Category: “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG)

CALL US CRAZY, BUT . . . . THERE ARE SOLUTIONS TO THE IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG PROBLEM THAT WILL ENHANCE FAIRNESS & DUE PROCESS WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK — It Just Requires Some Imagination, Initiative, & An Unswerving Commitment To Putting Due Process & Fairness First — The “Lister-Schmidt Proposal”

 

CALL US CRAZY, BUT . . . . THERE ARE SOLUTIONS TO THE IMMIGRATION COURT BACKLOG PROBLEM THAT WILL ENHANCE FAIRNESS & DUE PROCESS WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK — It Just Requires Some Imagination, Initiative, & An Unswerving Commitment To Putting Due Process & Fairness First — The “Lister-Schmidt Proposal”

 

The other day I got a call from my good friend and UW Law classmate, retired Wisconsin State Judge Tom Lister. The conversation went something like this:

 

TOM: Schmidt, I’ve been reading about the backlog in your blog — 1.1 million cases! No way it’s going to be solved just by hiring more judges. But, hey, I’m out here living well in retirement, and I’d be happy to help out. And there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of other retired judges throughout the U.S who probably would be willing to pitch in too.

 

ME: Yeah, sounds nice Tom, but I doubt there is any money in the EOIR budget for hiring retired judges. They once claimed they would bring back some of my retired colleagues, but the program doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere.

 

TOM: I don’t need a salary. I’m willing to volunteer! Just pay my incidentals.

 

ME: Well, then there’s this thing called the Anti-Deficiency Act that prevents agencies like DOJ from accepting free services. It would take some kind of statutory waiver . . . .

 

By that time, I felt that I was retreating into just the type of bureaucratic “yes-buts” or “passive yeses” that I used to hate during my days as a bureaucrat right up until the present.

 

But, what if Congress created an independent Immigration Court free of the “bureaucratic no-nos” that plague the DOJ bureaucracy? And what if the system were run by actual sitting judges committed to using “teamwork and innovation” to solve problems, institute “best practices,” and aspire to become “the world’s best tribunals” guaranteeing fairness and Due Process for all?”

 

Maybe we’d have things like this:

 

SENIOR JUDICIAL DUE PROCESS BRIGADE

 

Retired judges of all types would be trained and available to assist the Immigration Courts in dealing with “surges,” retirement waves, changes in the law, and other “emergencies” on a volunteer basis.

 

DIVISION A: RETIRED IMMIGRATION JUDGES

 

They could be trained to handle all types of immigration cases on a volunteer “as needed” basis.  This would be very similar to the Senior Judge Corps used by other Federal Courts.

 

DIVISION B: RETIRED JUDGES FROM OUTSIDE THE IMMIGRATION BENCH

 

They could be trained to handle certain types of Immigration Court adjudications that are primarily fact-findings that would require some basic knowledge of immigration law but not the degree of specialized expertise that might be expected of a permanent Immigration Judge. Like “Division A” they would be volunteers, requiring expense reimbursement only.

 

Obvious candidates for “Division B Judges:”

 

  • Cancellation of Removal all types where basic eligibility is uncontested and the only issues are hardship and discretion;
  • Bonds where there are no statutory eligibility issues;
  • Adjustments of Status;
  • “Voluntary Departure Only” cases;
  • Master Calendars;
  • Withdrawals and other stipulated cases;
  • Status Conferences;
  • In Absentia dockets.

 

 

ASYLUM OFFICER MAGISTRATE BRIGADE

 

Put the Asylum Officers under the Immigration Courts where they can be used for a wide range of adjudications much like U.S. Magistrate Judges. This would include, but not be limited to, asylum, withholding, and CAT cases. Another obvious candidate would be certain Non-Lawful-Permanent Resident Cancellation of Removal cases.

 

Since the existing USCIS program would be folded in, the expenses of this conversion would be minimal and the possibilities for improving justice, due process, and efficiency limitless!

 

This is by no means the full extent of what could be done to improve the delivery of justice and fairness in the U.S. Immigration Courts.  But, to let the “creative juices and efficiencies flow,” it will require Congress to move the Immigration Courts out of the DOJ and create an independent court where judges are free to work as a team and with “stakeholders” to solve problems, rather than creating new ones or aggravating existing ones.

PWS

02-14-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. WASHINGTON POST/ABC POLL: TRUMP’S “CRUEL, MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” APPROACH TO ASYLUM HIGHLY UNPOPULAR & INEFFECTIVE: Dems Can Build Support By Strengthening Current Asylum System & Making It Work! — The “Real Face” Of “Border Security” Has Little Or Nothing To Do With Trump’s White Nationalist Rants & Barrage Of Lies!
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  4. ALL THINGS CONSIDERED: “Roundtable” Leader Judge Jeffrey Chase Tells NPR’s Michel Martin How Trump’s “Malicious Incompetence” & EOIR’s “Dysfunctional Bias” Are Increasing Backlog & Killing Due Process In Failing Immigration Court System

RADNOFSKY, PETERSON, & ANDREWS: The WSJ’s “Terrific Trio” Takes You Behind The Detention Stats In The “Deal” – It’s Somewhere Between 45,278 & 58,000 In The GOP’s “New American Gulag!”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/border-deal-doesnt-put-detention-questions-to-bed-11550012005?emailToken=e4d9f2903df6925fba0d7795cbe27f54IMR8XuU2eAzPC6wGnaQDljiBDM2JV3QgNqW//jtaX6Ic4r6VRI/10Hmv9RbvuGDwx/GCWiy7mPkYWpOuzZko/5pWA5CLAdmZkvCwIyYeISU=&reflink=article_email_share

By

Louise Radnofsky,
Kristina Peterson and
Natalie Andrews

Democrats largely came up short in their quest to limit the detention of immigrants as part of a bipartisan border deal reached this week, but the arcane math left lawmakers citing different numbers and activists on both sides crying foul.

The dispute over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds emerged as a late sticking point in the negotiations, and its resolution was key to the deal. Democrats wanted fewer beds and sought limits designed to prioritize the detention of criminals over other immigrants, such as people who overstayed their visas. Republicans wanted more beds and no constraints on which immigrants ICE can detain.

In the last fiscal year, Congress funded ICE’s average daily population at 40,520. Under the agreement reached by Democrats and Republicans this week, the administration will get funding for an average daily population of 45,274 in the current fiscal year, congressional aides say. ICE currently holds over 49,000 people in custody.

Democrats have pointed to the possibility that the negotiated number means ICE will have to reduce detention to make the new average work. Republicans have countered that ICE has the ability to transfer money, as it has been doing, to maintain a higher level of beds. Democrats aren’t disputing that they can transfer money, though they note that money will have to come from another account.

The complexities led to varying takes on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers disagreeing on whether the deal increased or decreased the number of detention beds.

Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R., S.D.) estimated that once ICE has transferred money, it could fund up to “58,000 or thereabouts” beds. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii) argued the agreed-to number of beds was actually a reduction. “They are pretty much at 45,000 or so,” she said.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), a hard-liner on illegal immigration, made the GOP’s initial goal his baseline. Comparatively, “it’s less than that,” he said. “It’s about 7,000 beds less.”

Pro- and anti-immigration activists both saw problems with the deal. Sandra Cordero, director of Families Belong Together, said the deal would keep detention levels steady and was “funneling more money to agencies that ripped thousands of children from their parents’ arms.” Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the reduction in ICE detention capacity “more than cancels out any benefit from that small amount of extra fencing.

Others saw the result as more clear-cut.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), the Senate majority leader, claimed victory on the issue and applauded Democrats for abandoning what he called “extreme positions,” including “the idea that we should impose a hard, statutory cap on ICE detainees.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), a member of the 17-lawmaker group that negotiated the border deal, said Tuesday the Democrats didn’t get everything they had hoped for on beds, a reflection of GOP control of the Senate and White House.

“We had hoped to not only stop the grand and glorious wall, paid for by Mexico, but also to deal with detention beds. I don’t know what the final wording is on this,” Mr. Durbin said, but “we wanted to address both, and it became more difficult when we realized the political reality.”

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I recognize that the Dems couldn’t solve this problem in these particular negotiations. That’s particularly true because, as aptly noted by Senator Durbin, the GOP holds power in two of the three political entitles of government.

However, let’s not forget that “behind the numbers” are real human beings, not just objects like “beds” or “bed numbers” — terms used to dehumanize the victims and obscure the true nasty nature of DHS “civil” detention. Most of them are not serious criminals and there might not be an “actual suspected terrorist” in DHS detention today. Indeed, it would probably be “gross negligence” to entrust a real suspected terrorist to DHS detention. If given a reasonable chance to get a lawyer, understand the system, and prepare a case, the vast majority of those now detained would appear for their Immigration Hearings, particularly if given an opportunity to be released on ankle monitors or other “alternatives to detention.”

While in the “Gulag,” these individuals have their rights to fairness and Due Process impaired, suffer from substandard conditions (while private contractors who run much of DHS detention profit), and are often duressed into giving up valuable rights and opportunities to apply for relief and “taking removal” just to escape from the intentionally coercive situation that DHS creates.

Yes, a much more limited amount of detention, 15% to 25% of the current number of “beds” (actually humans held in the “Gulag”) might be necessary to protect us from the relatively small number of dangerous individuals and those likely to abscond.

Nevertheless, the “New American Gulag” as now constituted by Trump and enthusiastically supported by the GOP is both unnecessary and a total disgrace to our national reputation and humanity. So, the Dems should “keep at it” for the next budget cycle and continue educating the American public about the useless cruelty, intentional dehumanization, wasted taxpayer money, and questionable contractual arrangements involved in promoting this human rights abomination. It’s also a massive (and expensive) failure as a “deterrent” which, for the most part, is its real purpose.

It’s possible that the Article III Courts eventually will step in. As noted previously in this blog, the Administration appears headed for a “big time” loss on the constitutionality of indefinite detention in the 9thCircuit. However, unless Chief Justice Roberts “gets religion” and joins the liberals, the Supremes are likely to sell out the Constitution on this one. After all, none of the “Conservative Justices” are in unconstitutional indefinite “civil” detention right now. But, life being what it is, they might not want to be so smugly tone-deaf about caving to the Executive on issues affecting life and liberty. Who knows, maybe someday someone they are related to, know personally, or love will be arbitrarily tossed in the Gulag and have the keys thrown away.

Whether it happens now or long after I’m gone, history will judge the GOP and their enablers harshly for this intentional and thinly disguised racially motivated degradation of humanity.  It will have adverse consequences for our country and the world for many generations to come.

Therefore, it’s important to continue “making the record” and never letting the GOP off the hook for what they are doing (although, I will concede that the Dems have also gone through periods of infatuation with the idea of “detention as a deterrent.” Won’t work, never has, never will.)

And, this is from someone, me, who spent part of my earlier career defending, with mixed results, the “Legacy INS’s” right to detain individuals, sometimes indefinitely.

PWS

02-14-19

 

Related posts:

  1. THE NY TIMES TAKES YOU INSIDE THE “NERVE CENTER” OF THE WHITE NATIONALIST EMPIRE: TRUMP’S “GONZO” IMMIGRATION POLICIES DRIVEN BY XENOPHOBIA, RACISM, IRRATIONAL FEAR, FAKE NEWS, MISINFORMATON, AND BIAS! – Trump & Cronies Deny Our Nation’s Immigrant Past While Seeking To Destroy Our Future As A Powerful and Diverse Democracy!
  2. “SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were THEIR Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?  
  3. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

TRAC IMMIGRATION: Latest Stats Strongly Suggest That Immigration Court Bond Decisions Are At Best A “Crapshoot,” & At Worst A Farce — Factors Other Than Due Process, Fairness, & Consistent Application Of Transparent Criteria Appear To Control Freedom From So-Called “Civil” Imprisonment Without Conviction!

