"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown at the border this spring was troubled from the outset by planning shortfalls, widespread communication failures and administrative indifference to the separation of small children from their parents, according to an unpublished report by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the government’s first attempt to autopsy the chaos produced between May 5 and June 20, when President Trump abruptly halted the separations under mounting pressure from his party and members of his family.
The DHS Office of Inspector General’s review found at least 860 migrant children were left in Border Patrol holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit mandated by U.S. courts, with one minor confined for 12 days and another for 25.
Many of those children were put in chain-link holding pens in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas. The facilities were designed as short-term way stations, lacking beds and showers, while the children awaited transfer to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.
U.S. border officials in the Rio Grande Valley sector, the busiest for illegal crossings along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, held at least 564 children longer than they were supposed to, according to the report. Officials in the El Paso sector held 297 children over the legal limit.
The investigators describe a poorly coordinated interagency process that left distraught parents with little or no knowledge of their children’s whereabouts. In other instances, U.S. officials were forced to share minors’ files on Microsoft Word documents sent as email attachments because the government’s internal systems couldn’t communicate.
“Each step of this manual process is vulnerable to human error, increasing the risk that a child could become lost in the system,” the report found.
Based on observations conducted by DHS inspectors at multiple facilities along the border in late June, agents separated children too young to talk from their parents in a way that courted disaster, the report says.
“Border Patrol does not provide pre-verbal children with wrist bracelets or other means of identification, nor does Border Patrol fingerprint or photograph most children during processing to ensure that they can be easily linked with the proper file,” the report said.
“It is a priority of our agency to process and transfer all individuals in our custody to the appropriate longer-term detention agency as soon as possible,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol, said in a statement. “The safety and well-being of unaccompanied alien children . . . is our highest responsibility, and we work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement to ensure the timely and secure transfer of all unaccompanied minors in our custody as soon as placement is available from HHS.”
In its Sept. 14 response to the inspector general’s report, DHS acknowledged the “lack of information technology integration” across the key immigration systems and “sometimes” holding children beyond the 72-hour limit.
Jim Crumpacker, the DHS official who responded to the report, said the agency held children longer mainly because HHS shelter space was unavailable. But he said transferring children to less-restrictive settings is a priority.
On June 23, three days after the executive order halting the separations, DHS announced it had developed a “central database” with HHS containing location information for separated parents and minors that both departments could access to reunite families. The inspector general found no evidence of such a database, the report said.
“The OIG team asked several [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] employees, including those involved with DHS’ reunification efforts at ICE Headquarters, if they knew of such a database, and they did not,” it states. “DHS has since acknowledged to the OIG that there is no ‘direct electronic interface’ between DHS and HHS tracking systems.”
Inspectors said they continue to have doubts about the accuracy and reliability of information provided by DHS about the scope of the family separations.
In late June, a federal judge ordered the government to reunite more than 2,500 children taken from their parents, but three months later, more than 100 of those minors remain in federal custody.
The inspector general’s report also found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) restricted the flow of asylum seekers at legal ports of entry and may have inadvertently prompted them to cross illegally. One woman said an officer had turned her away three times, so she crossed illegally.
At one border crossing, the inspection team saw CBP attempt to increase its detention space by “converting former offices into makeshift hold rooms.”
The observations were made by teams of lawyers, inspectors and criminal investigators sent to the border amid concerns raised by members of Congress and the public. They made unannounced visits to CBP and ICE facilities in the border cities of El Paso and McAllen, Tex.
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Meanwhile, over at Vanity Fair, Isobel Thompson give us the “skinny” on how the self-created “Kiddie Gulag” that Sessions, Stevie Miller, and Nielsen love so much has turned into total chaos, with the most vulnerable kids among us as its victims. We’ll be feeling the effects of these cruel, inhuman, and unconstitutional policies for generations!
Three months after Donald Trump gave in to global opprobrium and discontinued his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican border, the stark impact of his zero-tolerance directive continues to unfold, with reports emerging that, in the space of a year, the number of migrant children detained by the U.S. government has spiked from 2,400 to over 13,000—despite the number of monthly border crossings remaining relatively unchanged. The increase, along with the fact that the average detainment period has jumped from 34 to 59 days, has resulted in an accommodation crisis. As a result, hundreds of children—some wearing belts inscribed with their emergency-contact information—have been packed onto buses, transported for hours, and deposited at a tented city in a stretch of desert in Tornillo, West Texas. According to The New York Times, these journeys typically occur in the middle of the night and on short notice, to prevent children from fleeing.
The optics of the child-separation crisis have been some of the worst in history for the Trump administration, and the tent city in Tornillo is no exception. The facility is reportedly run according to “guidelines” provided by the Department of Health and Human Services, but access to legal aid is limited, and children—who sleep in bunks divided by gender into blocks of 20—are given academic workbooks, but no formal teaching. In theory, the hundreds of children being sent to Tornillo every week should be held for just a short period of time; the center first opened in June as a temporary space for about 400. Since then, however, it has been expanded to accommodate 3,800 occupants for an indefinite period.
Again, the lag time is largely thanks to the White House. Typically, children labeled “unaccompanied minors” are held in federal custody until they can be paired with sponsors, who house them as their immigration case filters through the courts. But thanks to the harsh rhetoric embraced by the White House, such sponsors are now in short supply. They’re often undocumented immigrants themselves, which means that in this environment, claiming a child would put them at risk for deportation. In June, that risk became even more acute when authorities announced that potential sponsors would have to submit their fingerprints, as well as those of any adults living in their household: data that would then be passed to immigration authorities. Matthew Albence, who works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, unwittingly illustrated the problem when he testified before Congress last week that I.C.E. had arrested multiple people who had applied to sponsor unaccompanied minors. Almost three-quarters had no criminal record.
Over time, the number of detained children is only expected to increase. According to The Washington Post, the flood of Central American immigrants moving north, driven by “hunger, joblessness, and the gravitational pull of the American economy,” shows no sign of abating. The number of men who cross the border with children has reportedly risen from 7,896 in 2016 to 16,667 this year, while instances of migrants falsely claiming children as their own have reportedly increased “threefold.” “Economic opportunity and governance play much larger roles in affecting the decision for migrants to take the trip north to the United States,” Kevin McAleenan, a border-security official, told the Post, adding that “a sustained campaign that addresses both push and pull factors” is “the only solution to this crisis.”
