting incorrectly identified Beth’s network affiliation. She reports for WNYC.

By clicking on the link at the top and going to Beth’s article on The Gothamist, you will be able to get a link to the original WNYC audio broadcast of this story.

It’s not “rocket science.” Better, fairer outcomes were available that would have fulfilled, rather than mocked, our obligation to provide Due Process and protection under our own laws and international treaties.

Here’s how:

Esperanza’s claim is a clear asylum grant for “Honduran women” which is both a “particular social group” (“PSG”) and a persecuted group in Honduras that the government is unwilling or unable to protect.
- Here’s a much better recent decision along those lines from Judge Howard Hom of the same Immigration Court granting a very similar case based on the PSG of “Guatemanlan women.” https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/09/19/the-good-news-gender-based-asylum-claims-continue-to-win-in-the-post-a-b-era-the-bad-news-applicants-subjected-to-let-em-die-in-mexico-compl/
Although the last two Administrations have intentionally twisted the law against Central American asylum seekers, Josue has a clear case for asylum as somebody for whom opposition to gang violence was an “imputed political opinion” that was “at least one central reason” for the persecution. See, e.g, https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2018/6/3/3rd-generation-gangs-and-political-opinion.
In any event, on this record, Josue clearly showed that he faced a probability of torture by gangs with the acquiescence of the Honduran government, and therefore should have been granted mandatory protection by the Immigration Judge under the Convention against Torture (“CAT”).
The Immigration Judge’s assertion that things are getting better for women in Honduras, one of the world’s most dangerous countries for women where femicide is rampant, not only badly misapplies the legal standard (“fundamentally changed conditions that would eliminate any well founded fear”) but is also totally disingenuous as a factual matter. See, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/05/opinion/honduras-women-murders.html.
Additionally, Honduras remains in a state of armed conflict. See, e.g., https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23740973.2019.1603972?needAccess=true. Under an honest Government, granting TPS to Hondurans (as well as Salvadorans and Guatemalans affected by environmental disasters heightened by climate change) would be more than justified.
Under honest Government following the rule of law, well-documented cases like this one could be quickly granted by the USCIS Asylum Officer or granted on stipulation in short hearings in Immigration Court. Many more Central Americans could be granted CAT relief, TPS, or screened and approved for asylum abroad. They could thereby be kept off of Immigraton Court dockets altogether or dealt with promptly on “short dockets” without compromising anybody’s statutory or constitutional rights (compromising individual rights is a “specialty” of all the mostly ineffective “enforcement gimmicks” advanced by the Trump Administration).
Over time, the overwhelming self-inflicted Immigration Court backlogs caused by the Trump Administration’s “maliciously incompetent” administration of immigration laws (e.g., “Aimless Docket Reshuffling”) would be greatly reduced.
- That, in turn, would allow the Immigration Courts to deal with cases on a more realistic timeline that would both aid rational, non-White-Nationalist immigration enforcement and provide real justice for those seeking protection under our legal system.
As I’ve said before, it’s not “rocket science.” All it would take is more honest and enlightened Government committed to Due Process, good court management, and an appropriate legal application of laws relating to refugees and other forms of protection. I doubt that it would cost as much as all of the bogus “enforcement only gimmicks” now being pursued by Trump as part of his racist, anti-migrant, anti-Hispanic agenda.
Poor judicial decision making, as well illustrated by this unfortunate wrongly decided case, not only threatens the lives of deserving applicants for our protection, but also bogs down an already grossly overloaded system with unnecessarily protracted litigation and appeals of cases that should be “clear grants.”
Contrary to the intentionally false “party line” spread by “Big Mac With Lies” and other corrupt Trump sycophants at the DHS and the DOJ, a much, much higher percentage, probably a majority, of asylum applicants from the Northern Triangle who apply at our Southern Border should properly be granted some type of legal protection under our laws if the system operated in the fair and impartial manner that is Constitutionally required. The Trump Administration aided by their sycophants and enablers, all the way up to the feckless Supremes, are literally “getting away with murder” in far, far too many instances.
Consequently, quickly identifying and granting relief to the many deserving applicants would be a more efficient, humane, and lawful alternative to the “Kill ‘Em Before They Get Here” deterrence programs being pursued by Trump, with the complicity of the Supremes, the Ninth Circuit, and some of the other Federal Circuit Courts who have been afraid to put a stop to the extralegal nonsense going on in our Immigraton Courts, detention centers (the “New American Gulag”), our Southern Border, and countries like Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and El Salvador where we are basically encouraging extralegal abuses and gross human right violations against migrants. It will eventually come back to haunt our nation, or whatever is left of our nation after Trump and his gang of White Nationalist thugs, supporters, appeasers, apologists, and enablers, are done looting and destroying it.

PWS

09-30-19

Children Die at Record Speed on U.S. Border While Coyotes Get Rich

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Recession Factor

The Legal Route

Related posts:

Related posts:

She raised her niece like a daughter. Then the US government separated them at the border

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

That’s where the “5 C’s” come into play: Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

At the same time, make an historical record of those judges who “stood small” in the face of Trump’s vicious and corrupt assault on our Constitution and our democratic institutions, not to mention the lives and well-being of vulnerable migrants!

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Jeffrey Chase, an immigration lawyer and former New York immigration judge, said it’s not surprising that Esperanza and Josue would each lose asylum. Judge Spencer only started last fall and is on probation for her first two years in the job.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this posting incorrectly identified Beth’s network affiliation. She reports for WNYC.

Related posts: