FACT: THE ROUND TABLE 🛡⚔️ HELPS LEAD THE FIGHT AGAINST EOIR CLOWN 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ SHOW’S “DYING GASP” ASSAULTS 🤮 ON THE MOST VULNERABLE AMONG US! — “Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere!” — Rev. MLK, Jr.

Knightess
Knightess of the Round Table
Hon. Ilyce Shugall
Hon. Ilyce Shugall
U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired)
Fearless “Knightess of the Round Table🛡⚔️“

Two sets of evil, scofflaw proposed regs at issue here:

MTR EOIR Comments FINAL

Round Table continuance regs comments_FINAL

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

Thanks to our leading “Warrior Queen” Ilyce and her team of knightesses and knights who took the lead on this phase of the never ending battle for “truth, justice, and the American way.”

I trust that it will take more than another pathetic “Alternative Fact Sheet” 🤥 to save the sorry bunch @ “EOIR’s Clown Tower”🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ in Falls Church from accountability for their sycophancy, false narratives, and constant assaults on due process, the rule of law, truth, and human decency. 👎🏻🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮
https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1161001/download

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style
Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Indicative and very telling that as justice further deteriorates, backlogs mushroom, productivity drops, public outrage grows, chaos reigns, (already rock bottom) morale plummets, and vulnerable humans suffer, the “malicious incompetents” 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ at EOIR spend time and public resources on this nonsense!

There will be neither racial justice nor social justice in America without “radical due process reform” that ends forever the disgraceful “Dred Scottification” of “the other” (particularly migrants of color, women, families, and, most disgustingly, children) by the EOIR Clown Courts!🤡🦹🏿‍♂️☠️ To paraphrase Rev. King, “Injustice to one is injustice to all.”

Due Process Forever!⚖️🗽🇺🇸👍🏼 EOIR’s Assault On Asylum Seekers, Never!👎🏻🏴‍☠️

PWS

12-29-20

 

 

🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻

Jacob Soboroff
Jacob Soboroff
NBC Correspondent
Jacob Soboroff at the ABC News Democratic Debate
National Constitution Center. Philadelphia, PA.
Creative Commons License

Jacob Soboroff reports for NBC News:

Inside the effort to provide mental health care to migrant families

  • SHARE THIS –
  • COPIED

Seneca Family of Agencies provides mental health care to migrant families separated by the Trump administration. NBC News’ Jacob Soboroff reports on the obstacles faced by the nonprofit in locating families.

Dec. 22, 2020

Watch Jacob’s report here.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/inside-the-effort-to-provide-mental-health-care-to-migrant-families-98295877800

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

Jacob and his terrific NBC News colleague Julia Edwards Ainsley have been at the forefront of exposing the irreparable human carnage and lasting trauma caused by the regime’s unlawful, racist, White Nationalist immigration policies (some of which were unconscionably “greenlighted” by an immoral and irresponsible Supremes GOP majority that views themselves and their rotten to the core, inhumane, right-wing ideology as above the needless human suffering they further and encourage).

The “perps” like,”Gonzo” Sessions, Grauleiter Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies” McAleenan, Noel Francisco, Rod Rosenstein, et al, walk free while the victims continue to suffer and others, like the Christ-like folks at Seneca Family of Agencies, are left to pick up the pieces! How is this “justice?”  

Our national policies  have truly abandoned Christ’s values of self-sacrifice, mercy, generosity in spirit and deed, courage in the face of oppression, human compassion, justice, and assistance  for the most vulnerable among us under the perverted and immoral “leadership” of a man and his party without humane values or respect for truth who stand for absolutely nothing that is decent in the world.

As Americans suffer and die from the pandemic he mocked, downplayed, and mishandled; unemployed Americans are dissed and shortchanged by his party of underachieving, out of touch fat cats, liars, cowards, and truth deniers; asylum seekers needlessly suffer in squalid camps in Mexico; refugees scorned, unlawfully and immorally abandoned and abused by the world’s richest country face persecution, torture, despair, and death; and non-criminals rot in DHS’s “New American Gulag,” the immoral Grifter-in-Chief lives it up at taxpayer expense for one last Christmas at his Florida resort; fumes about a fair and square election that he lost big time; savors a rash of holiday executions; delays bipartisan COVID relief; ferments treason against our republic; and pardons a wide range of scumbags, felons, war criminals, family members, cronies, fraudsters, and other totally undeserving characters. 

But, there is hope for our world at Christmas: 27 days and counting to the end of the kakistocracy, expulsion of the unqualified con-man and his motley crew of criminals and cronies, and the ascension of a real President and Vice President, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, to lead us, and perhaps our world, out of the current mess to a kinder, brighter future. That might be the best present of all this Christmas.

Due Process Forever!⚖️🗽👍🏼

PWS🎅🏻🎄😎

12-24-20

⚖️🗽JOAN HODGES WU, 🦸‍♀️😇EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ASYLUMWORKS, SPEAKS OUT ON NEW SUITS TO PROTECT HUMANITY FROM FURTHER ABUSE BY THE KAKISTOCRACY🤮☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️👎🏻! 

Joan Hodges Wu
Joan Hodges Wu
Founder & Executive Director
AsylumWorks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Tara Tidwell Cullen, NIJC, ttidwellcullen@heartlandalliance.org, (312) 833-2967
Asylum Seekers and Service Providers Sue Trump Administration

to Stop Rules that Block Access to Work Permits

WASHINGTON, D.C.(December 23, 2020) — A group of asylum seekers and immigrant services organizations are suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), purported Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, and purported Acting DHS General Counsel Chad Mizelle to vacate two rules that have drastically curtailed access to work authorization and identity documentation for people who flee to the United States and apply for asylum protection. The new rules, in effect since August, force asylum seekers to wait years for their cases to move through the backlogged immigration system before they may lawfully earn an income.

“These rules were one cruel part of the Trump administration’s continuous efforts throughout its single term in office to dismantle the United States’ commitment to provide refuge to people fleeing persecution,” said Keren Zwick, litigation director for the National Immigrant Justice Center, which is co-counsel in the case. “These particular rules betray so much of what our country is supposed to value; they try to deter asylum seekers from coming at all and deprive those who make it here of the means to support themselves and their families.”

The rules bar asylum applicants from receiving work permits for at least a year after they file their asylum applications and prevent some individuals from working for the entire duration of their cases — often several years.

Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, and Kids in Need of Defense also are providing co-counsel in the case, representing 14 individuals and three organizational plaintiffs before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The individual plaintiffs in the case are asylum seekers, including transgender women and parents with small children, who fled political persecution, gender-based violence, or gang and drug-cartel violence and are prevented under the new rules from receiving work permits. Three organizational plaintiffs — AsylumWorks, Tahirih Justice Center, and Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto — say the new rules threaten to derail their missions to provide employment assistance and legal and social services to asylum seekers. Asylum seekers’ ability to earn an income is critical for them to be able to pursue their legal cases and meet basic needs such as housing and mental and medical healthcare, and to avoid falling victim to human trafficking or other exploitation. Furthermore, in many states, work permits are the only identification documentation asylum seekers receive until they are granted protection.

“This lawsuit is about upholding basic human dignity,” said Joan Hodges-Wu, founder and executive director of AsylumWorks, lead plaintiff in the case. “Asylum seekers are simply looking for a fair shake — the chance to work, pay for their own housing, feed and clothe their families. Our asylum system should be rooted in justice and compassion. Instead, this policy forces future Americans — many of whom have already escaped unspeakable hardship — into further danger and depravity. This is a crisis the Trump Administration is determined to make worse. Denying the right to work for one year means unnecessarily delaying the time before asylum seekers can become productive, tax-paying members of the workforce, and denying our country vital frontline workers willing to risk their lives at this critical time.”

“These rules will force courageous survivors of violence into dangerously precarious living situations, needlessly compounding their suffering. They will also make it significantly more difficult for asylum seekers to afford legal representation, which we know can make a life-saving difference in these cases, and to sustain themselves and their families while they seek protection,” said Annie Daher, staff attorney at the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, co-counsel in the case. “The rules will undoubtedly result in refugees being wrongly denied asylum and ordered deported to the very dangers they have fled.”

In its comments to the Federal Register, the Trump administration said that governments should take responsibility for individuals who may be harmed by the rule, stating that asylum seekers who may become homeless as a result of the rule changes should  “become familiar with the homelessness resources provided by the state where they intend to reside.”

The plaintiffs ask the district court to vacate the proposed rules, arguing the rules violate U.S. laws and that the government did not provide adequate rationale for the harm the rules would cause. The lawsuit also argues that Wolf was not validly serving in that role when the agency issued the rules and Mizelle was no longer validly serving in that role when he signed the rules. Federal courts have already found that Wolf was not lawfully appointed to his position when he enacted other harmful immigration rules, including the administration’s failed attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Additional plaintiffs in the case offered the following statements:

Richard Caldarone, litigation counsel, Tahirih Justice Center: “Instead of allowing those fleeing violence and persecution to live their lives while they pursue relief in the United States, the government has deliberately chosen to condemn survivors and other asylum seekers to lengthy periods of homelessness, food insecurity, and unnecessary poverty. There are many understandable reasons why survivors of violence may wait more than a year to apply for asylum – including the need to heal from trauma or the need to avoid reliving painful memories. Our immigration system must uphold the right for survivors to work while their cases continue, rather than slamming the door shut to safety.”

Misha Seay, Managing Attorney, Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto: “These rules are a cruel attempt at forcing asylum seekers into poverty and homelessness if they choose to move forward with their asylum claims and wait for their day in court, which in some cases may take years. Asylum seekers will be stuck in a catch-22 of being unable to afford an attorney to help them apply for a work permit and seek asylum, and unable to lawfully work and earn a living so that they can afford to hire an attorney,” says Misha Seay, Managing Attorney at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto. “Our government’s commitment to providing protection to those fleeing persecution cannot be fulfilled if we make their everyday life impossible while they navigate that process.”

###

 

The National Immigrant Justice Center is a nongovernmental organization dedicated to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for all immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers through a unique combination of direct services, policy reform, impact litigation, and public education.

Read this statement on NIJC’s website

NATIONAL IMMIGRANT JUSTICE CENTER
224 S. Michigan Avenue, Suite 600 | Chicago, Illinois 60604
immigrantjustice.org

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

Thanks, Joan, my friend and a true hero of the NDPA, for speaking out and taking action to fight the “crimes against humanity” that continue to be committed by the kakistocracy and their baggage handlers on their way out the door!

Under Joan’s dynamic and courageous leadership, AsylumWorks has been providing support and community assistance services to asylum seekers in the D.C. area for several years. She has now expanded her organization’s mission to include impact litigation to protect and enhance the human dignity and the human rights of asylum seekers!

Check out AsylumWorks and their great programs (and contribute to this most worthy cause) at their website here:

https://asylumworks.org/

Due Process Forever!⚖️🗽🇺🇸

PWS

12-23-20

WHY EOIR 🤡 MUST GO ** CH. CI — Latest CLINIC Court Victory Over Regime Exposes Unholy (Not To Mention Unconstitutional & Unethical) Alliance Between EOIR & ICE Enforcement To Screw Kids! — The Bottom Is Unfathomably Deep @ The Deadly EOIR Clown Show🤡! —  “ICE is barred (both at the IJ and BIA levels) from seeking denials of continuances or other postponements to await adjudication of the I-589 filed with USCIS, seeking EOIR exercise of jurisdiction over an asylum claim where USCIS has initial jurisdiction under the terms of the 2013 Kim Memo, or otherwise taking the position that USCIS lacks initial jurisdiction over the class member’s asylum application.”

Michelle Mendez
Michelle Mendez
Defending Vulnerable Populations Director
Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (“CLINIC”)

Michelle Mendez @ CLINIC reports:

Court Grants Class Certification and Amends Preliminary Injunction in USCIS UC Asylum Jurisdiction Litigation

 

On December 21, 2020, the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland granted Plaintiffs’ motion for class certification in J.O.P. v. DHS, No. 19:1944, a lawsuit challenging a May 31, 2019 USCIS policy limiting USCIS asylum jurisdiction over applicants previously determined to be “unaccompanied alien children.” The court certified the following class:

 

“All individuals nationwide who prior to the effective date of a lawfully promulgated policy prospectively altering the policy set forth in the 2013 Kim Memorandum (1) were determined to be an Unaccompanied Alien Child (“UAC”); and (2) who filed an asylum application that was pending with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”); and (3) on the date they filed their asylum application with USCIS, were 18 years of age or older, or had a parent or legal guardian in the United States who is available to provide care and physical custody; and (4) for whom USCIS has not adjudicated the individual’s asylum application on the merits.”

 

Simultaneously, the court granted in part Plaintiffs’ motion to amend the nationwide preliminary injunction to prevent USCIS’s deference to EOIR jurisdictional determinations and to prevent ICE’s advocacy against USCIS initial jurisdiction. The court denied Plaintiffs’ request to amend the preliminary injunction to prevent USCIS from rejecting jurisdiction based on its expansion of the “affirmative act” exception from the 2013 Kim Memo, instead granting Plaintiffs 21 days to amend their complaint to encompass this claim. Please see CLINIC’s litigation webpage for the court’s December 21, 2020 memorandum opinion and order, as well as other case-related documents.

 

As amended, the preliminary injunction has the following components:

  • It enjoins USCIS from relying on the 2019 policy for any purpose. USCIS is barred from “rejecting jurisdiction over any asylum application filed by Plaintiffs and members of the class whose applications would have been accepted” under USCIS’s previous policy, articulated in the 2013 Kim Memo.
  • It enjoins USCIS from deferring to EOIR jurisdictional determinations. USCIS is barred from “deferring to EOIR determinations in assessing jurisdiction over asylum applications filed by Plaintiffs and members of the class.”
  • It orders USCIS to retract adverse decisions already made. USCIS must “retract any adverse decision rendered on or after June 30, 2019 that is based in whole or in part on any of the actions enjoined and restrained” as described above.
  • It enjoins ICE from advocating against USCIS initial jurisdiction. Where a class member’s asylum application is pending before USCIS, ICE is barred (both at the IJ and BIA levels) from seeking denials of continuances or other postponements to await adjudication of the I-589 filed with USCIS, seeking EOIR exercise of jurisdiction over an asylum claim where USCIS has initial jurisdiction under the terms of the 2013 Kim Memo, or otherwise taking the position that USCIS lacks initial jurisdiction over the class member’s asylum application.

Counsel for the Plaintiffs will continue to provide updates to practitioners as this litigation progresses. Advocates for clients: (1) who receive adverse decisions dated on or after June 30, 2019 that violate the terms of the amended preliminary injunction; or (2) in whose removal proceedings ICE advocates in violation of the amended preliminary injunction should contact Plaintiffs’ counsel Mary Tanagho Ross, mross@publiccounsel.org, and Kevin DeJong, KDeJong@goodwinlaw.com.

 

Thank you,

 

Michelle N. Mendez | she/her/ella/elle

Director, Defending Vulnerable Populations Program

Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC)

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

Thanks for another “great news” report, Michelle, my friend!

Finally, at long last, some Article III judges are “calling out” the highly unethical and glaringly unconstitutional “partnership” between ICE enforcement and EOIR to screw asylum seeking kids.

The EOIR White Nationalist agenda 🏴‍☠️ of limiting legitimate continuances and administrative closing to mindlessly, improperly, and inefficiently proceed in Immigration Court on matters that should be resolved through USCIS adjudication is not only thoroughly corrupt, but also totally counterproductive, as uncontrollably mounting EOIR backlogs and increasing Article III Court interventions have shown.

And, the completely unconstitutional and unethical call early on by corrupt former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions 🤮 for “his wholly owned EOIR judges” to join their “ICE enforcement partners” in racist immigrant bashing initiatives should long ago have been a basis for the Article IIIs to declare this entire ungodly mess in the Immigration Courts to be unconstitutional under the 5th and 14th Amendments.

Thanks to you and other members of the NDPA, Michelle, for all you have done and continue to do to expose corruption, illegality, and wrongdoing in the regime’s sprawling, out of control, immigration kakistocracy! Now, we need you and other members of the NDPA like you on the Federal Bench to short circuit all the BS and get sane, legal, humane policies and “best interpretations and practices” in place “from the git go” and then enforce them on recalcitrant bureaucrats.

Racial Justice in America is, as it must be, one of the top Biden-Harris priorities! 🇺🇸 It can only be achieved if the White Nationalist mess at EOIR and ICE is cleaned up and replaced with experts committed to due process, fundamental fairness, and human rights in charge! There must be new, dynamic, and courageous leadership committed to controlling and reforming the actions of civil servants throughout government who furthered Stephen Miller’s vile racist agenda unlawfully and immorally targeting immigrants of color, their families, and their communities. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (MLK, Jr.).

Time for the NDPA ⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️👩‍⚖️ to replace the EOIR Clown Show🤡!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-22-20

DUH OF DA DAY: White Nationalist Agenda, Anti-Asylum Gimmicks, Grotesque Mal-Administration Leads To Longer Waiting Times @ Disastrously Dysfunctional EOIR 🤮 — Biden-Harris Administration Must End America’s Disgraceful Star Chambers ⚰️!

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style
Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

Immigration Court Case Completion Times Jump as Delays Lengthen

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Not surprisingly, Immigration Court closures and delays in hearings for courts that are conducting hearings have drastically reduced the number of completed cases for the first two months of this fiscal year as compared with prior years at the same time.

New cases continue to drastically outpace case completions. In October and November 2020, the Immigration Courts received 29,758 new filings. This is fewer filings than usual, but still almost twice the 15,990 cases they completed.

As a result, the court’s active backlog at the end of November 2020 reached 1,281,586. This is up 18,821 cases in just the last two months. Adding to the court’s workload are not only new filings, but previously closed cases that have been reopened, remanded for reconsideration, or otherwise placed back on the court’s docket.

Disposition times for closed cases have also shot up this year. Cases disposed of in FY 2020 took on average 460 days. During the first two months of FY 2021, the courts disposed of a much smaller number of cases, but the disposition times were much longer at an average of 755 days—or 64 percent longer. The longest disposition times were found in the Cleveland Immigration Court where it took on average 1,617 days.

For the latest disposition times at each Immigration Court read the full report at:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/634/

To examine a variety of Immigration Court data, including asylum data, the backlog, MPP, and more now updated through November 2020, use TRAC’s Immigration Court tools here:

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

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

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

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://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 US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

https://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 

trac@syr.edu 

https://trac.syr.edu 

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse is a nonpartisan joint research center of the Whitman School of Management (https://whitman.syr.edu) and the Newhouse School of Public Communications (https://newhouse.syr.edu) at Syracuse University. If you know someone who would like to sign up to receive occasional email announcements and press releases, they may go to https://trac.syr.edu and click on the E-mail Alerts link at the bottom of the page. If you do not wish to receive future email announcements and wish to be removed from our list, please send an email to trac@syr.edu with REMOVE as the subject.

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

As mom used to say, “Haste makes waste.” Taking more time to decide cases would be perfectly defensible if it actually produced useful deliberation, thoughtful scholarship, and just and fair results. But, this currently is a system that must limit its intake while it develops the expertise, scholarship, analytical skills, quality control mechanisms, and best practices necessary for judicial efficiency that complies with due process and fundamental fairness (not to mention basic asylum law). That’s a “complete rebuild.”

Then, once that system is running well, it could be methodically and rationally expanded, if actually necessary. But, aimlessly building more assembly lines producing defective products and then ratcheting up the speed will, not surprisingly, produce nothing except more dangerous and defective  products.

Not exactly rocket science that a bunch of hacks implementing racist policies, trying to speed up the assembly line, engaging in “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” eradicating due process, discouraging fairness and deliberation, eliminating their own jurisdiction to control the dockets, and denying everything while mindlessly throwing more resources into a broken beyond belief “(non)system” at war with its own essential employees and those whom it (dis)serves would produce total chaos and dysfunction. Also, throw in lack of best technology and overt disregard for public health and safety.

And, while this is going on, an undisciplined, out of control, and for all practical purposes worse than useless ICE continues to pour new cases into the maelstrom at twice the rate it can get turn them out! As the late NY Met’s Manager Casey Stengel once said, “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

This is an ongoing and increasingly visible unmitigated national disgrace. It’s also an abuse of public funds and a betrayal of the public trust — fundamentals of sound government.

And, it won’t be “swept under the table” in the finest tradition of incoming Administrations. As I’ve said before, the Biden-Harris Administration either fixes EOIR🤡 immediately with some new faces with real expertise, or it “owns” it. And, the current White Nationalism infested atrocity and den of “malicious incompetence” at EOIR🤡 is not something an Administration striving to achieve equal justice and racial reconciliation should want to own!

Due Process Forever!

Hey hey, ho ho, the EOIR Clown Show 🤡 has got to go!

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

PWS

12-22-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻IN NYT OP-ED, FORMER TRUMP DOJ ATTORNEY ERICA NEWLAND ADMITS COMPLICITY! — Having Undermined Democratic Institutions, Sold False Narratives To (Too Often Willing) Federal Judges, & Participated In Racist-Inspired “Dred Scottification” (“Dehumanization”) Of the Other Is Actually a BIG Deal! — So Is The Destruction Of Due Process & Fundamental Fairness In The Immigration Courts (Now, “Clown Courts”🤡, or “America’s Star Chambers”☠️) 

Erica Newland
Erica Newland
Former DOJ Attorney
Photo source: lawfareblog.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/opinion/trump-justice-department-lawyer.html?referringSource=articleShare

. . . .

Watching the Trump campaign’s attacks on the election results, I now see what might have happened if, rather than nip and tuck the Trump agenda, responsible Justice Department attorneys had collectively — ethically, lawfully — refused to participate in President Trump’s systematic attacks on our democracy from the beginning. The attacks would have failed.

. . . .

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

Read the full op-ed at the link. That’s right Erica. Lack of ethics, morality, and failing to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law have consequences. Helping to “custom design” obvious pretexts for racist and hate inspired policies, for consumption by right-wing judges who only seek “cover” for going along  to get along with fascism, is wrong. Duh!

It’s no surprise that the clearly unconstitutional and racially and religiously bigoted “Travel Ban,” willingly embraced by an intellectually dishonest and morally compromised Supremes majority, was first on the list in Erica’s “confession.” 

But, don’t expect any apologies from the vast majority of Trumpist lawyer/enablers who violated their oaths of office or from the big time law firms (one where I was formerly a partner) who have granted them undeserved refuge at fat salaries! Nor should we expect large-scale redemption from the legions of Government lawyers in DOJ, DHS, and elsewhere who will assert the “Nuremberg defense” of “just following orders.”  But, that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t demand some accountability for participation in  what are essentially “crimes against humanity.” 

Erica’s article largely echoes what my friend and colleague Judge Jeffrey Chase, many of our colleagues in the Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, ⚔️🛡 and numerous members of the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) have been saying throughout this Administration. Indeed, I frequently have noted that the once-respected Solicitor General’s Office and EOIR operated as basically “ethics free zones” under the disgraced “leadership” of Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr.

It’s also why the the Biden-Harris team that takes over at DOJ must: 

  1. immediately remove all the current “executives” (and I use that term lightly) at EOIR as well as all members of the BIA and transfer them to positions where they can do no further damage to asylum seekers, migrants, their (often pro bono or low bono) lawyers, or the rest of humanity; 
  2. replace them with qualified individuals from the NDPA; and 
  3. be circumspect in eventually making retention decisions for Immigration Judges, taking into account public input as to the the degree to which each such judge’s jurisprudence during the Trump kakistocracy continued to reflect adherence to constitutionally required due process and fundamental fairness to migrants, respect for migrants and their representatives, best practices, and interpretations that blunted wherever reasonably possible the impact of the kakistocracy’s xenophobic, racist, White Nationalist policies. 

American justice has been ill-served by the DOJ and the Immigration Courts over the past four years. That’s something that must not be swept under the carpet (as is the habit with most incoming Administrations). 

The career Civil Service overall, and particularly complicit and often ethics-free government lawyers,  failed to put up the necessary resistance to an overtly anti-American regime with an illegal and immoral agenda. Lives were lost or irreparably ruined as a result. That’s a big-time problem that if not addressed and resolved will likely make continuance of our national democratic republic impossible.

⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️👍🏼🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Complicity Never☠️🤮🏴‍☠️👎🏻!

PWS

12-21-20

EOIR Clown Show Must Go T-Shirt
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept

   

START YOUR HOLIDAY 🎄 WEEK OFF RIGHT WITH THE “DUH” ARTICLE OF THE DAY: Bad Things Happen 🤮☠️⚰️ To Nations That Put Criminals, Incompetents, & Toadies (a/k/a “The Kakistocracy”) In Charge — “There is the dereliction of duty in the response to the pandemic, and then there is the original dereliction of duty in placing a dime-store gauleiter like Stephen Miller anywhere close to a center of power.”

Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce
American Writer & Journalist
Photo source: Charles pierce.net

https://apple.news/Au2L4FahYQKqPiFqdxmwdaA

Charles P. Pierce in Esquire:

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

—A Christmas Carol, Stave III

The Ghost of Grifters Not Yet Past was everywhere over the weekend. In the New York Times, we read about how the Ghost had arranged for a meeting of the political Chronic Ward in the White House. In the Washington Post, we read about how the Ghost had visited his feral children, Ignorance and Want, upon the land by giving them national political leaders who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel, and, worse, had no desire to learn how, even in the midst of the greatest public health crisis in a century. 

While the Times’ account of the Mad Hatter’s seditious tea party is the flashier story, it is the Post’s deep spelunking into the administration*’s brutal (and quite deliberate) mishandling of the pandemic that is more likely to resound in historical memory as the most criminal dereliction of duty in the history of the American presidency. By comparison, Herbert Hoover at the onset of the Great Depression and James Buchanan as the nation slid toward the Civil War were positive pikers in their disregard for the office they held and the country they were chosen to lead.

. . . .

And then there’s the Dauphin Prince, who apparently had some power and almost no respect, possibly because he was marginally less of a fck-up than everyone else was.
. . . .

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

Read Charlie’s complete article at the link.

The Moron-in-Chief, the Party of Putin, and their rabidly anti-American followers and fellow travelers must have exceeded Vladimir’s wildest expectations. 

And, at what a bargain price: no need for huge investments in the military, expensive weapons of mass destruction, complicated spy networks, or even major payment of bribes. Just find enough greedy, selfish, delusional, resentful, racist, dim-witted folks willing to betray our nation. Then, invest modest amounts in misinformation, flattery, fanning White Supremacy, and cyber espionage, and “puff” you’re inside the U.S. security, intelligence, and essential infrastructure system with your traitors and dupes installed throughout government and society. Heck, you own a major political party and didn’t even have to contribute billions to do it!

30 days and counting till the end of the kakistocracy and the return of hope, sanity, and competence to our national government. Let’s just hope that it’s not too late for those of us who still believe in America and for our world that is hurting for rational, far-sighted, values-based leadership!

PWS

12-21-20

⚖️🗽“HOUSTON, WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM!”  — It’s Called “EOIR” & It’s Time For The Clown Show 🤡 To Go! — Here’s My Speech Last Night To The Houston Chapter of AILA!

EOIR clown Show Must Go T-Shirt
“EOIR Clown Show Must Go” T-Shirt Custom Design Concept
Me
Me

Good evening, Houston! Hope you and yours are staying well. Thanks for joining me to help plan the next big battle for our New Due Process Army (“NDPA”).

I’m retired, so I can tell it like it is: no party line, no bureaucratic doublespeak, no BS, just the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Nevertheless, I do want to hold AILA, your organizers, you, and anyone else of any importance whatsoever harmless for the following remarks, for which I am solely responsible. To borrow the words of country music superstar Toby Keith, “it’s me baby, with your wakeup call!”

And, perhaps to state the obvious: “Houston, we’ve got a problem!” The problem is EOIR, it’s threatening our entire justice system, and I need your help to fix it!

42 days and counting left in the kakistocracy – governance by the worst among us. We got the job done in November. But, by no means is the fight to preserve our justice system and save our nation over. Indeed, in many ways it’s just beginning!

I’m dividing my presentation this evening into two parts. First, I’m going to take you from one of the highlights of my career, the Kasinga decision in 1996, to the depths of the current unmitigated disaster in our Immigration Courts. I’ll explain how policy-making by myth, inadequate leadership, followed by malicious incompetence snuffed out hope and progress and replaced it with despair and return to the dark days of Jim Crow.

Then, I’m going to tell you what needs to be done to restore and re-energize due process at EOIR, why our time is now, and why your voices as members of our New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) need to be heard loud and clear by the incoming Biden-Harris Administration.

 

* * * * * * *

We also need an AG who is advocate for human rights and immigrants’ rights. Additionally, there is a pressing need for immigration/human rights experts from the NDPA in authoritative positions in other parts of the DOJ, like the SG’s Office, OIL, and the Office of Legal Policy, as well as, of course DHS, ORR, State, and even CDC.

Remember: This isn’t “rocket science!” It’s just common sense, “practical scholarship,” best practices, moral courage, humanity, and respect for human dignity! All of which you and other members of the NDPA have in abundance! Most of all, it’s about getting the right practical experts in the key positions within the incoming Administration.

Unlike the Article III Courts, the “EOIR Clown Show” can be removed, replaced, and justice at all levels improved just by putting the right experts from the NDPA in charge right off the bat. Because these are Executive positions that do not require Senate confirmation, Mitch McConnell’s permission is not required.

Democratic Administrations, particularly the Obama Administration, have a history of not getting the job done when it comes to achievable immigration reforms within the bureaucracy. If you don’t want four more years of needless frustration, death, disorder, demeaning of humanity, and deterioration of the most important “retail level” of our justice system, let the incoming Biden Administration know: Throw out the EOIR Clown Show and bring in the experts from the NDPA to turn the Immigration Courts into real, independent courts of equal justice and humanity that will be a source of national pride, not a deadly and dangerous national embarrassment! 

Contrary to all the mindless “woe is me” suggestions that it will take decades to undo Stephen Miller’s racist nonsense, EOIR is totally fixable — BUT ONLY WITH THE RIGHT FOLKS FROM THE NDPA IN CHARGE!  It only becomes “mission impossible” if the Biden-Harris Administration approaches EOIR with the same indifference, lack of urgency, and disregard for expertise and leadership at the DOJ that often has plagued past Democratic Administrations on immigration, human rights, and social justice.

It won’t take decades, nor will it take zillions of taxpayer dollars! With the right folks in leadership positions at EOIR, support for independent problem solving (not mindless micromanagement) from the AG & DOJ, and a completely new BIA selected from the ranks of the NDPA experts, we will see drastic improvements in the delivery of justice at EOIR by this time next year. And, that will just be the beginning!

No more clueless politicos, go along to get along bureaucrats, unqualified toadies, and restrictionist holdovers calling the shots at EOIR, America’s most important, least understood, and “most fixable” court system! No more abuse of migrants and their hard-working representatives! No more ridiculous, “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” generating self-created backlogs! No more vile and stupid White Nationalist enforcement gimmicks being passed off as “policies!” No more “Amateur Night at The Bijou” when it comes to administration of the immigrant justice system at EOIR!

Get mad! Get angry! Stop the nonsense! Tell every Democrat in Congress and the Biden Administration to bring in the NDPA experts to fix EOIR! Now! Before more lives are lost, money wasted, and futures ruined! It won’t get done if we don’t speak out and demand to be heard! Let your voices ring out from banks of the Rio Grande to the shores of the Potomac, from the Gulf Coast to the centers of Government!  

This is our time! Don’t let it pass with the wrong people being put in charge — yet again! Don’t be “left at the station” as the train of immigrant justice at Justice pulls out with the best engineers left standing on the platform and the wrong folks at the controls! Some “train wrecks” aren’t survivable! 

Repeat after me: “Hey hey, ho ho, the EOIR Clown Show has got to go!” Then pass it on to the incoming Administration! Let them know, in no uncertain terms, that you’ve had enough! More than enough!

Thanks for listening, have a great evening, stay well, take care of your families, and, always remember the NDPA rallying cry, Due Process Forever!

 

Read my complete speech here:

HOUSTON

And, here’s the zoom video recording, courtesy of Roberto Blum, Esquire, of Houston AILA:

https://zoom.us/rec/share/s607ygH0DZ4E_tQqcbs_6w1nrdDjfcoY9JWlIT7FAQRKm_mdFu5iGNP5ukVWjXLI.Y_uTqJUfps7uq9St?startTime=1607558497000

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

🤮EOIR’S STUPIDITY IN MOTION: One of the audience questions last night concerned the recent mindless “scheduling orders” issued by EOIR bureaucrats masquerading as “judges.” These were the subject of immediate harsh congressional criticism, as I noted yesterday. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/12/09/kakistocracy-korner%f0%9f%8f%b4%e2%80%8d%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f-eoirs-latest-maliciously-incompetent-%f0%9f%a4%ae-attack-%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f-on-kids-earns-well-deserved-congressional-ire/

Basically, with over 1.3 million backlogged cases already on the docket, EOIR has chosen to expedite and prioritize newer asylum cases where individuals have not had time to obtain attorneys and properly prepare over hundreds of thousands, perhaps one million, of “ready to try” backlogged cases. Some of the latter undoubtedly date back to my time on the bench!

Rather than working with the private bar and ICE on a rational plan to get the cases that are ready to try heard, EOIR has chosen to rush ahead by putting “not ready for prime time” cases in front of those that have been waiting, some for many years. Apparently, the plan is to then dismiss the cases if completed asylum applications aren’t filed by the arbitrary, artificial, and unreasonable deadlines.

Remarkably, attorneys were told that if they couldn’t meet these arbitrary, unreasonable deadlines, they should “file motions.” That will 1) throw more useless paper into an un-automated system already drowning in it; 2) undoubtedly lead to wildly inconsistent adjudications among judges; and 3) generate unnecessary appeals and possible Federal court actions. Some unrepresented individuals likely will be wrongfully deported because they don’t understand what’s happening.

This is “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” in action. A great example of why “The EOIR Clown Show 🤡 has got to go!” Sooner, not later!

Let your voices be heard!

I hear lots of talk about the importance of civil rights from the Biden team. But, as we well know, “immigrants’ rights are civil rights.”

Civil rights reforms and justice for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other minorities will continue to be an unrealized dream unless and until we fix the broken and biased Immigration Court system: “The home of ‘Dred Scottification’ and the ‘21st Century Jim Crow.’” As MLK, Jr. once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat justice everywhere.”

After three decades of abject failure and “deterioration of justice at Justice,” time for some progressive new leadership at the DOJ that takes those words to heart and “connects the dots” between the continuing abuses of Black Americans in the streets and the disgraceful abuses inflicted on immigrants of color and their representatives in our 21st Century “Star Chambers” called Immigration Courts that operate within the DOJ. In my mind, appointing officials who were part of not solving the problem in the past, even if they “know” the DOJ, is not going to get the job done.

We need new faces in leadership at DOJ! That means individuals in leadership positions who have demonstrated a commitment to equal justice for all! Experts in justice rather than political and bureaucratic retreads! Time to value “real life” experiences and achievements over past participation in managing a failed and floundering DOJ bureaucracy that has been “AWOL” on equal justice and immigrant justice for far too long.

Yes, we need a “good manager” at Justice. But, a manager who has seen the problems with the justice system first-hand, through litigation or advocacy against the regime’s abuses, particularly in the Immigration Courts and with racist and unconstitutional immigrant bashing “policies.” A leader familiar with the problems at Justice, but not part of those problems in the past. Sure, that person will need personnel experts and some “bureaucratic insiders” to get the job done. But, they should be part of the team, not driving the train.

There will be no justice for all Americans without justice in our Immigration Courts! So far, I haven’t heard a direct acknowledgement and embracing of that simple fact from the Biden-Harris team. That’s a matter that should be of concern to all of us in the NDPA!

That’s why it’s so important for our voices to be heard now! Before the “train leaves the station” without the NDPA on board, which is precisely what happened in 2008!

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

 

12-10-20

THE GIBSON REPORT — 12-07-20 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

COVID-19

Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify information on the relevant government websites and with colleagues as best you can.

 

EOIR Status Overview & EOIR Court Status Map/List: Hearings in non-detained cases at courts without an announced date are postponed through, and including,January 1, 2020. NYC non-detained remains closed for hearings.

 

TOP NEWS

 

Judge Orders Government to Fully Reinstate DACA Program

NYT: Up to 300,000 additional undocumented immigrants could be allowed to apply for protection from deportation under a new court ruling. President Trump had sought to cancel the program.

 

Biden picks California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to be Secretary of Health and Human Services

ImmProf: As Attorney General, Becerra has filed 100 challenges to Trump administration policies, including many immigration and immigrant-related ones such as the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, efforts to defund sanctuary cities, addition of a U.S. citizenship question to Census 2020, and more.  Just last week Becerra won a challenge to President Trump’s public charge rule in the Ninth Circuit.

 

A Trump Immigration Policy Is Leaving Families Hungry

NYT: The “public charge” rule was supposed to ensure that green cards go only to self-sufficient immigrants, but in the pandemic, it is driving up hunger and leaving Joe Biden with a quandary.

 

Biden’s policies on immigration

WaPo: President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to make the United States a welcoming place for

immigrants, but his plans to dismantle the Trump administration’s barriers to immigration

could leave him in a quandary, especially as a new migration surge could be looming.

 

Undocumented Immigrants Are Half as Likely to Be Arrested for Violent Crimes as U.S.-Born Citizens

Scientific American: Some of the most solid evidence to date shows that President Trump’s cornerstone immigration policy was built on a wholly false premise.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

EOIR Issues Memo Consolidating and Updating Policy Regarding the Processing of Asylum Applications

EOIR issued a policy memo (PM 21-06) consolidating and replacing OPPM 00-01, Asylum Request Processing, and OPPM 13-02, The Asylum Clock. The memo concerns the processing of affirmative and defensive asylum applications, the asylum and EAD clocks, docketing and scheduling, BIA appeals, and more. AILA Doc. No. 20120702

 

EOIR Issues Guidance on “Enhanced Case Flow Processing” in Removal Proceedings

EOIR issued guidance on the implementation of an enhanced case flow processing model for non-status, non-detained cases with representation in removal proceedings. Memo is effective 12/1/20. AILA Doc. No. 20120130

 

BIA Rules on Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

BIA ruled that counsel accepting responsibility of error does not discharge the disciplinary authority complaint obligation, and respondents seeking reopening based on ineffective counsel must show probability they would’ve prevailed otherwise. Matter of Melgar, 28 I&N Dec. 169 (BIA 2020) AILA Doc. No. 20120442

 

Full 4th Circ. To Revisit Nationwide Public Charge Block

Law360: The full Fourth Circuit will revisit a lower court order blocking the Trump administration’s immigration wealth test, months after a split panel allowed the federal government to enforce the so-called public charge rule while immigrants challenge it in court.

 

CA1 Finds Petitioner Abandoned LPR Status After Living and Working in Canada for Six Years

The court denied the petition for review, finding that the petitioner, a Lebanese citizen who was admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident (LPR) in 1991, had abandoned his LPR status after living and working in Canada for six years. (Mahmoud v. Barr, 11/30/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120708

 

CA1 Upholds Denial of Asylum to Haitian Petitioner Who Provided Unsupported Theory of Attackers’ Motivation

Upholding the BIA’s denial of asylum, the court held that the Haitian petitioner had failed to establish a nexus between his 2017 attack and a protected ground, where he had provided no credible evidence that the attack was motivated by his political activity. (Celicourt v. Barr, 11/17/20) AILA Doc. No. 20113034

 

CA2: Federal Court Affirms New York’s Green Light Law Allowing Undocumented Immigrants To Seek Driver’s Licenses

Gothamist: In a ruling issued Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of Erie County Clerk Michael Kearns’s 2019 lawsuit seeking to block the state’s Green Light law.

 

CA4 Finds BIA Abused Its Discretion in Denying Asylum to Former Colombian Police Officer

The court held that the BIA erred in deciding that the petitioner, a retired Colombian police officer, had not shown past persecution because threats by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were written, and because he was never physically approached. (Bedoya v. Barr, 11/25/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120133

 

CA6 Upholds Matter of Castro-Tum and Says IJs Lack General Authority to Administratively Close Cases

The court found that the Attorney General correctly interpreted 8 CFR §§1003.10 and 1003.1(d) in Matter of Castro-Tum in holding that IJs do not have the general authority to suspend indefinitely immigration proceedings by administrative closure. (Hernandez-Serrano v. Barr, 11/24/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120134

 

CA7 Finds Petitioner Failed to Exhaust Administrative Remedies Where He Made No Argument About Criminal Violence in Mexico

The court dismissed in part the petitioner’s appeal of the denial of his cancellation of removal application, finding he had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies because he did not ask the BIA to address the subject of criminal violence in Mexico. (Barrados-Zarate v. Barr, 11/24/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120145

 

CA8 Upholds BIA’s Conclusion That Somali Government Would Not Acquiesce in Any Torture of Petitioner by Al-Shabaab

Where petitioner sought Convention Against Torture (CAT) relief and argued that the Somali government would acquiesce in his torture, the court held that the record did not show that the Somali government had willfully turned a blind eye to Al-Shabaab’s activities. (Moallin v. Barr, 11/23/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120146

 

CA9 Upholds Limited Preliminary Injunctions of DHS Public Charge Rule

CA9 upheld preliminary injunctions issued against DHS’s public charge rule by district courts in California and Washington. In its order, however, the panel majority vacated the Washington court’s entry of a nationwide injunction. (City and County of San Francisco, et. al. v. USCIS 12/2/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120235

 

CA9 Declines to Rehear Vega-Anguiano v. Barr En Banc

The court issued an order amending its prior opinion and denying the rehearing en banc of Vega-Anguiano v. Barr, in which the court found a reinstatement order improper where the petitioner had shown a “gross miscarriage of justice.” (Vega-Anguiano v. Barr, 11/19/19, amended 11/24/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120147

 

CA9 Finds BIA Erred in Giving Reduced Weight to Testimony of Specialist in Gang Activity

The court held that, despite its direction to reconsider the testimony of a specialist in gang activity in Central America and its effect on petitioner’s Convention Against Torture (CAT) claim, the BIA erred on remand by according reduced weight to his testimony. (Castillo v. Barr, 11/18/20) AILA Doc. No. 20113035

 

CA9 Says Showing of Prejudice Is Not Required When Ineffective Assistance Leads to In Absentia Removal Order

Granting the petition for review and remanding, the court held that the BIA erred by treating the petitioners’ failure to show prejudice caused by alleged ineffective assistance of counsel as a basis for denying their motion to reopen removal proceedings. (Sanchez Rosales v. Barr, 11/18/20) AILA Doc. No. 20113036

 

CA11 Says INA §241(a)(5) Bars Reopening of Reinstated Removal Order Where Noncitizen Unlawfully Reentered After Removal

The court concluded that the plain language of INA §241(a)(5) bars the reopening of a reinstated removal order where a noncitizen has illegally reentered the United States following his or her initial removal, and thus denied the petition for review. (Alfaro-Garcia v. Att’y Gen., 11/30/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120709

 

District Court Orders DHS to Fully Restore DACA Program

District court orders DHS to accept first-time requests for DACA, renewal requests, and advance parole requests, based on the terms of the DACA program prior to 9/5/17 and that one-year deferred action and EADs must be extended to two years. (Batalla Vidal, et al., v. Wolf, et al., 12/4/20) AILA Doc. No. 20120701

 

Advance Copy of USCIS Notice of Extension of TPS Documentation for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal

Advance copy of USCIS notice that DHS is automatically extending the validity of TPS-related documentation for beneficiaries under TPS designations for El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal through 10/4/21. The notice will be published in the Federal Register on 12/9/20. AILA Doc. No. 20120710

 

USCIS Issues Memo on Expanding Interviews to Refugee/Asylee Relative Petitions

USCIS issued a policy memo stating that it will require most petitioners to appear for an interview in connection with Form I-730. USCIS will implement the expansion of in-person petitioner interviews in phases and will provide advance public notice before each phase is implemented. AILA Doc. No. 20113041

 

DHS Issues Supplemental Policy Guidance on the Migrant Protection Protocols

DHS issued supplemental policy guidance on MPP, including on access to information about MPP, appeals, family units, mixed-nationality family units, UACs, known physical and mental health issues, use of restraints, interagency collaboration, and ongoing changes. AILA Doc. No. 20120712

 

CBP Says Program to Collect DNA Samples from Certain Individuals in Custody Will Reach Full Operation by End of 2020

CBP announced that the pilot programs it began in January 2020 to assess collection of DNA samples from certain individuals in CBP custody have provided the information it needs to implement nationwide collection. Per CBP, the collection program will reach full operation by December 31, 2020. AILA Doc. No. 20120433

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

   

 

ImmProf

 

Monday, December 7, 2020

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Friday, December 4, 2020

Thursday, December 3, 2020

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Monday, November 30, 2020

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

Undoubtedly, the “malicious incompetents” in the regime’s immigration kakistocracy will intentionally leave a mess behind. I also recognize that construction is more difficult than destruction.

But, I don’t subscribe to the “mission impossible” tenor of the Post article above in Elizabeth’s report. Sure, the issues related to immigration are challenging. But, if Biden puts experts from the NDPA in charge they are very solvable, in months and years, not decades!

And, even if there were an immigration “surge” on the horizon, it hardly presents the “dire threat” to America’s security and prosperity that both parties have claimed it to be in the past. The “fiction of the great surge” overwhelming our nation has driven immigration policy of both parties for far too long with disastrous consequences!

In an article I recently posted, my friend and Round Table colleague retired U.S. Immigration Judge Paul Grussendorf, who also has been an Asylum Officer and worked with the UNHCR, cogently debunks the oft repeated myth of “surge theory:”

In the early days of this administration there was much hype over the “migrant caravans” composed mostly of Central Americans from the “northern triangle” countries, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, that were “invading” our country — the old “barbarian hordes” trope that is a favorite of every totalitarian regime. In fact the numbers of each such “caravan” for the most part would easily fit inside a typical college stadium. (Current demographics demonstrate that even if we admitted all of them as potential workers and residents, the U.S. would still experience labor shortfalls in the near future and they would not supplant the decline of our native-born population.)

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/12/02/round-table-champion-%f0%9f%9b%a1%e2%9a%94%ef%b8%8fjudge-paul-grussendorf-speaks-out-from-personal-experiences-on-regimes-immigration-atrocities-%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%f0%9f%a4%ae%e2%9a%b0/

Hon. Paul Grussendorf
Hon. Paul Grussendorf
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member, Round Table of Former IJs
Author
Source: Amazon.com

Indeed, immigration is likely to be a key part of our economic, jobs, and societal recovery. To make that happen, however, we need to end the “Amateur Night at the Bijou” approach that has been take by Administrations over the past two decades, bring in the pros and experts from the NDPA, and empower them to solve problems in conjunction with the private sector, NGOs, industry, labor, and international groups. Figuring out how to create mutually beneficial opportunities from the reality of human migration, rather than treating it as a “threat” that can be eliminated unilaterally (it isn’t, and it can’t) is the way to future success.

It’s not “rocket science.” But it will require cleaning out the immigration kakistocracy at EOIR, DOJ, DHS, DOS, and across Government and replacing it with qualified, professional, experts from the NDPA and letting them solve the problems!

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

12-08-20

 

 

 

🛡⚔️WITH ROUNDTABLE “FIGHTING KNIGHTESS” JUDGE SARAH BURR SPEARHEADING THE ATTACK, ICE SCOFFLAWS  🏴‍☠️ FORCED TO COMPLY WITH CONSTITUTION BY U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE! 👩‍⚖️ 

Hon. Sarah Burt
Hon. Sarah Burr
Retired U.S. Immigration Judge
Knightess of The Round Table
Photo Source: Immigrant Justice Corps website
Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judgeship

Sir Jeffrey Chase reports:

Attached is the decision of U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan of the Southern District of New York ordering ICE to present detained noncitizens before an immigration judge within 10 days of their arrest.  It was not unusual as recently as early last year for noncitizens detained by ICE who were eligible for release to wait weeks or months to see an IJ for the first time.

Sarah Burr filed a declaration in support of the litigation that counsel acknowledged was critical to the outcome. Congrats, Sarah, and thanks for your extraordinary efforts on behalf of due process!

Whether as individuals or a group, we continue to make a difference in important decisions.

Best, Jeff

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

Thanks, and congrats, Sarah!

You are indeed one of the Round Table’s leading “warrior-princesses!”

Knightess
Knightess of the Round Table

Your fighting spirit and lifelong dedication to the battle to achieve “due process for all” are a constant inspiration to all of us in the Round Table and the NDPA!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-05-20

🇺🇸“GOOD MORNING OHIO!” — MY KEYNOTE SPEECH TO AILA THIS MORNING 🗽— AN NDPA CALL TO ACTION! ⚖️— “The EOIR Clown Show Has Got To Go!”🤡👨🏻‍⚖️👎🏻

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style
Me
Me

Friends, you know, and I know, what is the biggest crisis facing the American justice system today. One that undermines and threatens racial justice, social justice, equality before the law, voting rights, American values, and indeed the very foundations of our democratic institutions and our justice system.

It’s imperative that our incoming Administration and its leaders fully recognize the overwhelming importance and extreme urgency of immediately ending the ongoing, deadly, and dangerous “Clown Show” at EOIR – the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

Under the defeated but not yet departed regime, EOIR has been weaponized by White Nationalist nativists to function as America’s Star Chambers. Once envisioned by its founders, including me, as a potential “jewel in the crown” of American justice, EOIR now has become an ungodly nightmare of anti-due process, anti-immigrant propaganda, bad judges, bogus stats, uncontrollable backlogs, malicious incompetence, stupid regulations, daily doses of irrationality, abuse of private attorneys, and institution of “worst practices.” But, it doesn’t have to be that way! No, not at all!

With courage, bold action, and, most important, the right people in place in leadership and key judicial positions, EOIR can be fixed: sooner, not later. The Immigration Courts can, indeed, through teamwork and innovation become the world’s best courts guaranteeing fairness and due process for all, promoting a model of best practices for the Federal Judiciary as a whole, and providing a trained and ready source of due-process oriented judges with strong immigration, human rights, and equal justice backgrounds for the Article III Judiciary and public policy positions.

EOIR will then be positioned for the essential transition to an Article I independent U.S. Immigration Court when we have the votes.

But, it will require a far more progressive, visionary, and aggressive approach than past Democratic Administrations. We must immediately (and legally) clear out the deadwood and get the problem solvers from the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”) — mostly now in the NGO, clinical, and private sectors, folks like you and your colleagues — in place to fix this horribly broken system.

Read my complete speech here:

OHIO AILA

DUE PROCESS FOREVER!

PWS

12-04-20

⚔️🛡SIR JEFFREY ON THE LIFE-SAVING IMPORTANCE OF COMMENTING: Yeah, Preparing Regulatory Comments Is A Royal Pain In The Butt, Particularly When You Know The Malicious Incompetents In The White Nationalist Regime Won’t Pay Any Attention — But, Federal Judges 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️ Often Do!

Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2020/12/2/pangea-v-dhs-the-power-of-comments&source=gmail-imap&ust=1607531177000000&usg=AOvVaw2vQATGEpuX0Oss0KcQPyVx

Pangea v. DHS: The Power of Comments

The constant stream of proposed regulations relating to our immigration laws has led to a continuous call to the public to submit comments to those rules.  Individuals and organizations have responded in large numbers, in spite of the short 30 day comment windows this administrative has generally afforded.  For those who have questioned the purpose of submitting comments or have wondered if the effort was worth it, I point to the recent decision of U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston in the Northern District of California in Pangea Legal Services v. DHS granting a temporary restraining order against regulations that classify a wide range of crimes as bars to asylum eligibility.

As background, I would like to point to the explanation of the notice and comment procedures provided by U.S. District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly last year in CAIR Coalition v. Trump.  In that case, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security attempted to bypass the process by publishing final rules with no opportunity to comment.  Judge Kelly (who happens to be a Trump appointee) found that the avoidance of comments invalidated the regulations, explaining that the “procedures are not a mere formality.  They are designed (1) to ensure that agency regulations are tested via exposure to diverse public comment; (2) to ensure fairness to affected parties, and (3) to give affected parties an opportunity to develop evidence in the record to support their objections to the rule and thereby enhance the quality of judicial review.”

It is further worth noting that comments become part of the public record, and that the Administrative Procedures Act requires the agency to respond to all significant comments before the regulations can become final.

In accordance with this scheme, a brief comment period was provided as to the regulations covered in Pangea.  The proposed rule sought to expand the category of “particularly serious crimes” that Congress has designated as a bar to asylum.  Instead of allowing immigration judges to make such determinations on a case-by-case basis, the new rule sought to add a broad range of criminal conduct that the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security originally argued should categorically bar asylum as particularly serious crimes.

Commenters pointed out the flaws with this proposal, not the least of which was some of the offenses are not particularly serious.  The crimes include harboring certain noncitizens (even if they are family members), or possessing or using false identity documents (for example, to work and support one’s family).  These offenses are a far cry from the type of behavior that would pose such a threat to society as to outweigh the obligation to provide refugee protection.  In publishing the final rule, the Departments did acknowledge these concerns raised in the comments.  However, as explained above, more than mere acknowledgement was required.

Although Judge Illston found numerous reasons to support the granting of the temporary restraining order, one of those reasons was the Departments’ failure to respond to the above comments as required.  As Judge Illston wrote, “when commenters pointed out that the new bars would include minor conduct and conduct that cannot be categorized as particularly serious or even dangerous, the Departments either declined to respond or else relied on their authority under § 1158(b)(2)(C).”

In other words, when the comments received caused the Departments to realize that their claimed justification for the rule under the statute’s “particularly serious crime” provision was problematic, instead of addressing those comments as they were required to do, the agencies instead replied “Particularly serious crimes?  Is that what you thought we said?  We meant they were similar to particularly serious crimes.  Sorry for the confusion; let’s just say the changes fall under section 1158(b)(2)(C) for the sake of clarity.”

That section which  the Departments now chose to rely on contains vague language allowing the Attorney General to establish by regulation “additional limitations and exceptions, consistent with this section” under which noncitizens might be ineligible for asylum.  The Departments might not have noticed the words “consistent with this section,” which would seem to rule out their disregarding the fact that Congress had allowed only a few narrow statutory limitations to the right to asylum that tend to be consistent with international law.  That might explain their reading of the clause as an invitation to impose any limitation on asylum the Departments desired, with no regard to international law obligations.

But besides from the permissibility of the Departments’ interpretation of the clause, Judge Illston categorized their tactics as evasion.  The judge wrote that “the Departments initially stated they were relying in part on their authority to designate new offenses as particularly serious crimes. They then disclaimed reliance on that authority but said the new offenses were ‘similar to’ particularly serious crimes… And they declined to address commenters’ concerns that the Rule now bars crimes that do not rise to the level of particularly serious because, according to the Departments, they are not, in fact, designating new particularly serious crimes and any comments to that point ‘are outside the scope of this rulemaking.’”

Much thanks are owed to the lawyers and organizations who litigated and filed supporting briefs in Pangea; they managed to block yet another effort by this administration that sought to undermine the very nature of refugee protection.  But thanks are also due to those who took the time and effort to submit comments.  Hopefully, this will provide inspiration to continue to submit comments to new regulations still being proposed in these final days before what will hopefully be a return to normalcy, decency, and respect for the rule of law.

Copyright 2020 Jeffrey S. Chase.  All rights reserved.

Republished by permission.

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

While many Federal Judges have been receptive and stopped illegal (and often immoral) regulations in their tracks, there is one key group of jurists so in the regime’s White Nationalist pocket that they don’t pay any much attention. That is the GOP majority on the Supremes, who have happily treated the Trump/Miller racist agenda of “Dred Scottification” of asylum seekers and other migrants with kid gloves. At the request of an “ethics free” Solicitor General, the majority has used corrupt procedural moves to interfere with the lower courts and advance the regime’s agenda while accepting obvious factually and legally inaccurate “pretexts” to “justify” the regime’s extreme, racist, dehumanizing actions. 

Imagine all the positives for America that could be accomplished if  all of the time and resources devoted to blocking an avalanche of illegal regulations and litigating them through the Federal courts were instead devoted to working for the public good. That’s actually what government is supposed to do. But, fascist regimes and their enablers, not so much.

Ultimately, better qualified, more scholarly, human, and humane Justices —  judges distinguished for their wisdom, courage, humanity and constructive problem solving abilities rather than adherence to some far-right agenda — on the Supremes will be necessary for a better, more equal, America.

Life tenure means it will be a slow process of getting the right “Supreme Team” in place. But, one that needs to begin somewhere. A remade U.S. Immigration Court seems like a good starting place for building a better Federal Judiciary at all levels, bottom to top!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-03-20

ROUND TABLE CHAMPION 🛡⚔️JUDGE PAUL GRUSSENDORF SPEAKS OUT FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCES ON REGIME’S IMMIGRATION ATROCITIES, ☠️🤮⚰️ URGENT NEED FOR PRACTICAL HUMANITARIAN REFORMS — “The sham is that no law enforcement body in the country, federal or state, has a zero tolerance policy, simply because no one has the resources to detain, charge, prosecute, adjudicate and jail all offenders. (This stark reality is in fact the reason for the plea bargaining system in criminal court).”

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”
Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style
Sessions in a cage
Jeff Sessions’ Cage by J.D. Crowe, Alabama Media Group/AL.com
Republished under license
Trump Dumping Asylum Seekers in Hondiras
Dumping Asylum Seekers in Honduras
Artist: Monte Wolverton
Reproduced under license
Hon. Paul Grussendorf
Hon. Paul Grussendorf
U.S. Immigration Judge (Ret.)
Member, Round Table of Former IJs
Author
Source: Amazon.com

https://paulgrussendorf-19333.medium.com/trumps-asylum-immigration-policies-must-be-rolled-back-82de743ab175

Trump’s Asylum & Immigration Policies Must be Rolled Back

pastedGraphic.png

Paul Grussendorf

6 days ago·17 min read

“Stephen Miller, the self-hating white nationalist who has dictated this administration’s immigration policy from the beginning, was once a staffer for then-Senator Jeff Sessions. Miller subscribes to the ‘white replacement’ or ‘white genocide’ theory that the brown-skinned migrant hordes will replace the superior descendants of Western civilization if not stopped.”

In 2016, after a legal career of 30 years in refugee and asylum protection, including eight years as a federal refugee officer and seven years as an immigration judge, I accepted a position in the Arlington, Virginia asylum office as a Supervisory Asylum Officer. I had tremendous respect for the U.S. asylum program and I knew from experience that most asylum officers choose the job as a humanitarian calling; their ranks include many attorneys and individuals with graduate degrees, with experience in the Peace Corps and other humanitarian backgrounds. And I can affirm that Asylum Officers have the hardest job of any immigration officers in USCIS-United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, due to the complex and ever-changing asylum law, and the nature of the intensive interviews.

The law enforcement side of our immigration system is exercised by ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a sub-agency of DHS that was created, along with Department of Homeland Security, in 2003 after the tragedy of 9/11. ICE officers are hired from a completely different profile of applicants and receive much less training in the humanitarian aspect of immigration law. The equivalent at the border is CBP — Customs and Border Protection.

The Netflix Series Immigrant Nation, airing in August 2020, exposes how, soon after Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency, he and his nativist cronies put into place a series of executive measures designed to practically eliminate refugee admissions; to curtail and eventually eliminate access to our asylum system; and even to severely reduce lawful migration to the United States. Virtually all of these executive measures are unlawful, in conflict with our nation’s immigration statute and in violation of our international treaty obligations, and even demonstrably harmful to the economic well-being of the U.S. They have all been challenged in court and practically every such executive measure has been deemed unlawful by federal district and appellate courts, yet the anti-immigrant juggernaut sails on. Recently the GAO — Government Accounting Office, an independent body, declared that, according to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act the current Acting Directors of both DHS, Chad Wolf, and USCIS, Ken Cuccinelli, were unlawfully appointed, and presumably every edict that they have issued since their appointments this past year will also be deemed unlawful.

One of the first ignoble acts of the administration’s new appointee to head U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, Director Lee Cissna, was the removal of this truism from the agency’s mission statement: “America is a Nation of Immigrants.” Why would the head of the agency that receives all applications for visas, both temporary and permanent, and for asylum and refugee protection choose to redact such seemingly innocuous and self-evident verbiage from the agency’s mission statement?

In the same time frame the Department of Housing and Urban Development, headed by Trump’s appointee Ben Carson, removed the words “inclusion” and “free from discrimination” from its mission statement. We’ve seen in history how totalitarian regimes try to control the dialogue within their populace by changing and sanitizing language, including the use of language within federal institutions.

When this White House requested a study to map the net costs of refugees, conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, and the results showed a net benefit to the economy over a period of ten years of $63 billion, the White House buried the study. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/refugees-revenue-cost-report-trump.htm

Simultaneously the administration was implementing the so-called Muslim ban against citizens and residents of seven mostly-Muslim countries out of supposedly national security reasons. No one has ever explained why Saudi Arabia, the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 bombers, was not included in the list. (Saudi Arabia is also the home of the Al Qaeda sympathizer who shot up the Naval Air Station at Pensacola,Florida Air Base in December, 2019, killing three sailors and wounding eight.)

In the early days of this administration there was much hype over the “migrant caravans” composed mostly of Central Americans from the “northern triangle” countries, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, that were “invading” our country — the old “barbarian hordes” trope that is a favorite of every totalitarian regime. In fact the numbers of each such “caravan” for the most part would easily fit inside a typical college stadium. (Current demographics demonstrate that even if we admitted all of them as potential workers and residents, the U.S. would still experience labor shortfalls in the near future and they would not supplant the decline of our native-born population.)

In the final months of 2016, I traveled with a group of asylum and refugee officers to San Salvador where we interviewed and vetted minors who were requesting refugee protection because of threats to themselves and their families by the ruthless MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. The children we spoke with or their parents had all received such threats as, “Either you work for us or you and your parents will be dead next week,” or “Give me your daughter or you have two days to leave the country.” And they all knew neighbors or close relatives who had died when such threats were ignored. We felt gratified knowing that we were granting these kids a lifeline of resettlement to the U.S.. I would only hope that any American father or mother, if ever faced with such a choice by a credible threat, would have the courage and means to flee across borders in order to protect their children, just as those parents joining the caravans with their children have chosen to do.

The new administration ordered a halt to such in-country interviews and even the resettlement of the cases we had already approved for travel. Its spokesmen have continuously and falsely characterized such asylum applicants as fraudsters who are gaming the system. The administration’s first morally challenged Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, claimed there was a conspiracy of corrupt attorneys who are manufacturing all of their stories. Believe me, they are not manufactured. All credible international reporters, including our own State Department, rebut the claim that such migrants are merely seeking jobs in the U.S. International reports affirm that some gangs in El Salvador are able to maintain such power and territorial control that they exercise the functioning equivalent of State authority, making it impossible for potential victims to resist their demands.

Sessions even admonished the assembled group of immigration judges at a conference, telling them they must not let their humanitarian impulses interfere with some fictitious mandate to deport as many applicants as possible. (Stephen Miller, the self-hating white nationalist who has dictated this administration’s immigration policy from the beginning, was once a staffer for then-Senator Jeff Sessions. Miller subscribes to the “white replacement” or “white genocide” theory that the brown-skinned migrant hordes will replace the superior descendants of Western civilization if not stopped.)

Jeff Sessions also chose to meddle in the administration of the immigration courts, in such a bungling manner that his mandated reforms achieved the opposite of his goal to reduce backlogs. By restricting the ways in which immigration judges can control their own docket, such as eliminating a judge’s ability to place a case on hold or “administratively close” a case while collateral legal action is ongoing in the migrant’s case, and by taking away ICE trial attorneys’ discretion to agree to grants of compelling cases, backlogs blossomed by the tens of thousands — within the two and a half years of this administration from approximately 500,000 to currently one and a half million.

The Netflix film crew obtained unprecedented access to ICE and CBP operations in the making of their series. I have trained asylum officers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center at Glencoe, Georgia, featured in the first episode of the Netflix series, and I have supervised asylum officers at the ICE family detention centers in Texas featured in the first episode. And I experienced, along with my colleagues, the devastating effects of the administration’s continuing attempts to deter refugees from coming to our southern border through abuse and cruelty, the so-called family separation policy. It is telling to see how many ICE and CBP officers and supervisors conceded, on camera, that the deterrence of ripping children from their parents’ arms upon arrival at the border is cruel and inhumane and un-American, but they felt compelled to follow the orders because “it’s the law.”

The so-called Zero Tolerance policy that was advanced by retired Marine General Kelly, first DHS Secretary and later White House Chief of Staff, and AG Sessions was a sham from the get-go. An impossible task, launched for public consumption and to create the impression that only by locking up all unlawful border crossers could any order be returned to the enforcement of our laws. The sham is that no law enforcement body in the country, federal or state, has a zero tolerance policy, simply because no one has the resources to detain, charge, prosecute, adjudicate and jail all offenders. (This stark reality is in fact the reason for the plea bargaining system in criminal court). In my career I observed how the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in Washington, D.C., and in San Diego, would, within their discretion, “no-paper” cases they considered too minor or insignificant to prosecute, saving their powder for bigger game. This was also the policy that the Obama Administration, under guidance of then DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, established as ICE policy, when ICE agents and prosecuting attorneys were advised to let the low-hanging fruit go, such as hard-working but undocumented laborers, and concentrate instead on serious felons for apprehension and removal. The admitted consequences of this administration’s Zero Tolerance policy was to require all migrants be detained and prosecuted. Since children cannot be detained in an adult facility, they were to be separated from their parents, in order to achieve the maximum of trauma and pain upon the children and their parents. The trauma itself was to be a deterrent to future unlawful crossers, by “sending a message” not to come to the U.S. The notorious photos of kids in cages have tarnished our international reputation and provided talking points for terrorists.

Netflix film crews accompanied agents on raids in multiple locations, when the Zero Tolerance policy initially led to mass inland roundups. The cameras recorded agents blatantly lying to targets about who they are and their authority to enter private dwellings and arrest suspects without criminal arrest warrants, clear violations of the Fourth Amendment. We see numerous ICE veterans, and even FODs-Field Office Directors — lamenting the new ‘catch everyone’ policy, knowing from experience that such tactics are inhumane and bound to fail in the long run.

We see a gung-ho ICE public affairs officer trying to convince the Field Office Director of the Charlotte, North Carolina office to lie in a press briefing and indicate that 90% of the migrants detained in a community-wide sweep have criminal records; the FOD twice corrects him that the correct figure is 30–35%, meaning the remaining 70% are harmless field workers, hotel employees, construction workers or single mothers with U.S. citizen children.

Even though political appointees such as DHS Secretary Kirsjten Nielsen and AG Sessions were willing to blatantly lie to Congress about the motivation and consequences of such cruel policies, they were still tossed out by the president when the reality on the ground impaired their ability to achieve deportation numbers sufficient to satisfy the Nativist in Chief. Ultimately it took an even more barbaric policy, the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), another unlawful executive order, to force legitimate asylum seekers to remain on the Mexican side of the border while their cases were piling up in the bureaucracy. MPP is Orwellian double-speak, because the migrants, rather than being protected, are being sent into circumstances where they are easy prey for cartels targeting them and are notoriously subject to kidnappings, rapes, robberies and murders. No migrant being forced to wait for months in tents or temporary shelters along the border is safe.

Most disappointing to me as a Supervisory Asylum Officer was how management at the Arlington Asylum office, as soon as the MPP operating instructions came down in early 2019, was so willing to coerce asylum officers into violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the U.S. At an internal meeting with management and the asylum officers, supposedly to hash out the ground rules of this new MPP program, one of my officers complained that he felt both ethically and morally conflicted for the first time in his career, knowing that forcing asylum seekers to wait in Ciudad Juarez, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, was a violation of his oath and his training to offer protection to asylum seekers.

I wondered how our managers could justify to themselves the cruel and unlawful policies they were insisting that their subordinates carry out. Were they hoping that the federal courts would soon overturn the blatantly illegal policy and they would thus be off the hook? Were they thinking that at least they, as a federal officer with some limited power, were better than whoever might replace them if they were to resign? I’m sure that is how many attorneys and jurists, working within totalitarian regimes, justify their collaboration and acceptance of policies that are dehumanizing and deadly. When they were asked by their subordinates for justification they threw up a disingenuous wall of semantics, and when asked what procedures Customs and Border Protection were following in the context of MPP, they were told, “We believe CBP knows how to do their jobs.” Basically, just shut up and do what we tell you to do.

I was one of the first supervisors sent to oversee our officers conducting the new MPP screening interviews at the San Ysidro border crossing south of San Diego. Under the new guidelines the migrant must demonstrate to the asylum officer that it is “more likely than not” that they would meet serious harm if forced to wait for many months in Mexico until returning for an audience in front of an immigration judge, in order to be exempted from the requirement of waiting in Mexico. One of my very conscientious officers decided to refer for protection a young Guatemalan woman who had been held captive in an apartment in Tijuana by her domestic partner and brutalized and assaulted, and then viciously stalked when she fled from the dwelling. She should be allowed to remain in the U.S. pending her court date because it was clearly too dangerous for her to return to where her tormentor could easily locate her. I reviewed the interview notes and consulted with my officer and I agreed that it was a good case for protection. We informed CBP and our chain of command of the decision. The next day I received a call from the Deputy Director of the Arlington Asylum office., Jennifer Rellis. I was told that we had to be very careful with our assessments of the MPP cases because the “front office” had eyes on these cases. I was instructed to overturn our decision and to deny the young woman protection. And I was instructed that, going forward, any time I was inclined to approve any of my officers’ decisions to grant protection, I must first have one of my managers also review and sign off on it. There was no such requirement if we decided to deny protection to an applicant. Thus a presumption was created that we should deny protection in our MPP adjudications, a reversal of all of our training as asylum and refugee officers, and a blatant violation of our own statute and of U.N. refugee guidelines. In the following months this presumption against protection has continued to be enforced.