Given the attitude of the current administration, such a campaign seems unlikely to materialize. With Congress poorly positioned to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and a suddenly swamped detention system draining money and resources and damaging the mental health of thousands of children, the escalating crisis seems poised to become an ever more serious self-inflicted thorn in the president’s side. Although the White House is confident that, as hard-liner Stephen Miller boasts, it can’t lose on immigration, it will at some point be forced to acknowledge that its draconian strategy has morphed into chaos.
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Wonder if any of these evil dudes who along with Sessions helped plan and implement the “Kiddie Gulag” knowing that it was likely in violation of the Constitution (in Federal court, DOJ lawyers didn’t even contest that a policy of intentional child separation would be unconstitutional) took out the “Bivens Insurance” offered to USG employees at relatively low-cost (I sure did!).
The only good news is that they are likely to be tied up in law suits seeking damages against them in their personal capacities for the rest of their lives!
So, perhaps there will eventually be some justice! But, that’s still won’t help traumatized kids whose lives have been screwed up forever as an illegal, immoral, and bogus, “deterrent” by a racist White Nationalist regime.
Immigration, Family Separation, Detention and Beyond: Where is the US Heading?
Alberto M. Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law Director of Immigration Clinic, GW Law
Michelle Brane
Director, Migrant Rights and Justice Program, Women’s Refugee Commission
Royce B. Murray
Policy Director American Immigration Council
This panel will discuss current issues related to the enforcement of immigration laws in the United States. The panelists will shed light on recent matters that have attracted significant media coverage, such as family separation policies, the practice of detaining families seeking asylum, and the plan advanced by the Trump Administration affecting immigrants seeking welfare benefits. The panel will discuss the domestic law implications of these issues, as well as their international law repercussions.
Closing Remarks: Paulina Vera, Supervisory Attorney, Immigration Law Clinic, GW Law Moderator: Rosa Celorio, Associate Dean, International & Comparative Legal Studies, GW Law
Tuesday, October 2, 2018 3:00-4:30 p.m.
Jacob Burns Moot Court Room [Lerner 101] Light Refreshments
Trump’s immigration policies have especially affected women and domestic violence victims
By: Tal Kopan, CNN
The Salvadoran woman could not escape her ex-husband’s abuse. Even after their divorce, he tracked her down in a town two hours away, raped her, and separately had a friend and his police officer brother threaten her directly. So she snuck into the US and applied for asylum.
Then Attorney General Jeff Sessions used her case to make it extremely difficult for her and women like her to get those protections.
The identity of the woman in the case remains anonymous. But her story is too familiar for the advocates and attorneys who work with thousands of immigrant women and immigrant women victims seeking the right to stay in the country.
Despite their stated objectives of cracking down on criminals and fraud, many of the Trump administration’s immigration policies have especially impacted the vulnerable and victims.
One policy change that could deter women victims from reporting their crimes takes effect Monday as the Senate deliberates whether to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh amid assault allegations against him, which he has vehemently denied.
Some of the changes were barely noticed. Others, like Sessions’ overhaul of asylum law, have generated numerous headlines.
But the sum total of those policies could put an already particularly vulnerable population even at risk, advocates who work with women say. And that could empower abusers and predators even further, they add, making everyone less safe.
The policies
A policy takes effect on Monday that could increase the risk of deportation for undocumented immigrant victims or witnesses of crimes. The agency that considers visa applications will begin to refer immigrants for deportation proceedings in far more cases, including when a person fails to qualify for a visa. The policy would also constrain officers’ discretion.
The new US Citizenship and Immigration Services policy specifically applies to visas designed to protect victims of violent crime and trafficking, including some created under the Violence Against Women Act. Those visas will give legal status to victims who report or testify about crimes.
The result: Victims who apply for the special visas but fall short, including for reasons like incomplete paperwork or missing a deadline, could end up in deportation proceedings. Previously, there was no guidance to refer all visa applicants who fall short to immigration court for possible deportation. Under the new policy, it’ll be the presumption. Advocates for immigrants worry the risk will be too great for immigrants on the fence about reporting their crimes.
In the Salvadoran woman’s case, Sessions ruled in June that gang and domestic violence victims generally don’t qualify for asylum, and the Department of Homeland Security applied those rules to all asylum seekers at the border and refugees applying from abroad.
Other policies that especially impact women and victims include:
‘I wouldn’t wish it even on my worst enemy’: Reunited immigrant moms write letters from detention
By Tal Kopan, CNN
The women say they were treated like dogs and told that their children would be given up for adoption. They lied awake at night, wondering if their kids were safe.
But even after being reunited with their children, they say their nightmare has not ended.
Their anguish is conveyed in a collection of letters written from one of the few immigrant family detention centers in the country, where some moms and children who were separated at the border this summer are now being held together while they await their fate. The mothers’ writings reflect a mix of despair, bewilderment and hope as they remain in government custody and legal limbo, weeks after they were reunited.
“My children were far from me and I didn’t know if they were okay, if they were eating or sleeping. I have suffered a lot,” wrote a mother identified as Elena. “ICE harmed us a lot psychologically. We can’t sleep well because my little girl thinks they are going to separate us again. … I wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone.”
The letters reflect the scars inflicted at the height of family separations this summer, when thousands of families were broken up at the border and kept apart for weeks to months at a time. They also reflect the ongoing uncertainty and emotional recovery for the families that are still detained.
The letters were collected at the Dilley detention center in Texas. They were provided via the Dilley Pro Bono Project by the Immigration Justice Campaign, a joint effort by leading immigrant advocacy and legal groups to provide access to legal support in immigrant detention centers.
The mothers speak with the Dilley Pro Bono staff in visitation trailers in the evenings and had expressed a desire to tell their stories to the public. The staff suggested writing them down, and the mothers agreed to write the letters, translated from Spanish, under pseudonyms.
Yup. Don’t let all the BKavs commotion distract you from focusing on the daily intentional and gross abuses of human rights and fundamental decency being committed by the Trump Administration.
Think a partisan Trump sycophant like BKavs would ever impartially uphold the rule of law against the abuses of the Trump Administration, particularly when it comes to treatment of women? Not a chance! He’s being put on the Supremes because Trump & the GOP are confident of his predetermined extreme right-wing agenda, his lack of objectivity, and his demonstrated inability to think outside the “box of privilege” which has allowed him to succeed and prosper (often at the expense of others).
Bucking history: Trump’s asylum policy does not represent America
BY BRUCE A. BEARDSLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/30/18 04:00 PM EDT 199
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
10
Do we know who we are as a nation?
Nursing infants separated from their mothers. Children warehoused in cages, then moved to tent cities without parents. Thousands of youngsters unaccounted for after separation at the border. Officials fumble and point fingers trying to lay the blame elsewhere. America’s human and humane dimensions seem lost. Is this who we are as a nation?
Even before American independence, settlers in the New World frequently saw themselves as morally superior: residents of the “city on the hill” serving as a beacon to others. While this beacon sometimes dimmed, we usually regained our moral compass with the passage of time — and a period of historical reflection.
Refugees and asylum seekers proliferate in the world as we close our doors to them. What has been our historical record?
The persecution of Jews in Germany was well known before Europe exploded in war in 1939, even though the death camps had not been established. Just before combat began, thousands of Jewish parents were able to send their children to safety in Great Britain and Canada. The Czech Kindertransport alone saved 669 children. These acts of hospitality by other countries are now almost universally praised — in contrast to the nearly insurmountable barriers erected then by the U.S.
After World War II, America did resettle some hundreds of thousands of refugees collected in Europe’s Displaced Persons camps. We did so while trying to avert our eyes from refugee surges in Asia. After the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Czech revolt, we helped resettle many of those who fled their native land via West Germany.
Closer to home, as Castro’s grip on Cuba tightened, thousands of Cuban youngsters came to the U.S on the “Peter Pan” flights (1960–1962). They came without their parents, and with no assurance of being reunited with them. Our country was (and remains today) at odds with Cuba politically, yet we welcomed these children and integrated them into our society.
In the two decades following the Vietnam War we resettled over a million refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. I know because I was in charge of elements of those programs, intermittently from 1975 to 1989.
The Vietnam programs had a separate category for unaccompanied minors. We worked closely with refugee camp administrators in countries of first asylum to afford these vulnerable children special protection in the refugee camps, and the potential for rapid resettlement in the U.S. and elsewhere. Yes, we were aware of, and dealt with, attempts at misrepresentation. And yes, we suspected that some refugee parents may have callously risked a child’s life to provide an “anchor” for the parent’s future migration. But the child was there.
When I was with the refugee programs in Malaysia and Thailand, my duties included urging the host countries to treat all asylum seekers humanely. In that we proudly led by example. U.S. policy then was dictated by the greater good of protecting minors who were at risk through no fault of their own. Now, decades later, many of those refugees who entered our country in poverty have become personally successful, greatly contributing to our country. They include doctors, teachers, senior military officers, scholars and job-creating entrepreneurs.
Today, on our southwest border, we are confronted by a similar challenge. Today our response is much different, and contrary to our basic values. Rather than offering asylum seekers a cloak of protection, our government seems to purposely make their lives as harsh as possible (and at great expense). Is separating families, caging children, and pressuring people to request removal who we are? Now the pretext of investigating the suitability of placing a minor in a relative’s home in the U.S. has become a vehicle for finding more deportees!
This is, alas, done to the cheers of a minority of people in America. Does it make our nation “great”?
Who are we as a nation anyway? Do we know?
Bruce A. Beardsley is a retired U.S. diplomat. During his 31 years in the Foreign Service, he oversaw what were then the U.S.’s largest refugee (in Thailand) and visa (in Mexico and the Philippines) operations.
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Do you want to leave an inspirational legacy to future generations of Americans? Then, rise up and vote the Kakistocracy, put in place by a minority of voters, out of office!
In shelters from Kansas to New York, hundreds of migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in West Texas.
Until now, most undocumented children being held by federal immigration authorities had been housed in private foster homes or shelters, sleeping two or three to a room. They received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases.
But in the rows of sand-colored tents in Tornillo, Tex., children in groups of 20, separated by gender, sleep lined up in bunks. There is no school: The children are given workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited.
These midnight voyages are playing out across the country, as the federal government struggles to find room for more than 13,000 detained migrant children — the largest population ever — whose numbers have increased more than fivefold since last year.
The average length of time that migrant children spend in custody has nearly doubled over the same period, from 34 days to 59, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees their care.
To deal with the surging shelter populations, which have hovered near 90 percent of capacity since May, a mass reshuffling is underway and shows no signs of slowing. Hundreds of children are being shipped from shelters to West Texas each week, totaling more than 1,600 so far.
The camp in Tornillo operates like a small, pop-up city, about 35 miles southeast of El Paso on the Mexico border, complete with portable toilets. Air-conditioned tents that vary in size are used for housing, recreation and medical care. Originally opened in June for 30 days with a capacity of 400, it expanded in September to be able to house 3,800, and is now expected to remain open at least through the end of the year.
“It is common to use influx shelters as done on military bases in the past, and the intent is to use these temporary facilities only as long as needed,” said Evelyn Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department.
Ms. Stauffer said the need for the tent city reflected serious problems in the immigration system.
“The number of families and unaccompanied alien children apprehended are a symptom of the larger problem, namely a broken immigration system,” Ms. Stauffer said. “Their ages and the hazardous journey they take make unaccompanied alien children vulnerable to human trafficking, exploitation and abuse. That is why H.H.S. joins the president in calling on Congress to reform this broken system.”
But the mass transfers are raising alarm among immigrant advocates, who were already concerned about the lengthy periods of time migrant children are spending in federal custody.
The roughly 100 shelters that have, until now, been the main location for housing detained migrant children are licensed and monitored by state child welfare authorities, who impose requirements on safety and education as well as staff hiring and training.
The tent city in Tornillo, on the other hand, is unregulated, except for guidelines created by the Department of Health and Human Services. For example, schooling is not required there, as it is in regular migrant children shelters.
Mark Greenberg, who oversaw the care of migrant children under President Barack Obama, helped to craft the emergency shelter guidelines. He said the agency tried “to the greatest extent possible” to ensure that conditions in facilities like the one at Tornillo would mirror those in regular shelters, “but there are some ways in which that’s difficult or impossible to do.”
Several shelter workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being fired, described what they said has become standard practice for moving the children: In order to avoid escape attempts, the moves are carried out late at night because children will be less likely to try to run away. For the same reason, children are generally given little advance warning that they will be moved.
At one shelter in the Midwest whose occupants were among those recently transferred to Tornillo, about two dozen children were given just a few hours’ notice last week before they were loaded onto buses — any longer than that, according to one of the shelter workers, and the children may have panicked or tried to flee.
The children wore belts etched in pen with phone numbers for their emergency contacts. One young boy asked the shelter worker if he would be taken care of in Texas. The shelter worker replied that he would, and told him that by moving, he was making space for other children like him who were stuck at the border and needed a place to live.
Some staff members cried when they learned of the move, the shelter worker said, fearing what was in store for the children who had been in their care. Others tried to protest. But managers explained that tough choices had to be made to deal with the overflowing population.