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The chances of being granted bond at hearings before immigration judges vary markedly by nationality, as do required bond amounts. Court hearing locations also appear to influence bond outcomes even for the same nationality.

Currently less than half of detained immigrants with bond hearings were granted bond – 48 percent during FY 2018, and 43 percent thus far during FY 2019. The median bond amount was $7,500 in FY 2018, and rose to $8,000 during the first two months of FY 2019.

Differences among nationalities are striking. Currently more than three out of every four individuals from India or Nepal, for example, were granted bond, while only between 11 and 15 percent of immigrants from Cuba received a favorable ruling. And those from China were less likely to receive a favorable ruling than are those from India or Nepal.

The median bond for immigrants from the Philippines was just $4,000, while those from Bangladesh were required to post $10,000-$12,000. These and many other findings are based on a detailed analysis of court records covering all of FY 2018 and the first two months of FY 2019 by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. The bond hearing-by-bond hearing records were obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).

A brand new free web query tool now allows the public for the first time to examine in detail the bond experience by hearing location for any nationality. The new app covers outcomes in Immigration Court bond hearings as well as subsequent case dispositions after detained immigrants are granted bond.

To read the full report, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/545/

To examine the underlying results for any nationality, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/bond/

In addition, many of TRAC’s free query tools – which track the court’s overall backlog, new DHS filings, court dispositions and much more – have now been updated through November 2018. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/imm/tools/

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University
Suite 360, Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY 13244-2100
315-443-3563

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

The U.S. Immigration Court System has deep Constitutional Due Process, fundamental fairness, and quality control issues that are being intentionally swept under the carpet by the Trump Administration in an attempt to just “move ’em out, to hell with the law, Constitution, or human rights.” And, while the Article IIIs occasionally step in, they are basically complicit in allowing this parody of justice affecting life and freedom to go on without honest, effective, professional judicial administration and accountability. Don’t get me started on Congress which created and then abandoned this dysfunctional mess that they mindlessly allow to continue in a “death spiral” that threatens to take the integrity of the entire U.S. justice system down with it.

These problems can be solved! But, not as long as politicos in the DOJ are involved and improperly and unethically using the Immigration Courts as an adjunct of ICE Enforcement.

And, remember that ability to be released on bond pending removal proceedings is often “outcome determinative.” Those free on bond can usually get attorneys, prepare and document a case for relief, and have a decent chance of prevailing.  Those forced to proceed in DHS detention (a/k/a the “New American Gulag”) are usually “shot like fish in a barrel” — with little chance of understanding, preparing, or presenting a case.

Then, there is the intentionally and inherently coercive effect of detention in the DHS’s substandard, sometimes life threatening, “Gulag.”  Detainees too often are treated like statistics rather than human beings with rights. That’s how politicos “jack up” removal statistics. But, it bears little resemblance to Due Process or justice in any independent court system in America.

That’s why we need the “New Due Process Army” fighting every day to make the unkept, now openly disregarded, promise of “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process to all” of those appearing in our Immigration Courts a reality rather than a sick joke!

PWS

02-13-19

Related posts:

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  2. NOTE TO NEW US IMMIGRATION JUDGES: YOU WOULD DO WELL TO IGNORE SESSIONS’S FALSE NARRATIVE & ADDRESS THE REAL PROBLEMS PLAGUING OUR US IMMIGRATION COURTS – Lack of Due Process, Abusive Detention, Some Biased Colleagues, Too Few Lawyers, Inconsistent Decisions, Far Too Many Denials Of Legitimate Refugees – “But more importantly, asylum-seekers have suffered from serious human rights abuses and merit protection under our laws. Their cases are not denied because they are not bona fide. Their cases are not denied because they do not qualify as refugees under the INA. Indeed, most of these asylum-seekers were found to possess a credible fear of return upon their initial apprehension. Through a combination of lack of access to counsel, unfair and uneven adjudication by IJs, and impermissible interference by the Attorney General, credible and bona fide cases are frequently denied.”
  3. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  4. TRAC: TRUMP DOJ’S “MALICIOUSLY INCOMPETENT POLICIES” SIGNIFICANTLY CONTRIBUTED TO ASTOUNDING 1,346,302 BACKLOG AND 4+ YEAR WAITS FOR HEARINGS — Don’t Let The Villains Blame The Victims & Their Lawyers For This Largely Self-Created Mess!

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 

TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-beto-border-rallies-20190211-story.html

Eli Stokols & Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports for the LA Times:

President Trump falsely told a raucous rally in El Paso on Monday night that he is already building a wall on the adjacent border with Mexico, as a potential Democratic challenger assailed him at a large protest nearby and, in Washington, congressional negotiators announced a tentative funding deal without the billions he demanded for a wall.

Beneath banners reading “Finish the Wall,” Trump hailed what he called a “big, beautiful wall right on the Rio Grande,” though no such construction is known to be underway. When supporters launched into a chant of “Build the wall!” — standard at his rallies for years — Trump corrected them: “You mean finish the wall.”

The president alluded to lawmakers’ announcement of a deal, which came moments before he took the stage, but did not give it his blessing. Nor did he disparage it though one of his foremost confidants, Fox News host Sean Hannity, came on the air midway through the president’s rally and condemned the reported agreement as “this garbage compromise.”

Without the president and Congress agreeing to a border security funding bill by midnight Friday, the government could be partially shuttered again, just three weeks after a shutdown that at 35 days was the longest ever. The “agreement in principle” called for $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new barrier on the 2,000-mile border — less than a quarter of the $5.7 billion Trump demanded.

He told the crowd that he hadn’t bothered to find out the particulars of the agreement because he was eager to take the stage. “I could have stayed in there and listened, or I could have come out to the people of El Paso, Texas,” he said. “I chose you.”

Outside the El Paso County Coliseum, thousands of protesters, bundled against the evening chill, marched along the Rio Grande to a nearby park. There, El Paso’s former congressman and a possible Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, Beto O’Rourke, joined other locals who spoke of El Paso and neighboring Juarez, Mexico, as one community and expressed indignation over Trump’s false characterization of their city as a violent one in last week’s State of the Union address.

“With the eyes of the entire country upon us, all of us together are going to make our stand. Here in one of the safest cities in the United States of America — safe, not because of walls but in spite of walls,” O’Rourke said, in the sort of rousing speech that brought nationwide attention to his Senate race last year, though he lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

“Let’s own this moment and the future and show this country there’s nothing to be afraid of when it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border,” O’Rourke said to cheers. “Let’s make sure our laws, our leaders and our language reflect our values.”

Late Monday, the House-Senate committee bargaining over border security funding and trying to avert another shutdown reached an “agreement in principle,” according to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Talks had stalled on the weekend, Republicans said, over Democrats’ demands to limit the detention of undocumented immigrants, many of them seeking asylum.

Should Congress pass a compromise, the onus would be on the president to accept it, or risk taking blame again for a partial federal shutdown. Before arriving in El Paso, Trump sought to preemptively shift blame to Democrats should the legislative effort ultimately fail. After the recent shutdown, polls showed the public put the blame squarely on him, and his approval rating slid.

With both his rally and the protest featuring O’Rourke receiving national coverage, the split-screen moment promised something of an audition of a hypothetical 2020 matchup, effectively creating a live debate between the president and a charismatic potential challenger on the issue that most animated Trump’s followers in 2016 and probably will again in his reelection bid.

Before leaving the White House, the president signaled that he too saw the dueling rallies as an early competition, with his familiar emphasis on crowd sizes. “We have a line that’s very long already,” Trump told reporters at the White House, referring to people waiting to enter his El Paso venue. He added, “I understand our competitor’s got a line too, but it’s a tiny little line.”

At his rally, Trump bragged that 10,000 supporters were inside the arena and 25,000 more were standing outside. According to the El Paso Fire Department, 6,500 people — the building’s capacity — were allowed inside, while at least 10,000 attended the protest rally. Organizers, however, had a slightly lower estimate.

“We have 35,000 people tonight and he has 200 people, 300 people,” Trump said. “Not too good. That may be the end of his presidential bid.”

While the border visit was intended as an opportunity for Trump to promote his signature issue, he wandered widely in his remarks — attacking Democrats repeatedly, including on abortion and on a so-called Green New Deal environmental platform that some are advocating, and mocking Virginia Democrats for controversies that have roiled the state’s government.

Trump’s drumbeat on immigration has yet to pay political dividends beyond his own supporters, and it has further galvanized his opponents. His fear-mongering during campaign rallies last fall over caravans of immigrants failed to prevent a Democratic wave that cost Republicans a net 40 seats and their majority in the House.

And during his State of the Union address, his incorrect portrayal of El Paso — he said it had “extremely high rates of violent crime” and was “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” until the government built a “powerful barrier” there — touched a nerve among civic leaders and citizens.

The El Paso County Commissioners Court on Monday approved a resolution assailing the president and his administration for misinformation and lies about a “crisis situation” on the U.S.-Mexico border, and noting that the federal government said “no crisis exists” and that “fiscal year 2017 was the lowest year of illegal cross-border migration on record.”

Yet Trump, at the rally, denounced his critics and media fact-checkers who disputed his claims that existing border fencing had slashed crime rates in El Paso. “They’re full of crap when they say it doesn’t make a difference,” he said, suggesting that local officials tried to “pull the wool over everybody’s eyes” by reporting low crime rates.

Lyda Ness-Garcia, a lawyer and founder of the Women’s March of El Paso, said organizers of Monday night’s protest were motivated to counteract Trump’s “lies” about their city.

“There was a deep sense of anger in our community, from the left and the right. It’s the demonization of our border. It’s the misrepresentation that the wall made us safe when we were safe long before,” she said.

Referring to the Mexican city just over the border, Garcia added: “We’re connected to Juarez. People forget. We’re not separate. We’re one culture.”

In truth, violent crime dropped in El Paso after a peak in 1993. It was at historic lows before Congress authorized a fence along the Rio Grande in 2006. Crime began to rise again over the next four years, after the fencing went up.

The city’s Republican mayor, Dee Margo, admonished Trump after the State of the Union speech, saying during an appearance on CNN that the president’s depiction of El Paso is “not factually correct.”

Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, said organizers intended the march as a community celebration rather than an anti-Trump or pro-O’Rourke political event. “The administration, they didn’t believe our community would react, that people would get upset about the lies,” he said. “Our community spoke in numbers.”

Garcia noted that residents had seen the fallout from the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies firsthand, both in family separations and in asylum-seekers being turned away from border bridges and required to remain in Mexico while they await hearings.

In December, two Guatemalan migrant children died in Border Patrol custody in the El Paso area after seeking asylum.

“Trump has created policies and strategies that have created deep wounds in our region,” Garcia said. “We are not a violent city. We are not criminals. We are part of America and we deserve respect from this president.”

Although the protest event brought together roughly 50 local groups, O’Rourke’s political star power generated significant media coverage.

“If you’re Beto, there couldn’t be a better, more visual contrast,” said Jen Psaki, a former communications director to President Obama. “By leading a march, he gets back to his grass-roots origins and it allows him to stand toe to toe with the president of the United States and to echo a message that even local Republicans agree with. It gives him a platform and a megaphone at a beneficial time.”

Not willing to cede the moment completely to O’Rourke, Julian Castro — a former mayor of San Antonio, an Obama Cabinet member and already a declared presidential candidate — went Monday to the border checkpoint where his grandmother entered the United States as a young girl. He filmed a video denouncing the president and calling Trump’s visit to El Paso an effort “to create a circus of fear and paranoia” and “to tell lies about the border and about immigration.”

Speaking directly into the camera, Castro added, “Don’t take the bait.”

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Eli Stokols

CONTACT

Eli Stokols is a White House reporter based in the Los Angeles Times Washington, D.C., bureau. He is a veteran of Politico and the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the 2016 presidential campaign and then the Trump White House. A native of Irvine, Stokols grew up in a Times household and is thrilled to report for what is still his family’s hometown paper. He is also a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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Molly Hennessy-Fiske

CONTACT

Molly Hennessy-Fiske has been a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times since 2006. She won a 2018 APME International Perspective Award;2015 Overseas Press Club award; 2014 Dart award from ColumbiaUniversity; and was a finalist for the Livingston Awards and Casey Medal. She completed a Thomson Reuters fellowship in Lebanon in 2006 and a Pew fellowship in Mexico in 2004. Hennessy-Fiske grew up in Upstate New York and graduated from Harvard College. She spent last year as Middle East bureau chief before returning to cover foreign/national news as Houston bureau chief.

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The racist lies about immigration just keep spewing forth from Trump and his White Nationalist support groups, including the “right wingnut” media.

We’re not being invaded by foreign criminals. Actually, we’re experiencing a quite predictable and potentially manageable influx of refugees seeking to exercise their legal rights to lawfully apply for asylum in the US. Not surprising, given that we have no viable refugee program in or near the Northern Triangle and have undoubtedly contributed to the breakdown of the rule of law and society in those “failed states.” 

The idea that real criminals, terrorists, drug smugglers, or human traffickers will be stopped or even materially deterred by a Wall is beyond absurd. Walls generally “reroute migration” and kill more innocent people. Real threats to our security are laughing at Trump and his base while they view the diversion, wasted time and money, and the failure to beef up intelligence, undercover, and anti-smuggling operations as a free gift.

And, I’m sure they cheer the focus on “rounding up” and detaining asylum applicants who turn themselves in to apply for asylum (because Trump has intentionally disabled reasonable processing through legal ports of entry) instead of doing the real law enforcement work of breaking up criminal enterprises. 

“Numbers” aren’t everything, particularly when the majority of the apprehensions have little to do with criminals or other “bad guys. But, it’s easier to “chalk up big numbers” and support a bogus White Nationalist narrative about “loss of border security” by apprehending asylum applicants who are in search of ever more elusive justice in the U.S.

Unfortunately, outright fibs and bogus racist narratives seem to work for our “Lier-in-Chief!” Here is an article from today’s NY Times by native Texan Richard Parker actually suggesting that Trump succeeds because Texans are as addicted to “Tall Tales” as Trump is to “Big Lies!” In other words, a “match made in Heaven.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/opinion/el-paso-trump-beto.html

Rather an unhappy commentary, if true. Who am I as a “mere Badger” to say, but I would suspect that these tall tales of fake invasions and bogus fear mongering directed mostly at the growing Latino community appeal more to some Texans than to others.

Just shows the importance of the work of the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) in defending our laws and Constitution!  Also illustrates the importance of committing ourselves to “regime change” in 2020. The immigration nonsense from Trump and his supporters and the intentional divisiveness, chaos, and anarchy that flow from it is an existential threat to our national existence —  much greater than his mostly fake “border emergency.” 

PWS

02-12-19

Related posts:

  1. TWO LA TIMES EDITORIALS “SPOT ON” IN CALLING OUT TRUMP’S FAILED BORDER POLICIES, BOGUS EMERGENCY, & ABUSE OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY!
  2. MOLLY HENNESSEY-FISKE @ LA TIMES: As DHS Disintegrates Under Trump, Volunteers Pick Up The Pieces & Save Lives!
  3. AMERICA’S “MASS ATROCITY” — Professor Kate Cronin-Furman Says Don’t Kid Yourself About What The Trump Administration Is Doing In Your Name & How “Ordinary Civil Servants” Carry Out The Unthinkable & Unacceptable!
  4. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

POLITICS: SHUTDOWN COUNTDOWN: Legislators Say They Have A Deal – No Details!

Emily Cochrane & Glenn Thrush report for the NYT:

WASHINGTON — Top House and Senate negotiators said late Monday that they had reached an “agreement in principle” on border security that would avoid a second government shutdown that would begin this weekend. Lawmakers declined to offer details, but seemed confident that the agreement — if supported by leadership and signed by President Trump — could resolve an immigration dispute and allow the government to keep operating. It was unclear if Mr. Trump would go along with the deal, the specifics of which must still be worked by congressional staff members. The president has already accepted, reluctantly, far less money than he wanted for repairs and extensions of existing border barriers — and no new wall. Progress on the deal had been stalled by an impasse over Mr. Trump’s roundups and detention of undocumented immigrants. Yet, as the negotiations continued, but before the deal was announced, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the top member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said both he and Mr. Shelby thought it was preferable to find a resolution by the end of the night and not let the impasse languish. “We’re trying to be legislators,” he said. A specific point of contention has been the number of detention beds under the control of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Aides in both parties had warned that a final deal might leave the number of detention slots — or “interior beds” — unchanged, not reduced as Democrats want and not increased as Mr. Trump wants. House Democrats, urged on by immigration rights group, have pushed hard, hoping to leverage White House fears of another damaging shutdown into a softening of the president’s hard-line immigration policies that they say have torn apart families, wrenched productive citizens from the communities they have lived in for years and infused a heartlessness into official American immigration policy. The Democrats’ tool: limit the number of beds that ICE has to hold undocumented immigrants in custody to 16,500 from around 20,700. The Democrats’ ultimate goal is to cut the overall number of detention beds, including those occupied by asylum seekers and people caught at the border, from its current level of around 49,000 to 34,000, the number funded during the Obama administration, Democratic aides said. That, they say, would end sweeps and roundups, and force ICE to focus on pursuing hardened criminals. Last year, the Trump administration requested funding for 52,000. With their number, Democrats say they can seize the initiative on immigration from a president who has staked his political fortunes on the issue. “We started at zero on the wall, and we compromised a lot after that, and we are now asking them to change, too,” said Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California and a member of the 17-member House and Senate conference committee tasked with hammering out a compromise. Mr. Trump was catching on. When Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, presented him with the Democrats’ demand, he rejected it quickly, according to two people briefed on the exchange. “These are people coming into our country that we are holding and we don’t want in our country,” the president told reporters at the White House late Monday. “That’s why they don’t want to give us what we call ‘the beds.’ It’s much more complicated than beds, but we call them from ‘the beds.’” In private, Republicans responded with a plan that would exempt many detained immigrants from the cap, including those people either charged with or convicted of crimes, including misdemeanor drug offenses and violent felonies. That, in turn, was rejected by Democrats. “You have ICE agents picking up mothers and fathers and children in their own neighborhoods. That’s why the beds issue is so much more important than the wall,” said Ms. Roybal-Allard, whose Los Angeles-area district is 85 percent Hispanic, the highest percentage of any district in the country. The number of beds occupied by detainees fluctuates over time, influenced by a variety of factors, including ICE enforcement policies and the flow of migrants at the border with Mexico. The rate of that flow is unpredictable and determined by factors such as the performance of the economies north and south of the border, crime, gang activity and the business practices of coyotes paid to transport migrants from Mexico and Central America to California and the Southwest. The number of monthly apprehensions of migrants at the border has averaged 25,000 to 40,000 for most of the past decade, but has risen to about 50,000 over the past several months, according to statistics compiled by the Department of Homeland Security. If ICE does not have enough room to place individuals and family members they detain, they must loosen their enforcement actions, creating a powerful motive for new migrants to enter the country illegally, Trump administration officials say. “You cannot have border security, without strong interior enforcement, whether there is a wall there or not,” said Matt Albence, the deputy director of ICE, on Monday in a conference call with reporters. Republicans closed ranks to blast the plan. “This is a poison pill that no administration, not this one, not the previous one, should ever accept,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said on the Senate floor. “Imagine the absurdity of this: House Democrats want to set a limit on how many criminal aliens our government can detain.” Earlier Monday, Democratic leadership aides said that there would be no deal without some concession on the bed issue — in part because immigrants rights groups and party liberals would revolt if they agreed to extend border barriers without getting something tangible in return. Last Friday, when word of a possible deal first leaked out, advocates for immigrants reached out to Democratic leadership offices, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, to say that they would oppose any deal that did not address their concerns about ICE. “For the last two years, we have been trying to limit the bad. We have taken a defensive approach, but now House Democrats have the power to start doing some good,” said Lorella Praeli, the deputy national political director of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that has pressed the Democratic leaders, Ms. Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, to reject any deal that does not include steps to reduce aggressive immigration enforcement. “It’s time for them to show that they are fighting for us,” Ms. Praeli added. “It means you have to do something more than a floor speech or a tweet supporting immigrants. It’s time to actually do something.”

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

I hope it happens.  But, as I always say, “the devil is in the details,” and we don’t have any yet. Stay tuned.

PWS

02-11-19

 

Related posts:

  1. TRUMP TAKES “LIEFEST” TO EL PASO BORDER — Many Protest Against His White Nationalist Baloney! 
  2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  3. DON’S KILLER DEAL: Salvadoran Teenage Girl First Casualty Of Trump’s “Make ‘Em Die In Mexico” Deal — As Investigation Continues, One Thing Is Clear: This Is Just The First Of Many Deaths & Human Tragedies That Will Result From Trump’s “Malicious Incompetence” & Unwillingness To Comply With Asylum Laws!
  4. [BUREAU] ‘CRATS CONTINUE TO FLEE SINKING DHS SHIP AS ABUSES, LIES, COVER-UPS MOUNT — John Sanders Latest To Exit — Trump Taps Mark Morgan, Eager Architect Of Administration’s Temporarily Aborted “Community Reign of Terror” (A/K/A/ “Operation Wetback ‘19”) Program As Next Acting CBP Chief — Expect More Mindless Cruelty, Lies, False Narratives, White Nationalist Racism, Violations Of Law & Human Rights!

AOC & CO. ARE RIGHT TO SPEAK OUT ON INEFFECTIVE, INHUMANE, WASTEFUL, OFTEN ILLEGAL DHS POLICIES DRIVEN BY A WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA – But, They Might Be Better Served By Holding Their Fire For Meaningful Oversight & The Next Budget Cycle – Like It Or Not, DHS Is Here & Isn’t Going Anywhere & We Do Need An Orderly System For Controlling Migration & Processing Refugees At Our Border!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberals-urge-democrats-to-take-a-hard-line-on-border-11549323945

Kristina Peterson & Louise Radnofsky report for the WSJ:

WASHINGTON—House Democratic leaders held firm through the five-week government shutdown that ended last month. Still, the party’s liberal wing is keeping up pressure on leadership as negotiations over a border-security deal heat up.

A group of liberal House Democrats and advocacy groups are urging Democrats in a bipartisan negotiating committee to refuse further funding for the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the border with Mexico. The group’s 17 lawmakers have less than two weeks to reach a deal before government funding expires again.

President Trump has said several times he is pessimistic lawmakers can reach a deal that he would accept, and he has threatened to take action to build his long-promised border wall on his own, including possibly declaring a national emergency.

Congressional leaders have been optimistic the group of House and Senate lawmakers can reach an agreement, but any bipartisan deal is unlikely to appease some in the party’s left wing.

A letter to House Democrats, written by freshman Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and signed by at least three others, criticizes Homeland Security for practices including prosecution and detention of immigrants.

The department and its frontline enforcement units—Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection—have become high-profile targets as they implement the Trump administration’s attempts to step up deportations and the zero-tolerance policy that last year resulted in family separations at the border.

“These agencies have promulgated an agenda driven by hate—not strategy,” the lawmakers wrote. They argue that the agencies’ ability to shift funds makes it impossible to prevent money from being used for policies that Democrats generally oppose.

Refusing funding for the agency housing the president’s top political priority isn’t going to draw Republican support, a House Democratic aide said, which the committee would need to produce a deal.

“It’s totally unrealistic,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R., Mo.), who is in the negotiating group, said of the Democratic letter. “That basically says you don’t want to secure the border.”

Democrats overall say they favor border security, just not Mr. Trump’s border wall, and immigration advocates said their task is to counter the president.

. . . .

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

Read the complete WSJ report from these “emerging stars on the immigration beat.”

There hasn’t been any meaningful oversight of DHS or the mess DOJ politicos have created at EOIR in two years. So, while there certainly should not be additional funding for DHS’s already overused and abused detention system, for now, Democrats should probably work with DHS as the “only game in town” on the Southern Border.

Over the next year, DHS and DOJ politicos should be required to testify and should be held accountable for the absolute, largely avoidable, chaos and inefficiency they have intentionally, incompetently, or maliciously created in immigration enforcement, our Immigration Courts, the refugee and asylum system, and the system for granting immigration benefits.

Then, based on the record, make rational, fact-based proposals for needed improvements in immigration enforcement, administration, and adjudication for the next budget cycle.

PWS

02-05-19

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. WASHINGTON POST/ABC POLL: TRUMP’S “CRUEL, MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” APPROACH TO ASYLUM HIGHLY UNPOPULAR & INEFFECTIVE: Dems Can Build Support By Strengthening Current Asylum System & Making It Work! — The “Real Face” Of “Border Security” Has Little Or Nothing To Do With Trump’s White Nationalist Rants & Barrage Of Lies!
  3. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
  4. COURTSIDE HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF EXPOSING THE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” COMMITTED BY THE REGIME AND THE MORAL CULPABILITY OF THOSE WHO WILLFULLY CARRY OUT & ENABLE THESE ATROCITIES — The “Mainstream Media” Is Now Channeling Courtside! — “In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.”

ANOTHER UGLY TRUMP MILESTONE: Administration’s “Malicious Incompetence” Jacks Immigration Court Backlog To 1.1 Million! — Even With 17% Increase In Judges, Trump & Sessions Incredibly DOUBLED Backlog In Under Two Years!

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/536/

Immigration Court Backlog Surpasses One Million Cases

Figure 1. Immigration Court Workload, FY 2018

The Immigration Court backlog has jumped by 225,846 cases since the end of January 2017 when President Trump took office. This represents an overall growth rate of 49 percent since the beginning of FY 2017. Results compiled from the case-by-case records obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the court reveal that pending cases in the court’s active backlog have now reached 768,257—a new historic high.

In addition, recent decisions by the Attorney General just implemented by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) have ballooned the backlog further. With a stroke of a pen, the court removed 330,211 previously completed cases and put them back on the “pending” rolls. These cases were previously administratively closed and had been considered part of the court’s completed caseload[1].

When the pending backlog of cases now on the active docket is added to these newly created pending cases, the total climbs to a whopping 1,098,468 cases! This is more than double the number of cases pending at the beginning of FY 2017.

Pending Cases Represent More Than Five Years of Backlogged Work

What does the pending case backlog mean as a practical matter? Even before the redefinition of cases counted as closed and cases considered pending, the backlog had reached 768,257 cases. With the rise in the number of immigration judges, case closures during FY 2018 rose 3.9 percent over FY 2016 levels, to 215,569. In FY 2017, however, closure rates had fallen below FY 2016 levels, but last year the court recovered this lost ground[2].

At these completion rates, the court would take 3.6 years to clear its backlog under the old definition if it did nothing but work on pending cases. This assumes that all new cases are placed on the back burner until the backlog is finished.

Now, assuming the court aims to schedule hearings eventually on all the newly defined “pending” cases, the backlog of over a million cases would take 5.1 years to work through at the current pace. This figure again assumes that the court sets aside newly arriving cases and concentrates exclusively on the backlog.

Table 1. Overview of Immigration Court Case Workload and Judges
as of end of FY 2018
Number of
Cases/Judges		 Percent Change
Since Beginning
of FY 2017
New Cases for FY 2018 287,741 7.5%
Completed Cases for FY 2018 215,569 3.9%
Number of Immigration Judges 338/395* 17.0%
Pending Cases as of September 30, 2018:
On Active Docket 768,257 48.9%
Not Presently on Active Docket 330,211 na
Total 1,098,468 112.9%
* Immigration Judges on bench at the beginning and at the end of FY 2018; percent based on increase in judges who served full year.
** category did not exist at the beginning of FY 2017.

Why Does the Backlog Continue To Rise?

No single reason accounts for this ballooning backlog. It took years to build and new cases continue to outpace the number of cases completed. This is true even though the ranks of immigration judges since FY 2016 have grown by over 17 percent[3] while court filings during the same period have risen by a more modest 7.5 percent[4].

Clearly the changes the Attorney General has mandated have added to the court’s challenges. For one, the transfer of administratively closed cases to the pending workload makes digging out all the more daunting. At the same time, according to the judges, the new policy that does away with their ability to administratively close cases has reduced their tools for managing their dockets.

There have been other changes. Shifting scheduling priorities produces churning on cases to be heard next. Temporary reassignment and transfer of judges to border courts resulted in additional docket churn. Changing the legal standards to be applied under the Attorney General’s new rulings may also require judicial time to review and implement.

In the end, all these challenges remain and the court’s dockets remain jam-packed. Perhaps when dockets become overcrowded, the very volume of pending cases slows the court’s ability to handle this workload – as when congested highways slow to a crawl.

Footnotes

[1] The court also recomputed its case completions for the past ten years and removed these from its newly computed completed case counts. Current case closures thus appear to have risen because counts in prior years are suppressed. Further, the extensive judicial resources used in hearing those earlier cases are also disregarded.

[2] For consistency over time, this comparison is based upon the court’s longstanding definition, which TRAC continues to use, that includes administratively closed cases in each year’s count. Under this standard, numbers are: 207,546 (FY 2016), 204,749 (FY 2017), 215,569 (FY 2018).

[3] The court reports that the numbers of immigration judges on its rolls at the end of the fiscal year were: 289 (FY 2016), 338 (FY 2017), and 395 (FY 2018). The 17 percent increase only considers judges who were on the payroll for the full FY 2018 year. See Table 1. For more on judge hires see: https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1104846/download

[4] New court cases based upon court records as of the end of FY 2018 were: 267,625 (FY 2016), 274,133 (FY 2017), and 287,741 (FY 2018). Due to delays in adding new cases to EOIR’s database, the latest counts may continue to rise when data input is complete. TRAC’s counts use the date of the notice to appear (NTA), rather than the court’s “input date” into its database. While the total number of cases across the FY 2016 – FY 2018 period reported by TRAC and recently published by EOIR are virtually the same, the year-by-year breakdown differs because of the court’s practice of postponing counting a case until it chooses to add them to its docket.

TRAC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center affiliated with the Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Whitman School of Management, both at Syracuse University. For more information, to subscribe, or to donate, contact trac@syr.edu or call 315-443-3563.
*********************************
This is truly “Kakistocracy in Action.” Remember these numbers are as of the end of FY 2018, September 30, 2018. Trump’s Shutdown added another 80,000 to 100,000 to the backlog. Combined with “normal mismanagement,” the backlog is probably over 1.3 million by now and growing daily.
Unfortunately, this isn’t going to stop until either Congress or the Article III courts step in, put an end to this travesty, and force due process, fairness, and administrative competence back into this dysfunctional national disgrace.
PWS
02-05-19

Related posts:

  1. TRAC: TRUMP DOJ’S “MALICIOUSLY INCOMPETENT POLICIES” SIGNIFICANTLY CONTRIBUTED TO ASTOUNDING 1,346,302 BACKLOG AND 4+ YEAR WAITS FOR HEARINGS — Don’t Let The Villains Blame The Victims & Their Lawyers For This Largely Self-Created Mess!
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: HE FIDDLES AS ROME BURNS! — Threats To Judges, Xenophobia, Racism, Cutting Corners, Dissing Respondents & Their Lawyers, Bogus Numbers, Aimlessly Adding Bodies Fail To Stem Tide Of Backlogged Cases In An Obviously Broken System — When Will Congress &/Or The Article IIIs Do Their Jobs By Restoring Due Process, Impartiality, & Competent, Apolitical Court Management To This Sorry Caricature Of A Court System?
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!

“MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE” MORPHS INTO CONTEMPT FOR COURT AS ADMINISTRATION TELLS COURT & SEPARATED FAMILIES “GO POUND SAND” — They Just Don’t Care About Humanity!

Angelina Chaplin reports for HuffPost:

On Friday, officials from the Trump administration said it would require too much effort to reunite the thousands of families it separated before implementing its “zero-tolerance” policy in April, according to a declaration filed as part of an ongoing lawsuit between the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Last month, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services released a report stating that “thousands” more immigrant families had been separated than the government had previously disclosed. In the declaration submitted Friday, HHS officials said they don’t know the exact number of children who were taken from their parents before “zero tolerance” and that finding them would be too much of a “burden” since there was no formal tracking system in place.

“The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit against ICE, in a statement. “The administration also doesn’t dispute that separations are ongoing in significant numbers.”

HHS did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

The deputy director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Jallyn Sualog, said that 100 ORR analysts would have to work eight hours each day for between seven and 15 months to “even begin reconciling” data on separated families. “In my judgment, ORR does not have the requisite staff for such a project,” Sualog wrote in the declaration.

Immigration advocates are appalled by the fact that the government didn’t bother to properly track separated families and that it is now shirking its responsibility to reunite parents and children.

“They are saying they just don’t care,” said Michelle Brané, the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “It’s shocking frivolous om a human rights perspective for a government to behave this way.”

“I think the policy of taking the children away in the first place was cruel,” said Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer, “but to not even have a system to return the parents to the children just increases the magnitude of the cruelty.”

The government also failed to properly track the roughly 2,800 children that it separated from their parents under the “zero-tolerance” policy between April and June. The administration was required to reunite families as part of an ACLU lawsuit, an ongoing process that has at times required immigration advocates to search for deported parents on foot in remote, crime-ridden areas of Central America.

According to the inspector general’s report, 159 children who were separated under “zero tolerance” are still in ORR care, most of whose parents were deported and decided to keep their kids in the U.S. due to dangerous situations back home. If the government doesn’t allow those parents to re-apply for asylum in the U.S., families may remain permanently separated. Gelernt worries that before “zero tolerance” the government could have deported hundreds more parents who might not have had a say in their children’s futures.

In the declaration, Jonathan White, a commander with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, said that most unaccompanied children are released to family sponsors and that in addition to logistical challenges, trying to reunite separated kids with their parents could be destabilizing and “would present grave child welfare concerns.”

But Gelernt says the government should not be making decisions on behalf of mothers and fathers. “[The administration] had no right to just give these kids away unless the parent was making an informed decision,” he said. “This is not a situation where the parents put the child up for adoption. This is a situation where the child was forcibly taken from the parents.”

On Feb. 21, Gelernt will argue in front of a federal judge in California that all families separated before “zero tolerance” should be part of the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit and that the government has a responsibility to reunify these parents with their children. He is disappointed that the administration failed to act humanely towards immigrant families in its declaration.

“The [government] is saying it’s not legally required for them to [reunite families] and therefore they won’t do it,” he said. “But why not do it because it’s the right thing to do?”

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

Isn’t it time for the U.S. District Judge to start holding ICE and ORR officials in contempt of court? What about former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions who “masterminded” this cruel fiasco?

Can there be justice without any morality or accountability?

PWS

02-02-19

 

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. FOUR TODDLERS RESCUED BY PRO BONO LAWYERS FROM DEADLY SITUATION IN CBP CUSTODY — Putrid, Unsanitary, Repressive Conditions Causing Lifetime Harm To Other Traumatized Kids — But, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost Wants You To Know That She’s Not Taking Responsibility For The Humanitarian Disaster Intentionally Engineered On Her Watch!
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: AS SESSIONS RAMPS UP THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG,” RAMPANT SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE DETAINEES CERTAIN TO INCREASE! – AG’S Child Abuse Also Makes Him Complicit In Sexual Abuse! – See The Short Video By Emily Kassie Here!
  4. SCOFFLAWS OUTED AGAIN: U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S ILLEGAL ATTACK ON ASYLUM LAW: ORDERS PROCESSING OF ALL WHO APPLY TO RESUME! — “Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden!”

MARIA SACCHETTI @ WASHPOST: CRUEL & UNUSUAL: DHS’s “New American Gulag” Is An Unconstitutional, Unaccountable, & Sometimes Deadly “(Bogus) Civil” Prison System For Migrants! — ICE Denials NOT Credible — 14,000 Violations In 2 1/2 Years Is NOT “Accountability!”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/homeland-security-ig-questions-ices-oversight-of-detention-facilities/2019/02/01/baf8b828-263c-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html

Maria writes:

Public and private contractors running immigration jails violated federal detention standards thousands of times in recent years — including failing to report allegations of sexual assaults and staff misconduct to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — but were fined only twice, according to a report issued Friday.

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general called on ICE to improve oversight of facilities that detain roughly half the 45,000 immigrant detainees held every day across the United States, and to do a better job holding federal contractors accountable for their health and safety.

ICE defended its oversight in a letter to the Inspector General that was included in the report, and said generally it can terminate contracts or relocate immigrants if it believes facilities are unsafe.

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ICE documented 14,003 violations from Oct. 1, 2015 through June 30 at 106 facilities nationwide, the report said. The fines assessed by the agency amountedto $3.9 million, or 0.13 percent of the more than $3 billion ICE paid to the contractors during that period.

One facility was fined after “a pattern of repeat deficiencies over a 3-year period, primarily related to health care and mental health standards,” the report said. Another fine followed a Labor Department order against the facility for failing to pay proper wages.

In other cases, the inspector general found, immigration officials granted waivers allowing some contractors to bypass detention standards or avoid punishment for violations. From September 2016 through July, 65 waivers were approved — most for indefinite time periods.

One waiver authorized a facility to use CS gas, or tear gas, even though it is 10 times as toxic as pepper spray.

The inspector general said immigration officials lacked formal policies to oversee waivers and that some officials “without clear authority” were granting them.

“Key officials admitted there are no policies, procedures, guidance documents, or instructions to explain how to review waiver requests,” the report said.

The inspector general issued a series of recommendations urging ICE to shore up its oversight of detention facilities and ensure paperwork is included in contracts that will make clear when the agency should impose penalties on contractors that fail to follow federal rules.

“ICE has a strong record of holding detention facilities accountable when deficiencies are identified,” spokesman Matthew Bourke said in a statement.

He said the waiver process in the inspector general’s report is a “rarely used mechanism.”

The report comes as the White House and Congress are preparing for a heated battle over detention funding, building a wall on the southern border and other aspects of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. This week, Democratic lawmakers unveiled a proposal to “significantly” reduce ICE detention beds, require more detention facility inspections, and limit ICE’s leeway to detain more immigrants than Congress allows.

The 106 facilities in the report housed an average of 25,000 immigrants a day as of fiscal year 2017. They are under ICE’s direct oversight. About 100 other facilities are run by the U.S. Marshals Service and are not included in the report.

ICE contractors are required to comply with detention standards that outline their responsibilities, the services they must provide to immigrants and what each facility must do to provide a “safe and secure detention environment for staff and detainees,” the report said.

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

No doubt in my mind that DHS is lying and covering up malfeasance, perhaps criminal activity.

Time for 1) some House oversight, 2) accountability for those at DHS and their contractors responsible for these abuses, and 3) Congressional action to phase out and strictly limit DHS’s grossly overused and under supervised detention function.

PWS

02-01-19

Related posts:

  1. MARIA SACCHETTI IN WASHPOST: INSIDE THE “NAG” (NEW AMERICAN GULAG) — CRUEL, INHUMAN, DEGRADING TREATMENT APPEARS TO BE WIDESPREAD IN SO-CALLED “CIVIL” IMMIGRATION DETENTION! — Where’s The Outrage? — Where’s The Congressional Oversight? — Why Aren’t Guys Like “Gonzo” & Homan Who Knowingly Promote Violations Of Legal & Human Rights As (Unlawful) “Immigration Deterrence” Under Investigation For Their Roles In Violating Human, Constitutional Rights!
  2. PROFESSOR FITZ BRUNDAGE @ WASHPOST: Can We Regain Our Humanitarian Values In The Age Of Trump? — “We must shine a spotlight on cruel and illegal policies that undermine our national ideals and find the wisdom and the courage to do better.”
  3. CONTINUING JUDICIAL EDUCATION FOR ARTICLE III JUDGES: “Kids In Cages” Ought To Be Displayed Outside Every Federal Courthouse & The Supremes So That “Robed Enablers” Can See The Results Of Their Abdication Of Constitutional Duties!
  4. GONZO’S WORLD: DHS IG REPORT SLAMS GONZO’S “KIDDIE GULAG” WHILE CRITICISM OF INTENTIONAL CHILD ABUSE BY HIM AND OTHERS IN THE ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO MOUNT — Will The Article IIIs Eventually Draw The Line Between Incompetence & Intentional, Malicious Violations Of Constitutional Rights & Hold Gonzo & His Collaborators in DHS & ORR Personally Liable Under “Bivens?”

PAUL WALDMAN @ WASHPOST: Why True Bipartisan Immigration Reform In Our National Interest Will Require “Regime Change:” “[I]t’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/31/never-mind-wall-theres-more-important-question-we-need-answer/

Waldman writes:

As immigration policy hangs over the ongoing conflict over whether the government is going to remain open, there’s something missing from this discussion, something so fundamental that it’s quite remarkable that we all seem to have forgotten to even ask about it. The president is demanding his border wall, Democrats are fighting against him, and occasionally we bring up issues like the fate of the Dreamers and those here under Temporary Protected Status.

But what nobody asks is this: What kind of immigration system do we actually want?

Not what might happen in the next negotiation or what each side would be willing to give up, but what does each side see as the ultimate goal they’re working toward? If they could look forward ten or twenty years and say “This is where we should get to,” what would that look like?

It’s a vital question, because whatever we’re doing at the moment should be guided by our long-term goals. Once we understand what those goals are, we can think more clearly about where we should go after we get this whole shutdown ridiculousness behind us. And we all ought to be able to agree that there is some future we’re trying to arrive at, a point at which we have a system that works to our satisfaction and immigration isn’t something we’re constantly at each other’s throats about.

That may not be possible, but I’ll start with what liberals would like to see. There are certainly disagreements not just on the left generally but among immigration advocates as well, but there is a basic vision one can identify.

The first thing they want, of course, is to take the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants who are in the country now and give them a path to citizenship. That’s something even some Republicans agree with, and if you put requirements like learning English and paying back taxes on it, support becomes nearly universal.

Second, liberals would like to see an expansion of the legal immigration system, which is a consistent source of frustration and a driver of illegal immigration. When it can take decades to get approved to move to the United States, of course many people are going to opt for the illegal route, even if it can be dangerous and uncertain. If the legal immigration works, people will go through it and not around it.

And if you have a well-functioning legal system, you can make illegal immigration less attractive, with things like an E-Verify process that makes it harder to find work if you’re undocumented. There may always be some kind of black market for workers, but if you’re simultaneously offering people a legal path — both toward permanent residency and with temporary work visas for people who are looking only to make some money and then return to their home countries — it will be much smaller problem.

So in the liberal vision, we might end up with about the same number of immigrants coming into the country as we have now, it’s just that the overwhelming majority would be coming legally. We’d have security at the border, but we wouldn’t need ICE breaking down doors and tearing parents from their children’s arms. We’d have a robust system to evaluate asylum claims so we wouldn’t have to be throwing people in cages. We certainly wouldn’t pretend that one day there will be no more demand in the labor market for immigrant workers.

There are many Republicans who could be okay with that future, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted. But the conservative vision is complicated. For years, we heard Republican politicians say, “I’m for legal immigration. I’m against illegal immigration.” They may not usually have been advocating significant increases in legal immigration, but it’s important to remember that the current venomous hostility toward immigrants was not always the standard Republican position. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were both far friendlier toward immigrants than Donald Trump is.

Conservatives might disagree with this characterization, but as I see it, their ultimate goal is a system in which coming into the country illegally is utterly impossible, but levels of legal immigration don’t change much. In other words, we still have immigration, but the flow slows to a trickle. And the Trump administration is making attempts to drastically reduce legal immigration. With the president’s enthusiastic support, domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller is driving a nationalist agenda that seeks to drastically reduce the inflow of immigrants to the country and even looks for every possible means to deport both legal and undocumented immigrants, even if they’ve been living here for years or decades.

That’s a somewhat extreme position even within the Republican Party, but it does reflect a discomfort with immigration that is common on the right. It’s the cultural problem, the fact that many people just don’t like having contact with people who don’t look like them or don’t speak the same language they do or eat the same foods they do. Trump very skillfully played to that discomfort by essentially telling voters he could wind back the clock to the time when they were young, before all this disconcerting change happened. His targets were the people who say “I don’t recognize my country anymore,” and when he said he would make America great again, “great again” meant “like things were when you were young.”

That’s a demand that can never be satisfied, even if it’s only a portion of the Republican electorate that really dreams of an America where there are almost no new immigrants and most of those who are already here just disappear. Unfortunately, that portion currently not only controls the White House but exercises a veto over any attempt at comprehensive immigration reform, because the rest of the GOP is so terrified of them.

Which is why it’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.

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

Right on, Paul!  You “nailed” it!  Pretty much what I’ve been saying on “Courtside” all along!

However, the unlikelihood of achieving “comprehensive immigration reform” in the “Age of Trump” shouldn’t prevent the parties from working together in a bipartisan manner on “smaller fixes” such as that relating to child marriage suggested by Nolan Rappaport, posted earlier this week. See https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3Hu

Progress is progress, even by “small steps.”

PWS

02-01-19

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  3. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  4. WASHINGTON POST: GONZO’S IMMIGRATION COURT “REFORMS” WILL CREATE “KANGAROO COURTS!” —Recent “moves to evaluate judges based on the speed with which they handle dockets that typically exceed 2,000 cases, rather than on fair adjudication, is a recipe for assembly-line injustice.”

SCOTT BIXBY @ THE DAILY BEAST: Trump Puts U.S. Immigration Courts Into Freefall – Judges & Experts Doubt It Can Be Fixed Without Major Due Process Enhancements — “Fixing the backlog without sacrificing undocumented immigrants’ right to due process—a prospect with which Trump has already publicly flirted—could require a wholesale reconfiguration of the immigration court system, Marks said, starting with removing it from the purview of the Department of Justice.”

https://apple.news/A8VLzlyN7QImERHmUEChNnA

Scott Bixby reports for The Daily Beast:

President Donald Trump’s record-long shutdown may be over, (for now), but immigration judges and attorneys worry that its disastrous effects on the immigration court system will last for years.

The 35-day government shutdown, ignited over Trump’s demands for congressional funding of his long-promised border wall, exacerbated the very immigration crisis the president claims the barrier would solve, halting nearly all immigration court cases and putting three in four immigration judges on furlough. Hearings on asylum cases, deportation, and appeals against orders of removal were delayed indefinitely, pending a “reset” upon the government’s re-opening that shuffled tens of thousands of cases to the back of the line.

The only way to solve the pileup, one prominent immigration judge told The Daily Beast, is a trade: Dump Trump’s demand for a 2,000-mile wall, and instead double the number of immigration judges to deal with cases.

“If we’ve got a million cases backlogged, we need a thousand judges,” said Judge Dana Leigh Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco and president emeritus of the National Association of Immigration Judges. The current roster of roughly 400 judges, she said, “is less than half of what we need.”

“We’re having a tsunami of retirements because working conditions have become so unbearable,” said Marks. “It is incredibly stressful, because we know that the consequences of our cases are literally life and death.”

The Department of Justice, which oversees the immigration court system, already had a crisis on its hands before the shutdown, Marks said, with a backlog of at least 800,000 cases in a system with too few judges and too little funding.

The swell of asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, combined with the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the United States, had created a years-long backlog of pending immigration court cases. The number of pending immigration court cases grew by 84 percent since the end of 2013, according to the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, and jumped by 26 percent just since the end of 2016.

“They allowed the courts to get to the anemic state that we were in prior to the shutdown,” said Marks, who has served as an immigration judge for 33 years. With the cancellation of tens of thousands of immigration cases that will now be shuffled to the back of a years-long line, “the shutdown’s effects will last for years.”

That backlog—which doesn’t even include an estimated 300,000 closed “low-priority” cases that the Justice Department ordered reopened in May—is currently being pushed through a mere 60 immigration courts across the United States. The roughly 400 immigration judges who keep that system moving have been given the Sisyphean task of clearing their dockets, a mission that even the most industrious judges think may be unfeasible.

“Most of us are extremely pessimistic about the current state of our dockets,” said Marks, noting that immigration judges are optimally supposed to go through four three-hour hearings per day. “They’re booked in an unrealistically heavy-packed manner that will not mean that we can finish all of the cases that are set on a given day.”

In a bid to speed through the backlog, the Department of Justice announced in April that it would impose quotas on judges, requiring the completion of 700 immigration cases per year to earn a “satisfactory performance” rating, as well as less than 15 percent of their cases remanded to a higher court—meaning that judges have to both increase the speed of their proceedings while decreasing errors that could lead to an appeal.

“The purpose of implementing these metrics is to encourage efficient and effective case management while preserving immigration judge discretion and due process,” wrote then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions when the policy was announced.

That new policy, Marks said, would only increase the pressure on the judge to serve two competing masters: the Department of Justice quotas and due process.

“The quintessential skill of a judge is knowing how to schedule your dockets, and yet we’re being told for political reasons, for the optics, how to do so,” said Marks, who warned that forcing judges to speed along complex proceedings encourages future appeals based on questions of judicial motivation.

“These are not simple and straightforward” cases, said Marks, who once famously likened deportation proceedings to “doing death penalty cases in a traffic court setting.”

“An immigration judge is shifting through four or five different times that the story has been told to see whether it’s consistent or inconsistent… Political optics is at tension, if not in conflict, with a judge’s role to ensure that each case in front of us provides the individual with due process.”

Add in a shutdown, immigration attorneys told The Daily Beast, and an overburdened system risks collapsing into chaos.

“Each day that there’s a government shutdown, you’re setting yourself up to add months” before a hearing, said Michael Wildes, an immigration attorney who represented Melania Trump and her parents in their immigration proceedings. “There will be enormous delays. For undetained individuals with court dates… they will back up even more egregiously than they have.”

Unclogging the dockets may be impossible, said Jason Dzubow, a Washington D.C.-based immigration attorney specializing in asylum law, leaving clients with good cases waiting for years to have their day in court.

“It’s just gonna be way too complicated to give people any kind of priority—which then, of course, causes a huge chain reaction, because it’s already a big mess,” Dzubow said. “What are they going to tell their families?”

Fixing the backlog without sacrificing undocumented immigrants’ right to due process—a prospect with which Trump has already publicly flirted—could require a wholesale reconfiguration of the immigration court system, Marks said, starting with removing it from the purview of the Department of Justice.

“People feel like there’s a thumb on the scales… because of the historically close relationship between the prosecutors‚ the Department of Homeland Security and the judges,” said Marks. “Judges have become, in a way, the sacrificial lamb in this process, because so much pressure has been applied to us. If we don’t follow, it renders us subject to personal discipline or training for evaluations that we are performing poorly, which can affect our very ability to retain our jobs.”

Such a dynamic, Marks said, has “a tremendous chilling effect.”

“A political branch is not the proper administrator for a neutral legal system.”

But in the meantime, both judges and attorneys working in the clotted immigration system feel that the $5.7 billion Trump has demanded for his border wall would be put to better use in hiring more immigration judges.

“There is an enormous divide between the amount of traffic and judges,” said Wildes. “In many ways, immigration has been looked upon as a stepchild in our legal system, where people recognize that it’s only a civil matter rather than a criminal matter. It actually has greater import—particularly when someone is facing banishment from the country.”

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

Yup! Should be no surprise to readers of “Courtside.” In my experience, EOIR never really recovered from the mindless 2013 shutdown. Anybody with any real knowledge or who cared about our Government, our Constitution, and real immigration enforcement could have seen this coming “from a million miles away.” But, we’re saddled with a Kakistocracy — a “Clown Administration” if you will. 🤡

PWS

01-30-19

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. THE ASYLUMIST WEIGHS IN ON EOIR’S “FACT SHEET:” “Sometimes, myths and facts get mixed up, especially in the Trump Administration, which has redacted human rights reports to show that countries are safe, buried other reports that don’t say what they like, and claimed that asylum lawyers are making up cases to get their clients across the border. It’s all in the grand tradition of the merchants of doubt, men and women who know better, but who obfuscate the truth–about tobacco, global warming, vaccines, whatever–to achieve a political goal (or make a buck). Why shouldn’t EOIR join in the fun?”
  3. AMERICA’S SHAME: 🤡 “CLOWN COURTS” PLUNGE TO NEW DEPTHS UNDER TRUMP & DOJ: Unpaid Judges, Court Clerks Who Can’t Afford The Rent, Illegal Rulings & Idiotic Policies By Biased & Ignorant DOJ Politicos, Unachievable Expectations, Unnecessary Postponements Caused By Trump & DOJ, & On Top Of It All A Few Unqualified Judges Who Discriminate, Cut Corners, & Intentionally Deny Due Process, All Combine To “Tank” Already Low Morale To Incomprehensible Lows!
  4. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!

🤡U.S. CLOWN COURT: Where Justice & Logic Are A Bad Joke, & Those We Should Be Welcoming Are Instead Shown The Door!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/my-immigrant-client-won-a-judges-compassion-ice-still-dumped-him-on-the-border/2019/01/24/7802a800-1e9c-11e9-8b59-0a28f2191131_story.html

Attorney Marty Rosenbluth writes in the Washington Post Sunday Outlook Section:

Attorney  ’s client made a passionate case to the judge about our unjust system

This month, I went to court with José. He came to the United States without papers from Mexico when he was 15, in 1999. Now he has a wife, three kids and a job in construction in Raleigh, N.C. It all came apart when police pulled him over and arrested him for driving without a license. He soon landed in the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga. He fought his deportation case alone for several months before his family finally called my law firm.

We first told him we couldn’t take his case because he had no chance of winning, so ethically we couldn’t take his money. Most people in deportation proceedings have few if any options to stay in the United States through the immigration courts. I urged him to take voluntary departure, which enables people to leave the country without getting a deportation order on their records, so it is easier to come back legally in the future. But he told me he was certain that, if he could just tell the court his story, the judge would see that letting him stay was right and just and fair. I told him that our immigration system had many rules and laws, but little or no justice.

In truth, I think José knew he had no chance, and he knew he’d have to leave. But he didn’t want to leave quietly. We agreed that I would accompany him — I wouldn’t say “help,” because he could have realized his plan without me, and I didn’t charge a penny — but he would address the judge directly. One of the most important things I do as an attorney is to just be present. Since the immigration laws are so defective, and the judges often play by their own rules (routine bond requests are usually denied, and this Georgia court has one of the lowest approval rates for asylum cases in the country), and the detention/deportation centers are designed to break people’s spirits, often there is not much else that can be done. Based on what transpired, I’m glad I went.

[Civil servants said separating families was illegal. The administration ignored us.]

José’s whole family came to support him — his wife and his kids and a friend. When we sat down at the bench, I told the judge that José would be speaking for himself. In immigration courts, migrants usually just answer questions, so the judge asked me if I was requesting to withdraw. I said I wasn’t: I was staying at the table, but José was going to do all the talking. And the judge, to his credit, heard him out.

The judge explained the law and what José would have to prove in order to win. Before hiring us, José had submitted an application, on his own, for “cancellation of removal.” There are four elements: He had to prove that he had been living here for more than 10 years, that he was a person of good moral character and that he hadn’t broken any laws that would bar him under the statutes from applying. José could show all of these things. But the fourth criterion is the hardest. José would have to prove that if he were deported, it would cause an “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a spouse, parent or child who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. Usually it means you have a child with cancer, or a spouse with a disability that makes them unable to work or support a family — something on that scale. If you can convince the court merely that your family would be made homeless or that your children would subsist on food stamps, that is not considered sufficient. That is just the usual hardship that deportees’ families experience.

Without missing a beat, José said to the judge, “I have the first three, your honor, but I do not have the fourth.” Turning around to look at his family, with obvious pride, he told the judge: “This is my family. These are my children. Everything I do, I do for them. But thankfully they are all healthy, which for the moment seems for some reason to be bad.” Truly, logic has no place in immigration court.

[I crossed the border seeking safety. Instead, they took my daughter away.]

The judge said that, based on this testimony, he would have to deny his application for cancellation of removal. Still, the judge offered José voluntary departure and explained, as I had, that it would make it easier for him to return.

I had met with José’s wife, Maria, too, and explained “VD,” which is a safer option than exiting the nation through the usual deportation machinery. People who are deported to Mexico from Stewart and many other detention centers are just dumped on the border, where gangs await them. (People deported to other countries are flown.) They are often robbed, kidnapped, raped or killed. Those who take VD, on the other hand, don’t get to leave jail, but they fly back on a regular commercial flight.

The problem with voluntary departure, though, is the cost: You have to buy your own fare, and it is very expensive, currently around $1,250. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will accept only a “Y” class ticket, or a full-cost coach fare, which can often cost more than first class. José thanked the judge and declined. “The tickets cost a lot of money, and my family will need the money after I leave.”

[My family immigrated here legally. I used to think that made us special.]

Maria interjected, crying. “Take the voluntary,” she said. “Take the voluntary!” My client began crying, too, followed by his kids.

I decided to take a chance. I asked the judge if José could talk to his wife over the barrier. Any direct communication and especially physical contact is strictly forbidden in this courtroom. To my surprise, he agreed. So Maria came forward, and she and José started hugging and kissing and crying. The bailiff moved to intervene, but I just shook my head and mouthed the word “Please.”

The couple talked for a few minutes, and then José sat back down and offered that he would take voluntary departure. But he’d gotten to hug his 6-, 8- and 12-year-old children across the barrier. Imagine that. Humanity in what passes for a court. This is not usually how immigration cases go. The judge gave José 30 days to buy his ticket before he would lose the “privilege” of taking VD.