The system for sheltering migrant children came under strain this summer, when the already large numbers were boosted by more than 2,500 young border crossers who were separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. But those children were only a fraction of the total number who are currently detained.
Most of the detained children crossed the border alone, without their parents. Some crossed illegally; others are seeking asylum.
Children who are deemed “unaccompanied minors,” either because they were separated from their parents or crossed the border alone, are held in federal custody until they can be matched with sponsors, usually relatives or family friends, who agree to house them while their immigration cases play out in the courts.
The move to Texas is meant to be temporary. Rather than send new arrivals there, the government is sending children who are likely to be released sooner, and will spend less time there—mainly older children, ages 13 to 17, who are considered close to being placed with sponsors. Still, because sponsorship placements are often protracted, immigrant advocates said there was a possibility that many of the children could be living in the tent city for months.
“Obviously we have concerns about kids falling through the cracks, not getting sufficient attention if they need attention, not getting the emotional or mental health care that they need,” said Leah Chavla, a lawyer with the Women’s Refugee Commission, an advocacy group.
“This cannot be the right solution,” Ms. Chavla said. “We need to focus on making sure that kids can get placed with sponsors and get out of custody.”
The number of detained migrant children has spiked even though monthly border crossings have remained relatively unchanged, in part because harsh rhetoric and policies introduced by the Trump administration have made it harder to place children with sponsors.
Traditionally, most sponsors have been undocumented immigrants themselves, and have feared jeopardizing their own ability to remain in the country by stepping forward to claim a child. The risk increased in June, when federal authorities announced that potential sponsors and other adult members of their households would have to submit fingerprints, and that the data would be shared with immigration authorities.
Last week, Matthew Albence, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, testified before Congress that the agency had arrested dozens of people who applied to sponsor unaccompanied minors. The agency later confirmed that 70 percent of those arrested did not have prior criminal records.
“Close to 80 percent of the individuals that are either sponsors or household members of sponsors are here in the country illegally, and a large chunk of those are criminal aliens. So we are continuing to pursue those individuals,” Mr. Albence said.
Seeking to process the children more quickly, officials introduced new rules that will require some of them to appear in court within a month of being detained, rather than after 60 days, which was the previous standard, according to shelter workers. Many will appear via video conference call, rather than in person, to plead their case for legal status to an immigration judge. Those who are deemed ineligible for relief will be swiftly deported.
The longer that children remain in custody, the more likely they are to become anxious or depressed, which can lead to violent outbursts or escape attempts, according to shelter workers and reports that have emerged from the system in recent months.
Advocates said those concerns are heightened at a larger facility like Tornillo, where signs that a child is struggling are more likely to be overlooked, because of its size. They added that moving children to the tent city without providing enough time to prepare them emotionally or to say goodbye to friends could compound trauma that many are already struggling with.
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If you don’t want to turn back the clock to 1939, get out the vote to remove this scofflaw, White Nationalist, racist Administration from power before it’s too late!
Yes, youʼve heard about the family separations. Youʼve heard about the travel ban. But there are dozens of ways the Trump administration is cracking down on immigration across many agencies, sometimes in ways so small and technical it doesnʼt make headlines. This week, the quiet bureaucratic war that’s even targeting legal immigrants.
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Long, but highly documented, compelling, and well worth the listen if you really want to know about the ugly, depraved policies of Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, Cissna, Gene Hamilton, and the rest of the White Nationalist Racist Brigade.
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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Greetings. In August 2018, Immigration Courts remained overwhelmed with record numbers of cases awaiting decision. As of August 31, 2018, the number had reached 764,561. In July, the number of cases awaiting decision was 746,049 cases. This is a significant increase – up 41 percent – compared to the 542,411 cases pending at the end of January 2017, when President Trump took office.
California, Texas, and New York have the largest backlogs in the nation at 142,260, 112,733, and 103,054 pending caseloads respectively. While California is the state with the most pending cases, New York City’s immigration court topped the list of immigration courts with highest number at 99,919 pending cases at the end of August.
To view further details see TRAC’s immigration court backlog tool:
In addition to these most recent overall figures, TRAC continues to offer free monthly reports on selected government agencies such as the FBI, ATF, DHS and the IRS. TRAC’s reports also monitor program categories such as official corruption, drugs, weapons, white collar crime and terrorism. For the latest information on prosecutions and convictions through July 2018, go to:
Even more detailed criminal enforcement information for the period from FY 1986 through August 2018 is available to TRACFed subscribers via the Express and Going Deeper tools. Go to http://tracfed.syr.edu for more information. Customized reports for a specific agency, district, program, lead charge or judge are available via the TRAC Data Interpreter, either as part of a TRACFed subscription or on a per-report basis. Go to http://trac.syr.edu/interpreter to start.
If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:
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 US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:
At approximately 20,000 more backlogged cases per month, the “Gonzo-ized” version of the US Immigration Courts are on track to jack the backlog up to 1 million by the end of FY 2019! Talk about self-inflicted, totally unnecessary chaos!
Hiring more new Immigration Judges won’t solve the problem because 1) if they do the job right, they will be slow and deliberative, 2) if they are slow, they will be fired, 3) but if they do it “Gonzo’s way” and give Due Process a pass, many of their cases will be sent back by the Courts of Appeals, adding to the mess.
Gonzo’s recent “My Way or the Highway” speech to new IJs where he unethically urged them to violate their oaths of office by ignoring relevant humanitarian factors in asylum cases (which actually are supposed to be humanitarian adjudications) and just crank out more removal orders to carry out the Administration’s White Nationalist agenda is a prime example of why more judicial bodies can’t solve the problem without a complete overhaul of the system to refocus it on Due Process — and only Due Process.
Someday, the Immigration Courts will become independent of the DOJ. That should include a professionally-administered, transparent, merit-based, judicial selection and retention system with provision for meaningful public input. (Such systems now are used for selection and retention of US Bankruptcy Judges and US Magistrate Judges.) When that happens, those Immigration Judges who “went along to get along” with Gonzo’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant, ignore Due Process system might be challenged to explain why they are best qualified to be retained in a new system that requires fair, impartial, and scholarly judges.
This court system can be fixed, but not by the likes of Gonzo Apocalypto; also, not without giving the Immigration Judges back authority over their dockets and leverage to rein in a totally undisciplined, irresponsible, unprofessional, and out of control ICE. (Responsible, professional, practical, humane leadership at DHS and ICE is also a key ingredient for a well-functioning and efficient court system.)
Amid huge backlog, L.A. will get more immigration judges
Head of national jurist group says they’re ‘being used … as a political tool.’
By Andrea Castillo
Los Angeles has the nation’s second-largest immigration court backlog, with 29 judges handling 72,000 pending cases.
That’s including four judges who started within the last few months. An additional 10 were expected to be sworn in this week, according to Judge Ashley Tabaddor, who leads the National Assn. of Immigration Judges.
But she says that won’t fix the problem.
“We’re just transparently being used as an extension of the executive branch’s law-enforcement policies, and as a political tool,” she said.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions welcomed 44 new judges earlier this month, addressing them at a kickoff for their training with the Executive Office for Immigration Review. He said the administration’s goal is to double the number of judges active when President Trump took office.
“As you take on this critically important role, I hope that you will be imaginative and inventive in order to manage a high-volume caseload,” Sessions told them. “I do not apologize for expecting you to perform, at a high level, efficiently and effectively.”
There are 351 judges in about 60 courts around the country — up from 273 judges in 2016. These judges manage a backlog of nearly 750,000 cases,a figure that has grown from a low of less than 125,000 in 1999. Last year, Sessions introduced a “streamlined hiring plan” that cut the hiring timefor immigration judge candidates by more than half.
The EOIR has the funding for 484 judges by the end of the year, spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly said.
Tabaddor said the impending quotas and production deadlines, which take effect next month, have caused severe anxiety among judges. Justice Department directives that were announced in April outlined a quota system tied to performance evaluations under which judges will be expected to complete 700 cases a year to receive a “satisfactory” rating.
Hiring more judges won’t be enough to alleviate the pressure they’re all under, Tabaddor said.
“It’s pitting the judges’ livelihood against their oath of office, which is to be impartial decision-makers,” she said, calling it an “assembly-line formula.”
Tabaddor said there also isn’t enough space for new judges, so some might not start right away. She described the downtown L.A. offices as cramped, with law clerks sharing offices or cubicles. And she said additional support staff members have yet to be hired.
Yup! As long as the Immigration Courts are under DOJ, and particularly under the rule of “Gonzo Apocalypto,” it will be an exercise in “throwing good money after bad.” As I’ve said before (perhaps in the LA Times?), what Sessions is doing is like “taking an assembly line that is producing defective cars and making it run faster so that it will produce even more defective cars.” More or less the definition of insanity, or at least “fraud, waste, and abuse” of Government resources. But, accountability went out the window as soon as Trump took over and the GOP controlled both the Executive and Congress.
For a glimpse of what Immigration Court will look like under the new “Gonzo Quotas,” check out this great video:
Newly released memo reveals secretary of homeland security signed off on family separation policy
Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen previously denied existence of policy
Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight have obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requestthat provides new insights into internal decision-making behind the separation of thousands of parents from their children at the border earlier this year.
The biggest revelation in the documents is a memo dated April 23, in which top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials urged criminal prosecution of parents crossing the border with children—the policy that led to the crisis that continues today. The memo, first reported on by the Washington Poston April 26, but never previously published, provides evidence that Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen signed off on a policy of family separation despite her repeated claims denying that there was such a policy. The Post appears to have obtained a copy of the memo prior to its signature.
The memo states that DHS could “permissibly direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors held in immigration detention so that the parent or legal guardian can be prosecuted.” It outlines three options for implementing “zero tolerance,” the policy of increased prosecution of immigration violations. Of these, it recommends “Option 3,” referring for prosecution all adults crossing the border without authorization, “including those presenting with a family unit,” as the “most effective.”
The last page of the memo contains a signature approving Option 3, but the signature—almost certainly Nielsen’s, given that the memo is addressed to her—was blacked out by FOIA officers on privacy grounds. FOIA officials also appear to have redacted the date of the signature indicating approval.
Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight intend to appeal the redaction of the memo. The Secretary of Homeland Security is a high-level public official; using privacy exemptions to hide her role in major policy decisions is unacceptable.
Open the Government and the Project On Government Oversight did obtain an unsigned, unredacted copy of the same memo, but are unable to post the full document for reasons of source protection. The full memo recommends prosecuting and separating parents because:
…it is very difficult to complete immigration proceedings and remove adults who are present as part of FMUAs [family units] at the border. In fact, only 10 percent of non-Mexican FMUA apprehended during the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 surge have been repatriated in the nearly four years since their illegal crossing. Of these options, prosecuting all amenable adults will increase the consequences for illegally entering the United States by enforcing existing law, protect children being smuggled by adults through transnational criminal organizations, and have the greatest impact on current flows.
The memo references a pilot of the zero tolerance/family separation policies in the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which the Project On Government Oversight has previously investigated. The memo does not discuss any plan for reuniting separated families, or the harmful effects of separation on children, nor does it reflect any input from the government agencies who would be responsible for caring for the separated children.
The records released in response to the FOIA also include internal DHS directives sent in June and July following court orders to stop separating families, and internal emails discussing failed efforts to bring families back together. One troubling email explains that in July, DHS leadership instructed employees to deport families as quickly as possible, as a way of clearing out space for new families. The email raises questions on whether those deportations violated due-process protections.
At least 182 children remain separated from their parents months after a court-imposed deadline requiring the administration to reunite all of the separated families, according to a court filing dated September 20. The government has not taken all necessary measures to reunify families, according to immigration rights lawyers and non-profit groups.
Katherine Hawkins, an investigator at POGO, said of the DHS documents, “This is a small part of what must be an extensive paper trail on family separation, which needs to be made public so that the officials responsible can be held to account.”
“The newly disclosed documents provide a window into the internal policymaking behind the crisis that continues to haunt thousands of children,” said Lisa Rosenberg, Executive Director of Open the Government. “The administration needs to make available records that are still secret in order to fully understand why decisions were made to separate children from their families, and who made them.”
I’ve raised this point several times before. There is obviously a “paper trail” here, and some agency lawyers knew the truth about the policy that Nielsen was denying publicly and in court.
So, where is the “due diligence” from the DOJ lawyers representing Nielsen, Sessions, the DHS, and DOJ in court? Did the DHS attorneys who knew what the true policy was call the DOJ attorneys and tell them to retract their court denials? Did the DOJ lawyers check with their DHS/ICE colleagues before telling a court that a policy they conceded was unconstitutional wasn’t in effect?
Who is lying here and what has happened to the code of ethics (formerly?) applicable to Government lawyers? And why aren’t more Federal Judges “pushing back” on DOJ attorneys for their sometimes obviously untrue and other times thinly reasoned and meagerly supported positions in court?