In the end, José sat there smiling. And proud. He was still smiling as his family left the courtroom. And smiling when he gave me a hug. He’d known all along he wouldn’t win, but he wanted to be able to call out the injustice. And the judge, who has low rates of approval for just about anything, heard him out. (Only 31 of 347 judges denied asylum claims at a higher rate, according to the Transitional Records Access Clearinghouse.) It wasn’t a victory, exactly. José wouldn’t be staying with his family. But speaking a truth, to a hostile power, is still a kind of achievement.

[Trump’s attack on asylum is based entirely on false claims]

But it was a discordant one for such a ruthless corner of the law. And eventually the logic of our immigration system superseded his brave act.

This past week, according to a friend of his who called me to share the news, ICE came to his cell early one morning and said it would fly him to Mexico City; he wouldn’t even have to pay for his ticket. Then, that afternoon, officials came and handcuffed him, brought him to a room to wait with other detainees for several hours and deposited him on a bus. Not to the airport, as they had promised. They drove him to the border and dumped him out in Matamoros. I am looking into his legal options, because apparently no act of courage goes unpunished.

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

Thanks Marty, for giving us insight into the “parody of justice” that goes on daily in our Immigration Courts at the direction of a Department of “Justice” that long ago lost both its way and purpose and must be wrested from control of a major dysfunctional court system that it is so ethically and functionally unable to administer in anything approaching a fair and efficient manner.

I give the Immigration Judge credit for taking time to listen and allowing Jose to speak in court. In the toxic age of Trump, Sessions, Whitaker, and likely also Barr, Immigration Judges are pressured to prejudge cases and cut corners by denying claims without listening to the evidence to keep up with artificial “deportation quotas” imposed by Sessions and to keep up “productivity” which has replaced “guaranteeing fairness and Due Process” as the mantra of today’s “Clown Courts.”

On the other hand, there are alternatives available. The BIA precedents on what constitutes “exceptional and extremely hardship” are intentionally vague and subject to interpretation. How do I know? They were issued while I was serving as BIA Chair (one over my dissent).

They were supposed to be part of a group of cases, sometimes knows as the “basket of pain,” defining the term in a number of different contexts. But, after Ashcroft’s “Saturday Night Massacre” at the BIA “took out” those judges, including me, who sometimes ruled in favor of respondent’s positions, the project was abandoned. My remaining colleagues were afraid that ruling on anything so controversial, and particularly granting anything to a respondent, could be “career threatening,” probably with good reason. So, Immigration Judges were left to their own devices. Many of the BIA panels on the other hand, took a pretty hard line, all, of course, in unpublished decisions.

Coming to the Arlington Immigration Court from the BIA, I actually underwent some “culture shock.” In an early cancellation case, I was thinking that the respondents, although great folks who were doing good things for America and their citizen family, probably wouldn’t “make the cut” under the standards that my last BIA panel had been applying. But, when the Assistant Chief Counsel got up to make a closing, after I had given respondents’ counsel a rather “hard time,” I was surprised to hear an impassioned, well-reasoned, and well-supported plea joining counsel’s request for a finding of “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” and granting the case. “It’s Recinas, not Andazola,” as we came to say in Arlington, after the names of the BIA precedents that appeared to reach conflicting conclusions.

Some Immigration Judges would have found that deprivation of the support of the “primary breadwinner” is “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” and granted Jose cancellation of removal. And, some ICE Assistant Chief Counsel would have waived appeal. Just shows what a “crapshoot” justice has become in the Immigration Courts.

BS (“Before Sessions”) at the Arlington Immigration Court, the Assistant Chief Counsel would probably have offered “prosecutorial discretion” or “PD” to Jose. And, I would have encouraged Marty to take that offer and “live to fight another day.” I would have given Jose and his family my “bad things will happen if you screw up again in any way speech,'” “administratively closed” the case, and taken it off my docket. The court and both counsel would have saved time and Jose and his family could have gone on living their lives and contributing to America pending good behavior and an eventual legalization program by Congress.

Not a perfect solution to be sure. But, a fundamentally just one that allowed me, ICE, and the private bar to move on and deal with other higher priority cases that really needed my judicial attention.

Trump, Sessions, Nielsen and their White Nationalist Gang have stripped the Immigration Courts of whatever little sense of justice and judicial control remained. They intentionally have turned a struggling system into a totally dysfunctional and fundamentally unjust and unconstitutional one.

We can only hope that at some point the Article III Courts will have seen enough and will put this totally bankrupt system into “receivership;” or that some future Congress and a more competent and honest Administration will create an independent Immigration Court focused, as it should be, on fairness and Due Process. Until then, justice and logic will continue to be a bad joke in the “U.S. Clown Courts.” 🤡

PWS

01-28-19

Related posts:

  1. ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER @ WASHPOST: UNDER TRUMP, MORE JUDGES, MORE DETENTION, MORE RANDOM CRUELTY, FEWER ACTUAL REMOVALS!
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DIVERSE “NATION OF IMMIGRANTS” ANOINTS A COMMITTED XENOPHOBE AS ITS CHIEF LAW OFFICER? – Gonzo Is Deconstructing Our System Of Justice, One Day At A Time!
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!
  4. PURE BS 💩 — TRUMP’S “BIG LIE” ABOUT MIGRANT APPEARANCES FOR HEARINGS BOGUS AS $3 BILL 🤮👎🏻— Replacing DHS/EOIR With Rational, Qualified, Fact-Based Governance & Real Judiciary Could Bring Appearance Rate Close To 100%!  — Two Items From ImmigrationProf Blog!

INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”

http://time.com/longform/migrants/

Haley Sweetland Edwards writes in Time Magazine:

But they were willing to do whatever it took. Going back to Guatemala was simply not an option, they said. Monterroso explained that in October, their family was forced to flee after a gang threatened to murder the children if they didn’t pay an exorbitant bribe, five months’ worth of profits from their tiny juice stall. The family hid for a day and a half in their house and then sneaked away before dawn. “There is nobody that can protect us there,” Monterroso said. “We have seen in the other cases, they kill the people and kill their children.” Her voice caught. “The first thing is to have security for them,” she said of her kids, “that nothing bad happens to them.”

All told, more than 159,000 migrants filed for asylum in the U.S. in fiscal year 2018, a 274% increase over 2008. Meanwhile, the total number of apprehensions along the southern border has decreased substantially—nearly 70% since fiscal year 2000. President Donald Trump has labeled the southern border a national crisis. He refused to sign any bill funding the federal government that did not include money for construction of a wall along the frontier, triggering the longest shutdown in American history, and when Democrats refused to budge, he threatened to formally invoke emergency powers. The President says the barrier, which was the centerpiece of his election campaign, is needed to thwart a dangerous “invasion” of undocumented foreigners.

But the situation on the southern border, however the political battle in Washington plays out, will continue to frustrate this U.S. President, and likely his successors too, and not just because of continuing caravans making their way to the desert southwest. Months of reporting by TIME correspondents around the world reveal a stubborn reality: we are living today in a global society increasingly roiled by challenges that can be neither defined nor contained by physical barriers. That goes for climate change, terrorism, pandemics, nascent technologies and cyber-attacks. It also applies to one of the most significant global developments of the past quarter-century: the unprecedented explosion of global migration.

. . . .

They abandoned their homes for different reasons: tens of millions went in search of better jobs or better education or medical care, and tens of millions more had no choice. More than 5.6 million fled the war in Syria, and a million more were Rohingya, chased from their villages in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands fled their neighborhoods in Central America and villages in sub-Saharan Africa, driven by poverty and violence. Others were displaced by catastrophic weather linked to climate change.

Taken one at a time, each is an individual, a mixture of strengths and weaknesses, hope and despair. But collectively, they represent something greater than the sum of their parts. The forces that pushed them from their homes have combined with a series of global factors that pulled them abroad: the long peace that followed the Cold War in the developed world, the accompanying expansion of international travel, liberalized policies for refugees and the relative wealth of developed countries, especially in Europe and the U.S., the No. 1 destination for migrants. The force is tidal and has not been reversed by walls, by separating children from their parents or by deploying troops. Were the world’s total population of international migrants in 2018 gathered from the places where they have sought new lives and placed under one flag, they would be its fifth largest country.

The mass movement of people has changed the world both for better and for worse. Migrants tend to be productive. Though worldwide they make up about 3% of the population, in 2015 they generated about 9% of global GDP, according to the U.N. Much of that money is wired home—$480 billion in 2017, also according to the U.N.—where the cash has immense impact. Some will pay for the passage of the next migrant, and the smartphone he or she will keep close at hand. The technology not only makes the journey more efficient and safer—smugglers identify their clients by photos on instant-messaging—but, upon arrival, allows those who left to keep in constant contact with those who remain behind, across oceans and time zones.

Yet attention of late is mostly focused on the impact on host countries. There, national leaders have grappled with a powerful irony: the ways in which they react to new migrants—tactically, politically, culturally—shape them as much as the migrants themselves do. In some countries, migrants have been welcomed by crowds at train stations. In others, images of migrants moving in miles-long caravans through Central America or spilling out of boats on Mediterranean shores were wielded to persuade native-born citizens to lock down borders, narrow social safety nets and jettison long-standing humanitarian commitments to those in need.

. . . .

The U.S., though founded by Europeans fleeing persecution, now largely reflects the will of its Chief Executive: subverting decades of asylum law and imposing a policy that separated migrant toddlers from their parents and placed children behind cyclone fencing. Trump floated the possibility of revoking birthright citizenship, characterized migrants as “stone cold criminals” and ordered 5,800 active-duty U.S. troops to reinforce the southern border. Italy refused to allow ships carrying rescued migrants to dock at its ports. Hungary passed laws to criminalize the act of helping undocumented people. Anti-immigrant leaders saw their political power grow in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Italy and Hungary, and migration continued to be a factor in the Brexit debate in the U.K.

These political reactions fail to grapple with a hard truth: in the long run, new migration is nearly always a boon to host countries. In acting as entrepreneurs and innovators, and by providing inexpensive labor, immigrants overwhelmingly repay in long-term economic contributions what they use in short-term social services, studies show. But to maximize that future good, governments must act -rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.

. . . .

But protocols and treaties can, at best, hope to respond to the human emotions and hard realities that drive migration. No wall, sheriff or headscarf law would have prevented Monterroso and Calderón, or Yaquelin and Albertina Contreras, or Sami Baladi and Mirey Darwich from leaving their homes. Migrants will continue to flee bombs, look for better-paying jobs and accept extraordinary risks as the price of providing a better life for their children.

The question now is whether the world can come to define the enormous population of international migrants as an opportunity. No matter when that happens, Eman Albadawi, a teacher from Syria who arrived in Anröchte, Germany, in 2015, will continue to make a habit of reading German-language children’s books to her three Syrian-born kids at night. Their German is better than hers, and they make fun of her pronunciation, but she doesn’t mind. She is proud of them. At a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise, she tells them, “We must be brave, but we must also be successful and strong.” —With reporting by Aryn Baker/Anröchte, Germany; Melissa Chan, Julia Lull, Gina Martinez, Thea Traff/New York; Ioan Grillo/Tijuana; Abby Vesoulis/Murfreesboro, Tenn.; and Vivienne Walt/Paris •

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

I strongly encourage everyone to read Haley’s outstanding article at the link.  It is one of the best and most easily understandable explanations of a complex phenomenon that I have seen recently. As I always say, “lots of moving parts.” But Haley and her colleagues have distilled the fundamental truths concealed by this complexity. Congrats and appreciation to Haley and everyone who worked on this masterpiece!

Haley debunks and eviscerates the restrictionist, racist “fear and loathing” baloney that Trump and his White Nationalist gang peddle. The simple truth always has been and continues to be that America needs more immigration.

The only real question is whether we are going to be smart and funnel it into expanded legal and humanitarian channels or dumb like Trump and push the inevitable migration into an extra-legal system. The latter best serves neither our country nor the humans pushed into an underground existence where they can be exploited and are artificially prevented from achieving their full potential for themselves and for us. Right now, we have a mix skewed toward forcing far, far too many good folks to use the extra-legal system.

We’ll only be able to improve the situation by pushing the mix toward the legal and the humanitarian, rather than the extra-legal. That’s why it’s virtually impossible to have a rational immigration debate with folks like Trump who start with the racist-inspired fiction that migrants are a “threat” who can be deterred, punished, and diminished.

Contrary to Trump and the White Nationalists, the real immigration problems facing America are 1) how can we best integrate the millions of law-abiding and productive undocumented individuals already residing here into our society, and 2) how can we most fairly and efficiently insure that in the future individuals like them can be properly screened and come to our country through expanded humanitarian and legal channels. Until we resolve these, American will continue to founder with immigration and fail to maximize its many benefits. That’s bad for us, for migrants, and for the future of our nation.

As a reminder, in the context of Congressional negotiations on border security, I recently put together a list of “practical fixes” to the immigration system which would address border security, humanitarian relief, and improved compliance with Constitutional Due process without major legislative changes — mostly “tweaks” and other common sense amendments that would make outsized improvements and certainly would be an improvement on squandering $5.7 billion and getting nothing but a largely symbolic “instant white elephant” border wall in return.  So, here it is again in all its hypothetical glory:  “THE SMARTS ACT OF 2019:

https://wp.me/p8eeJm-3E3

SECURITY, MIGRATION ASSISTANCE RENEWAL, & TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ACT (“SMARTS ACT”) OF 2019

  • Federal Employees
    • Restart the Government
    • Retroactive pay raise

 

  • Enhanced Border Security
    • Fund half of “Trump’s Wall”
    • Triple the number of USCIS Asylum Officers
    • Double the number of U.S. Immigration Judges and Court Staff
    • Additional Port of Entry (“POE”) Inspectors
    • Improvements in POE infrastructure, technology, and technology between POEs
    • Additional Intelligence, Anti-Smuggling, and Undercover Agents for DHS
    • Anything else that both parties agree upon

 

  • Humanitarian Assistance
    • Road to citizenship for a Dreamers & TPSers
    • Prohibit family separation
    • Funding for alternatives to detention
    • Grants to NGOs for assisting arriving asylum applicants with temporary housing and resettlement issues
    • Require re-establishment of U.S. Refugee Program in the Northern Triangle

 

  • Asylum Process
    • Require Asylum Offices to consider in the first instance all asylum applications including those generated by the “credible fear” process as well as all so-called “defensive applications”

 

  • Immigration Court Improvements
    • Grants and requirements that DHS & EOIR work with NGOs and the private bar with a goal of achieving 100% representation of asylum applicants
    • Money to expand and encourage the training and certification of more non-attorneys as “accredited representatives” to represent asylum seekers pro bono before the Asylum Offices and the Immigration Courts on behalf of approved NGOs
    • Vacate Matter of A-B-and reinstate Matter of A-R-C-G-as the rule for domestic violence asylum applications
    • Vacate Matter of Castro-Tum and reinstate Matter of Avetisyan to allow Immigration Judges to control dockets by administratively closing certain “low priority” cases
    • Eliminate Attorney General’s authority to interfere in Immigration Court proceedings through “certification”
    • Re-establish weighing of interests of both parties consistent with Due Process as the standard for Immigration Court continuances
    • Bar AG & EOIR Director from promulgating substantive or procedural rules for Immigration Courts — grant authority to BIA to promulgate procedural rules for Immigration Courts
    • Authorize Immigration Courts to consider all Constitutional issues in proceedings
    • Authorize DHS to appeal rulings of the BIA to Circuit Courts of Appeal
    • Require EOIR to implement the statutory contempt authority of Immigration Judges, applicable equally to all parties before the courts, within 180 days
    • Bar “performance quotas” and “performance work plans” for Immigration Judges and BIA Members
    • Authorize the Immigration Court to set bonds in all cases coming within their jurisdiction
    • Fund and require EOIR to implement a nationwide electronic filing system within one year
    • Eliminate the annual 4,000 numerical cap on grants of “cancellation of removal” based on “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship”
    • Require the Asylum Office to adjudicate cancellation of removal applications with renewal in Immigration Court for those denied
    • Require EOIR to establish a credible, transparent judicial discipline and continued tenure system within one year that must include: opportunity for participation by the complainant (whether Government or private) and the Immigration Judge; representation permitted for both parties; peer input; public input; DHS input; referral to an impartial decision maker for final decision; a transparent and consistent system of sanctions incorporating principles of rehabilitation and progressive discipline; appeal rights to the MSPB

 

  • International Cooperation
    • Fund and require efforts to work with the UNHCR, Mexico, and other countries in the Hemisphere to improve asylum systems and encourage asylum seekers to exercise options besides the U.S.
    • Fund efforts to improve conditions and the rule of law in the Northern Triangle

 

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

No, it wouldn’t solve all problems overnight. But, everything beyond “Trump’s Wall” would make a substantial improvement over our current situation that would benefit enforcement, border security, human rights, Due Process, humanitarian assistance, and America. Not a bad “deal” in my view!

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

PWS

01-27-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

BUZZFEED NEWS: “Our Gang” Leader Judge Jeffrey Chase Blasts Nielsen’s Latest Disingenuous Attack On Legal Asylum Seekers — “Outrageous Move”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/the-trump-administration-will-start-sending-some-asylum

Hamed Aleaziz reports:

SAN FRANCISCO — Central American migrants seeking asylum at the US–Mexico border will be forced to remain in Mexico while their cases in the US are being processed, the Trump administration said Thursday.

The unprecedented policy change will take effect on Friday with the return of the first group of migrants at the border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, according to Vox.

The policy, titled the Migrant Protection Protocols, is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to discourage migrants, including asylum-seekers, from trying to enter the United States. Previous attempts, such as banning asylum for those who crossed without authorization, were blocked by the courts, and this effort also is likely to face a challenge in court.

Under the policy, certain migrants at the border will receive a “notice to appear” in US immigration court and will be returned to Mexico until their hearing, according to a Department of Homeland Security fact sheet. The Mexican government, according to the agency, has provided the ability for those individuals to stay in the country until their court dates in the US. On the day of their hearing, migrants will be taken to US immigration courts for their cases to be heard.

Unaccompanied children will be excluded from the policy and those from “vulnerable populations” may be excluded on a case-by-case basis.

“We have implemented an unprecedented action that will address the ongoing humanitarian and security crisis at our Southern border,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. “For far too long, our immigration system has been exploited by smugglers, traffickers, and those who have no legal right to remain in the United States. The Migrant Protection Protocols represent a methodical commonsense approach to exercising our statutory authority to require certain individuals to await their court proceedings in Mexico.”

A US official close to the process who is critical of the policy told BuzzFeed News it would lead migrants to “revert to sneaking in rather than going to ports of entry” and cause “more deaths in the desert.”

The Trump administration informed the Mexican government that it was going to be enacting the policy based on a statute stating that certain individuals can be sent back to the contiguous country they arrived from.

BuzzFeed News first reported that the administration was considering such a policy back in November.

Trump administration officials have accused asylum-seekers of gaming the US system, requesting asylum that they know they won’t qualify for so that they can remain in the country for months or years while immigration courts hear their cases.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said the policy was a circumvention of the country’s immigration laws.

“Today’s announcement creates more questions than answers. Even putting aside the unlawfulness of this action, we do not know where these asylum-seekers will be held, who will be responsible for their safety, how and where their hearings will take place, or how access to counsel will be handled,” she said in a statement Thursday.

Jeff Chase, a former immigration judge, said the move was outrageous.

“We should be allowing asylum-seekers to enter and pursue their claims according to the international legal norms,” he said. “It will obviously be much more difficult for asylum-seekers to obtain counsel and to meaningfully participate in increasingly complex legal claims from outside the country.”

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

Right on, Jeffrey! Thanks for expressing our outrage in the dishonest, deceitful, inhumane, and counterproductive actions of shallow Trump sycophant Nielsen. Another mess is sure to follow. Despite her claims, and Nielsen is an established liar, everything I’ve read indicates that Mexico is unready to implement this if it involves more than a few hundred individuals. And, if the program were that small, it wouldn’t be worth doing. The Trump Administration of incompetents has yet to carry out any major new program without screwups.

What if Trump, Nielsen, DOJ, and EOIR just did their jobs by generously and efficiently granting asylum as mandated by the Refugee Act, the Supremes in Cardoza–Fonseca, and, ironically, the BIA’s own well-established but seldom enforced precedent Mogharrabi?

What if we took 50,000 refugees directly from the Northern Triangle, as we easily could and should do?

What if the Administration worked with, rather than against, pro bono groups and NGOs so that asylum seekers could fairly and efficiently move through the system consistent with Due Process?

What if DHS enforcement actually concentrated on potential “bad guys” rather than getting sidetracked by treating refugee families like criminals?

What if Trump treated refugees like the deserving and productive human beings that they have been throughout our history and welcomed and integrated them into our society?

What if he stopped using false narratives and restrictionist White Nationalist racist lies to make policy?

What if he cut the often illegal, always “built to fail,” and grossly fiscally wasteful gimmicks, smoke, mirrors, and job avoidance and just got the job done?

We’d actually be on the way to making America great again. Too bad that neither the Trump Administration nor the GOP seems interested in doing the real work of making government function within the law and advancing the real general public interests!

PWS

01-25-19

Related posts:

  1. IMMIGRATION COURTS: “MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE ON STEROIDS” — With Court System Reeling & Asylum Applicants Suffering, Administration Plans Another Round Of Massive “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), Reports Hamed Aleaziz @ BuzzFeed News!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. TRUMP’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE IS THE REAL “SOUTHERN BORDER CRISIS” — AND, A GENUINE HUMAN TRAGEDY — The Legal Tools To Address The Crisis In The Northern Triangle Causing A Refugee Flow Exist; This Administration Stubbornly Refuses To Use Them!
  4. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”

SPECIAL COURTSIDE “PRESS RELEASE” — “Court Chaos”

COURT CHAOS

“It’s chaos on top of disaster. By the end of next week, Trump will have added at least 100,000 cases to the already existing backlog of 800,000 + cases, plus another 300,000 that former A.G. Sessions diabolically and unnecessarily promised to artificially force back into the system. That’s 4-5 years of work for the Courts even with no new filings! People with good cases are denied justice while others postpone their day of reckoning indefinitely.

Many of these cases will never be decided unless Congress reforms this broken system by removing political control from the DOJ. I call this “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”) — cases being moved around by incompetent politicos at the DOJ without ever being completed. And under Sessions, the DOJ excelled at ADR, unnecessarily and artificially “jacking” the backlog by an incredible 50%+ in less than two years of politically biased and incompetent maladministration of the system. And, that’s even with more judges on the bench! Trump and his cronies have effectively destroyed one of America’s largest and most important court systems.

It must be reformed into a court independent of Executive overreach and incompetence. A new court must be established run by apolitical expert judges with the assistance of professional court administrators accountable to those judges, not Administration politicos. It’s not rocket science, just common sense, fundamental fairness, and above all, Constitutional Due Process.”

PWS

01-25-19

Related posts:

  1. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  2. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  3. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”