While Trump is the undisputed “King of Liars,” Sessions and Nielsen also have well-established reputations for intentional lack of candor and twisting and misrepresenting facts, particularly on immigration policies. So why isn’t there some higher duty on Government lawyers to do “due diligence” when dealing with these known liars?
Thanks to the fabulous Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis for passing this item along.
1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC United States 20004
Presented by: Community Projects/Legal Advocacy
Co-Sponsored by: Immigration Law Forum
Featuring:
The Honorable Lawrence O. Burman, on behalf of the National Association of Immigration Judges Lindsy Miles-Hare, Pro Bono Coordinating Attorney, Ayuda Christie Turner-Herbas, Deputy Director of Legal Services, KIND Kathryn Finley, Managing Attorney, Tahirih Justice Center Astrid Lockwood, Attorney, The Federal Practice Group Julia Bizer, Esq. Staff Attorney, CAIR Coalition Michael Lukens, Esq. Pro Bono Director; Operations Director, CAIR Coalition Natalie Roisman, National Leadership Team, Lawyer Moms of America
Our panelists are on the front lines of today’s immigration issues, providing both legal and support services. Our program will include a discussion of the current challenges and how they are being met. Additionally, organizations will provide a pathway for the WBA and its members to get involved.
Following the panel discussion, we have planned a “Day of Service” (Date: TBD), for which WBA members will be able to volunteer for discrete activities that meet the needs of each organization.
Cost:
Advance Registration
Members $25
Non-Members $35
After 09/25/2018
Members $30
Non-Members $40
Thank-you to our host Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP!
If you have heard or appeared before my distinguished former Arlington Immigration Court colleague Judge Larry Burman, you know what he “brings to the table.” And, if you haven’t, you have a real treat in store. Trust me, he’s not only super knowledgeable and down to earth, but also very funny! He’s also a big supporter of “Bench & Bar” functions and Continuing Legal Education.
Judge Burman, of course, appears solely in his capacity as an Officer of the National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”).
Many thanks to my good friend Attorney Pauline Schwartz of the Women’s Bar Association of DC for forwarding this important item.
The Family Research Council (FRC) uses discredited research and junk science to attack and vilify LGBT people. It claims they’re incestuous and “violent,” for example, a danger to children and society.
Joining them is none other than Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The news that such a high-ranking member of the Trump administration — one charged with representing the United States to the rest of the world — is choosing to attend an FRC event certainly “raises eyebrows,” as Nahal Toosi wrote for Politico.
As a former George W. Bush administration official told Toosi, “It’s unusual for a secretary of state to be at an event with ‘voter’ in the title.”
It’s much worse than that, in fact.
Pompeo, though, might feel right at home appearing with such far-right extremists. He’s spoken at numerous conferences hosted by ACT for America and Center for Security Policy, both anti-Muslim hate groups. And he’s not the only one from the Trump administration.
The Trump administration has opened its doors to the radical right. Not only are high-ranking officials speaking at events hosted by hate groups, they’re inviting extremists to consult on the administration’s policies, set its agenda and shape its rhetoric.
Both have ties to extremists who would like to see exactly such a policy out of the White House. Bannon, of course, is Trump’s former chief strategist, a man who has boasted of transforming Breitbart News into “the platform for the alt-right.” Kobach, now the secretary of state in Kansas, is a longtime lawyer for the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform. He is also one of the nation’s leading proponents of state laws that suppress the votes of the poor and people of color.
We’ve been tracking instances of extremism in the White House. In less than a year, we’ve found 160 incidents, with at least 15 different hate groups involved in some way.
That’s unacceptable. And it’s why last weekend, we went to Washington to talk to residents who — like us — won’t stand for the bigotry on display at today’s so-called Values Voter Summit.
It’s overwhelmingly clear that the “values” Pompeo will be supporting – tacitly, at the very least –will not be those of LGBT people.
They won’t be the values of the DC residents who are standing with us to say #Y’allMeansAll.
They won’t even be the values of the majority of Americans, whose government should represent their interests rather than the interests of a hate group.
Heather Nauert, a spokeswoman for the State Department, told Politico that Pompeo’s message today is “not political. It’s not a Republican or Democrat message.”
That makes no difference. He has already sent a clear message by agreeing to even appear at the summit. And we’ve all heard it.
The Editors
P.S. Here are some other pieces that we think are valuable this week:
A former senior government official who oversaw refugee resettlement under Barack Obama warned that the Trump administration’s decision to slash the refugee admissions cap to a record low could have fatal consequences.
Bob Carey, the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) under the Obama administration from 2015 to 2017, told the Guardian the new limit of 30,000 refugees per year and the Trump administration’s justification for the cap was “a new low in our history”.
“People will be harmed,” Carey said. “People will die.”
Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, announced on Monday that in the fiscal year that begins 1 October, the US will only allow up to 30,000 refugees – a sliver of 1% of the more than 68 million people forcibly displaced across the globe.
Carey and other refugee advocates said the new limit is part of a systematic effort by the US government to dismantle humanitarian protections for people fleeing violence, religious persecution and armed conflict. And they are concerned other countries will follow the US in dismantling refugee programs.
Pompeo’s announcement followed a six-month period where the US forcibly separated more than 2,600 migrant children from their parents, ended its commitment to funding the United Nations’ program for Palestinian refugees and was scrutinized by its own military officials for denying entry to Iraqis who assisted US troops.
Carey left his posting at ORR, an office in the health department, when Trump took office in January 2017. He said the refugee program – which is overseen by the health department, department of homeland security and state department – is being “managed to fail”.
“It’s really disturbing and tragic,” said Carey, who is now a fellow at the Open Society Foundations. “I think it will ultimately make the world less secure.”
Resettlement is what happens after people flee to one county and are then given a chance to start new lives in a third country. Resettlement is not what happens to most refugees: there were 19.9 million people who had fled their home country at the end of 2017, but less than 1% were resettled that year, according to the UN refugee agency.
An additional 40 million people are internally displaced and 3.1 million are seeking asylum, according to UNHCR.
With two weeks to go in the 2018 fiscal year, the US has admitted 20,918 refugees for resettlement – 46% of the current 45,000 refugee cap.
To justify the lower cap, Pompeo cited a backlog of outstanding asylum cases for draining resources. In doing so, he linked two groups that are processed differently – refugees and asylum seekers – and overstated how many asylum cases are in the backlog.
“Some will characterize the refugee ceiling as the sole barometer of America’s commitment to vulnerable people around the world,” Pompeo said. “This would be wrong.”
But humanitarian groups allege that targeting a population that is vetted more than any other immigrant group is a key indicator of the US’s humanitarian priorities under Trump.
“There is no question that from the very beginning this administration had a goal to shut down or extremely limit the refugee program,” said Michelle Brané, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission.
Brané said low refugee admissions, coupled with the Trump administration’s slate of policies and directives that limit legal and illegal immigration, has created a “pressure cooker” in the most unstable regions in the world.
“You lock people in, you don’t let them out,” Brané said. “You don’t provide them an avenue to safety. What does that mean in the end? It feels like we’re leading to a bigger crisis.”
People in the refugee resettlement community are worried that the rapid, dramatic dismantling of the program means it will be difficult to rebuild if the cap is raised in the future.
This is because with fewer refugees coming in, there is less need for refugee resettlement agencies who work as nonprofits contracted by the US government to manage the resettlement process by finding refugees housing, jobs and schools. This year, at least 20 were set to close and 40 others have cut operations, according to Reuters.
Paedia Mixon is CEO of New American Pathways, an Atlanta resettlement agency that provides assistance to all types of immigrants. “Our fears are in a short period of time you can destroy something that’s worked really well,” Mixon said.
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Yes, it took generations to build up the current NGO resettlement system. But, it has taken the Trump Administration less than two years to largely dismantle, and totally demoralize, it. Once destroyed, that system will not easily be rebuilt, if at all.
American is hurtling down a dark corridor. We must use our democratic processes to remove Trump, his White Nationalists, and their GOP enablers and supporters before it’s too late for America and the world, and most of all for the human beings whose lives depend on the international refugee protection system.
As Jake Sullivan, former senior national security adviser to Hillary Clinton told the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin: “It’s been a long time in this country since there was such a big moral gap between a big-hearted American people and their small-minded leaders.”
Once, those who picked on widows, orphans, women, and children were rightly considered to be immoral bullies and cowards, the butt of jokes. Now, we have somehow let them govern our country. That’s the very definition of a kakistocracy — government by the worst among us. Time for a change!
(1) Consistent with Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018), immigration judges have no inherent authority to terminate or dismiss removal proceedings.
(2) Immigration judges may dismiss or terminate removal proceedings only under the circumstances expressly identified in the regulations, see 8 C.F.R. § 1239.2(c), (f), or where the Department of Homeland Security fails to sustain the charges of removability against a respondent, see 8 C.F.R. § 1240.12(c).
(3) An immigration judge’s general authority to “take any other action consistent with applicable law and regulations as may be appropriate,” 8 C.F.R. § 1240.1(a)(1)(iv), does not provide any additional authority to terminate or dismiss removal proceedings beyond those authorities expressly set out in the relevant regulations.
(4) To avoid confusion, immigration judges and the Board should recognize and maintain the distinction between a dismissal under 8 C.F.R. § 1239.2(c) and a termination under 8 C.F.R. § 1239.2(f).
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Sessions seems remarkably intent on limiting the independent discretion of U.S. immigration Judges. Obviously, he doesn’t trust them to deport enough folks.
The first case, S-O-G-, appears pretty “plain vanilla.” The BIA and the Immigration Judges lack authority to review an exercise of prosecutorial discretion by the DHS. It’s a long-standing rule. Not quite sure why it merited an AG precedent, since the BIA got it right and there are other similar precedents out there.
In F-D-B-, Sessions obsesses because an Immigration Judge had the audacity to let someone who had qualified for permanent legal immigration await a visa interview in the United States, instead of being forced to “voluntarily deport’ under threat of deportation and spend part of the waiting time in Brazil. It isn’t clear why Sessions thinks it’s important to force IJs to docket and redocket this type of case in a system with a mushrooming backlog of approximately 750,000 cases. But, he did.
Bottom line: Before “terminating” or “dismissing” any case for anything other than the DHS’s failure to prove removability, the Immigration Judge must check with the DHS and get their permission. The DHS, not the Immigration Judge, controls the Immigration Courts’ docket.
ICE official stands by comparing detention centers to ‘summer camp,’ won’t say if he’d send his kids to one
By Tal Kopan, CNN
A senior Trump administration official on Tuesday stood by his controversial comments comparing the detention centers for immigrant families to “summer camp,” but declined to answer whether he’d send his own children there.
The remarks came at a congressional hearing where immigration and border security officials struggled to answer foundational questions from senators about the administration’s push to expand the detention of immigrant families and children.
Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s chief of arrests and deportations, Matthew Albence, if he stood by his comments earlier this summer that family detention centers are like “summer camp.”
“Absolutely I do,” he said.
But he demurred when asked whether he’d send his own children, or those of people he is close to, to the centers.
“Would you send your children to one of these detention centers?” she asked.
“That question’s not applicable,” he said.
Albence did say the standards for family centers are “very safe” and “humane,” and that at one he had visited, families had access to TVs, food and video games and other activities.
“The point is, the parent made the illegal entry,” Albence said when pressed further. “The parent put themselves in this position.”
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing topic was ostensibly a court settlement that governs how immigrant children can be treated by the US, including limiting the length of time a family can be involuntarily detained to 20 days. The administration is seeking to nullify that settlement and allow itself to detain far more immigrant families for far longer.
Harris’ line of questioning was one of a series from Democrats, who pressed the officials on why they’d want to expand family detention and child detention despite widely held beliefs among medical professionals that even short periods of detention can inflict permanent and devastating trauma on children. Though the hearing did not include the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the government’s program for immigrant children who are in the US on their own, senators also asked about the ongoing fallout over family separations and unaccompanied child detention.
Members of both parties pressed as to why the agencies were not pursuing other measures with bipartisan support that could streamline the immigration court system over an expensive effort to vastly expand family detention.
In June, Josue, a 21-year-old Honduran, reached a safe house in the Mexican border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas. He was there with 11 other Central American migrants. His family had spent the previous year scraping together the $3,800 necessary for this last part of his journey to the United States.
But the “safe” house was not so safe. Only miles from the border, his migration was interrupted as armed men burst into the house, kidnapping the migrants and demanding an additional $1,800 for their release. If their families couldn’t raise the money, the armed men warned, the migrants would be killed.
Every day, dramas and tragedies like this play out for the Honduran, Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants traveling through Mexico. The Trump administration’s rhetoric has repeatedly linked migrants to gangs, violence and crime, and cast undocumented immigrants as a threat to public safety. But in fact, a majority of the Central Americans arriving at the United States-Mexico border are not perpetrators but rather victims of violence, both in their home countries and during their fraught transit through Mexico.
Over the past three decades, the risks and dangers on the journey from Central America to the United States border have increased — ramped-up United States and Mexican migratory enforcement has pushed migrants onto more invisible, risky paths, and impunity in Mexico for criminal perpetrators has kept them on the streets.
Yet however daunting the risks and challenging the policies, they have not significantly put a dent in the number of Central Americans traveling north. What has changed is that hundreds of thousands of migrants make the journey to the United States along more clandestine and treacherous routes.
For Central American migrants, there is no single transportation method or route to travel through Mexico to reach the United States. Travel experiences are influenced by a migrant’s nationality, gender, age and income. If a Central American migrant hires a smuggler for transiting through Mexico — and 60 percent report hiring these guides in surveys conducted by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte — then the routes will also be determined by the smugglers’ contacts and methods. But they all have at least one thing in common: Not one is safe, and each comes with a series of risks.
As soon as migrants near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, the dangers begin. To reach Mexico’s southernmost cities, migrants with a bit of money can take local buses or hire taxis. Those with empty wallets must walk. This may include hiking for days on the sides of highways, often at night to avoid detection and the strong tropical sun. Mexican officials have focused their enforcement attention less at the physical border and more at highway checkpoints set up around 30 or 100 miles into Mexican territory, where migration authorities attempt to identify individuals transiting through the country without the appropriate documents.
Migrants fleeing violence in Central America may travel distances equivalent to that between Chicago and Miami (about 1,400 miles) or Chicago and the West Coast (more than 2,000 miles). Many are subject to crime along the way. The map shows some of the most-traveled routes.
In these desolate areas in the south of Mexico, migrants may be set upon by criminals like corrupt authorities, opportunistic local groups and members of the gangs MS-13 or Barrio 18 — the very groups that migrants may be fleeing and who have a presence in this part of Mexico.
That was the case for Josue, who was robbed by local criminals as he hiked the 40-mile stretch of remote highway between a Guatemala border city, El Ceibo, and Tenosique, a southern Mexican city. The thieves slipped out of the nearby ranch land and stripped him of his possessions, even taking his sneakers and leaving him with one of the robbers’ decrepit, fungus-covered pair. According to prosecutors in the southernmost states of Chiapas and Tabasco, these robberies and assaults are fairly common. Women are also singled out for other forms of violence, with Doctors Without Borders reporting that one-third of female migrants suffer sexual abuse while in Mexico.
To advance north, the poorest Central Americans climb aboard Mexico’s train cars (nicknamed “La Bestia,” or the Beast) and ride exposed through rain, heat and frigid wind, and with the constant fear of slipping off the sides. They also travel on high alert for the gang members or train security guards who sometimes board the trains to extort or rob the riders. Given these extreme risks — along with Mexican officials’ 2014 crackdown on migrants riding the train through the Southern Border Plan (Programa Frontera Sur) — only 12 percent of Central American migrants in 2017 reported to Colegio de la Frontera Norte researchers that they had taken the trains at any point in their journey.
Migrants with a little more money use private cars, buses or trailers and move along Mexico’s major north-south highways; they pass through the Mexican migration checkpoints by passing as locals or paying off corrupt officials. Some avoid the checkpoints altogether and hike around them. Traveling in vehicles is generally safer for migrants, but there may still be hardships from the varying quality of food, abysmal sleeping arrangements or mistreatment from their guides or fellow migrants.
At the United States border, patrol agents and a range of radars, sensors and other technology seek to block the migrants’ irregular crossing into the United States. In response, some Central Americans may attempt to cross in the remote areas in the vast California or Arizona deserts or near the border city of Ciudad Juárez. Others ask for asylum at ports of entry. But most travel up Mexico’s Gulf Coast to reach Reynosa, Tamaulipas. This city shares a border with McAllen, Tex., within the southern Rio Grande Valley. In fiscal 2017, the United States Border Patrol reported that it apprehended two-thirds of all irregular Central American migrants (104,305 in total) in this 320-mile section of the border.
On the Mexico side of the border near Reynosa, drug trafficking organizations, particularly the Gulf Cartel and the splinter groups of the Zetas, control the territory and the smuggling routes and act as unofficial tax agents. These groups offer the Central American migrants’ final security challenge and engage in their signature crime, kidnapping. Their presence gives this area the nefarious distinction of having the highest number of migrant kidnappings. Since 2011, data from Mexico’s National Migration Institute has documented 1,034 kidnapping victims in Tamaulipas — 75 percent of all migrant kidnapping victims in the country. Women and minors each account for more than a quarter of the victims.
But official numbers barely scratch the surface of the crimes committed against migrants in Mexico. Central Americans rarely report the crimes to Mexican authorities because of a lack of trust, fear of repercussions or limited knowledge of the country’s justice system. Josue is a good example. He was able to escape his captors after the Federal Police intercepted a car that was taking him to a second safe house, but he decided not to report the kidnapping given concerns over his safety.
When migrants do report these crimes, few are ever investigated or prosecuted. In July 2017, the Washington Office on Latin America reportedthat only 1 percent of crimes against migrants in Mexico ever reach a conviction.
What could push people to knowingly face these conditions or, worse, to bring their children along? For Central Americans, there is a deep chasm between migrants’ desires for safety, work and family reunification and their ability to fulfill these dreams within their own countries or legally in the United States.
In Reynosa, Josue was gearing up to try to make the hike from the border to Houston. Along with hundreds of thousands of other Central American migrants taking these same routes and escaping violence at home or in transit, he was confident that the journey would be worth it. The hope of a better and safer life in the United States was stronger than the fear of any dangers along the way.
Stephanie Leutert is the director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin.
As I always say, “we can diminish ourselves as a nation, but that won’t stop human migration.”
And, that’s doubly true when you have a disingenuous Administration that intentionally misrepresents the causes of human migration. Of course, “doubling down” on “doomed to fail” policies is going to fail and produce more chaos without materially diminishing “extralegal migration.” And, slashing refugee programs and other avenues of legal immigration are sure to compound the problem.
But, then the Trumpsters try to shift the blame for their predictable failures to the victims — if walls, cruelty, detention, family separation, denials of Due Process, and hate speech won’t stop them, let’s have more walls, crueller and more inhumane detention, more family separation, less Due Process, and spew forth more hateful xenophobic rhetoric. It’s destroying our country and our reputation; but it isn’t having any real long-term effect on migration. Almost anybody outside the Administration and their White Nationalist cheerleaders could have told them that.