I wondered how Ms. Rellis could live with herself in so callously stripping me of my discretion to afford protection to legitimate refugees, given her training as a humanitarian lawyer. I’m sure if asked, she would argue we have no choice but to comply, and we can still protect asylum seekers within the limits of this new program. But there was no articulable reason why she would order me to enact an unlawful presumption of ‘not qualified’ where none exists in our asylum statute, regulation, case law, or international refugee law. The fact that such managers, whom we had always believed were motivated by their own humanitarian commitments, would so enthusiastically fall in line with a blatantly unlawful program caused great distress among the ranks of asylum officers. Many of my colleagues sought reassignment to other divisions within USCIS or even left the agency altogether. When I received that phone call I also began making arrangements to leave what had become a compromised agency.

Only months after I departed in June, the much-beloved Director of the Asylum Division was reassigned by the unlawfully appointed Acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli to a management position in an uncontroversial department of USCIS. It was conceded that he had lamented to his asylum officers in an internal e-mail that it was unfortunate that the troops were being asked to adjust to these new policies with no forewarning or opportunity to adequately train.

It is remarkable that American Federation of Government Employees Union Local 1924, the union that represents asylum officers, has submitted “friend-of-the-court” briefs in numerous lawsuits against the administration’s attempts to implement the MPP program and otherwise curtail and dismantle the asylum program; and that Union Local 1924 President Michael Knowles has testified before Congress in opposition to such policies.

Jeff Session’s replacement AG William Barr has shown himself willing to continue the dismantling of our asylum program. He issued an edict that immigration judges would no longer have the discretion to grant bonds to asylum seekers in custody — clearly another attempt to discourage applicants from seeking shelter in the U.S. through the use of cruelty. This is an issue that is especially dear to my heart, as it has always been my principle that no asylum applicant should remain detained a day longer than necessary for routine administrative procedures. In fact, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013, at a time that comprehensive immigration reform was optimistically expected to be passed, in favor of granting immigration judges additional authority to issue bonds. My proposal wound up in the Senate’s draft legislation, which regretfully was never even taken up by the House. (In a meeting with Senator Marco Rubio’s immigration staffer I was assured that “the Senator is behind your proposals 100%.” During his subsequent presidential campaign in 2016 Rubio claimed he had never been in favor of comprehensive immigration reform). Again, several weeks after Barr’s edict against bond, a federal court blocked Barr’s draconian and heartless ban on conditional release from custody of asylum seekers from taking effect.

From the earliest campaign rallies in 2016, Trump has used fear and hatred of others to divide Americans and energize his base. The forefathers of most European Americans gained entry to the U.S. in exactly the same fashion as all those “illegal aliens” at our southern border; by showing up and asking for admission, at Ellis Island, at a time when there were no immigration controls in place other than routine screening for communicable diseases. Today the vast majority of Americans would not qualify for admission if measured against the standards this administration is trying to implement.

I was a refugee officer in the field at the time of the current President’s election. My colleagues and I were already conducting “extreme vetting” on Syrian, Iraqi, Somali, and numerous other populations, in conjunction with security resources of the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and Pentagon, years before this President decided to use fear as a means of control. My last assignment at the Refugee Affairs Division in 2015, before transferring to the asylum program, was to assist in the heightened vetting of all Syrian applicants at headquarters. Ironically, it is demonstrable that, on average, Syrian and Iraqi migrants to the U.S. are among the highest educated migrants in sciences and technology.

Refugee Admissions Decimated

During the last year of the Obama administration, in the context of the worst international refugee crisis since the end of the 2nd World War, the Obama administration asked that the Refugee Affairs Division increase refugee admissions from the already admirable number of 90,000 in fiscal year 2016 to 110,000 for 2017. However, on the heels of the Muslim ban came the new administration’s pronouncement that rather than 110,000, in fiscal year 2017 the program would be suspended for the rest of the year, thus grounding all refugee officers. . In 2018 the admissions was capped at 45,000 refugees, and it was determined that a ceiling of 30,000 admissions would be set for 2019. At a time when the U.S. should have been manning the bulwarks of refugee protection (Germany received a million refugees in 2015, comparable to the U.S. taking in 4 million) the U.S. effectively withdrew from the field, sending the signal that the U.S. no longer considers itself a leader in the world for refugee protection. A ceiling of 18,000 was set for fiscal year 2020, and this amount was only agreed to after push back from the Pentagon in reference to promises we had made to allies and interpreters working with our troops in the field in Irag, Afghanistan and Syria.

In 2018 Director Cissna also made the shocking announcement that USCIS would close all of its overseas offices, passing numerous tasks onto the State Department and domestic offices. The offices, established over a period of decades in such countries as Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, China, South Korea, Thailand, Mexico and Peru, primarily function as facilitators for family unity and refugee operations. Perhaps the first time that a federal bureaucracy has voluntarily given up turf, but in line with the administration’s seeming loathing for family unity.

The Myth of Skilled Migration

When then Chief of Staff General Kelly, formally DHS Secretary, disparagingly pronounced that most Central American migrants are “rural” migrants, as though of less value than presumably better educated “urban” migrants from white European countries, I took personal offense. My grandfather Grussendorf migrated with his family from a rural village in Lower Saxony, Germany at the end of the 19th Century at a time when there were no immigration controls at Ellis Island. He settled in the farming community of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where he ran a farm and begat five children, one of whom became a high school math teacher; one became a state judge, one opened a nursery in Duluth, and one, my father, became a highly decorated Marine colonel, former company commander at the WWII landings at Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. (I was born at Camp Pendleton). The state judge’s children included Cousin Benny Grussendorf who became Speaker of the House in the Alaskan Legislature. My father’s children included a Navy Captain and minister, a Navy enlisted man and transportation professional; a political activist, and an immigration judge. My brother the Navy Captain’s children include an Air Force flight surgeon and base hospital director; a veterinary, and a multi-lingual translator with her own business in France. All of these offspring were imbued with strong “rural” family values. That’s how migration works.

The idea of skilled-based migration, to be administered by a point system involving education, employment background, and language skills, isn’t all that bad in and of itself. Our close alleys Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand all administer a version of this skills-based migration. The problem is the suggestion to eliminate family-based migration, when clearly the vast majority of our nation’s people, including the President’s own family, have benefited from it. The better idea is to double the current admissions level of permanent residents, half to be drawn from a skills-based system. It is the unnaturally low numbers of annual permanent resident admissions that is partly responsible for the log-jam of our immigration system, in today’s world where there is such an interest in immigration to the U.S., and given that our otherwise native-born population is in decline.

We must recognize that the recent surge at our southern border is not some kind of existential challenge to the nation’s existence, as seen in a vacuum, but rather only one component of the world-wide refugee crisis, a symptom of wars and world-wide insecurity. The long-term solution to any refugee crisis is always peace and prosperity in the country/region that is generating the refugees. Only peace and stability in Syria and northern Africa can allay the human waves of refugees into Europe. Only a Marshal-type program for the northern triangle countries, coupled with short term humanitarian protection for those fleeing eminent death, can resolve the crisis at our southern border.

And finally, regarding the present state of the U.S. Immigration Court system under this white nationalist administration, I’d like to quote my friend and colleague, Judge Paul Schmidt:

Once upon a time, there was a court system with a vision: Through teamwork and innovation, one of the world’s best administrative tribunals guaranteeing fairness and due process for all. Two decades later, that vision has become a nightmare. (…)

Today, the U.S. Immigration Court betrays due process, mocks competent administration, and slaps a false veneer of “justice” on a “deportation railroad” designed to evade our solemn Constitutional responsibilities to guarantee due process and equal protection. It seeks to snuff out every existing legal right of migrants. Indeed, it is designed specifically to demean, dehumanize, and mistreat the very individuals whose rights and lives it is charged with protecting.

It cruelly betrays everything our country claims to stand for and baldly perverts our international obligations to protect refugees. In plain terms, the Immigration Court has become an intentionally “hostile environment” for migrants and their attorneys.

https://immigrationcourtside.com/ tag: Good Litigating in a Bad System

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

Thanks, Paul my friend and colleague.

As Paul points out, beyond all of the regime’s racism, illegality, and immorality that has already been exposed in the media, the deep corruption, cowardice, and cruelty of those carrying out the program is simply stunning! It’s precisely how authoritarian, anti-democracy, illiberal regimes of the past like Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Mao’s China operated. 

Inflicting “trauma for deterrence” on vulnerable humans is a “war crime” and a “crime against humanity,” plain and simple — regardless of the unlikelihood that regime’s many “perps” will be brought to justice within their lifetimes.

To those who doubt it, when the pandemic subsides, take a tour of the Holocaust Museum. The disgraceful conduct of the German judiciary and civil service is eerily similar to what Paul describes at DHS and EOIR.

We also must remember that despite being well-aware of the Trump/Miller racist-motivated immigration agenda, and the patent falseness of the legal and factual pretexts cooked up by the regime and its ethically challenged lawyers to provide “thin cover” for illegality and inhumanity, a Supremes’ majority improperly intervened to overrule lower Federal Courts and “greenlight” gratuitous cruelty and abuses of humanity! This process, known as “Dred Scottification” (“dehumanization of the other”) has carried over into the Supremes’ majority’s disgraceful  mistreatment of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other minorities in our society. It’s one of the key reasons why we have actually moved further away from racial equality and racial harmony in our society since the advent of the far-right judiciary.

Paul also exposes one of the biggest “shams” advanced by the racist right and their congressional supporters: That we must build an Immigration Court capable of deporting everyone in the U.S. without authorization. To state the obvious, this would be a practical impossibility, as well as an economic and social disaster — destabilizing industries and communities throughout the U.S., at a high cost, with no overall benefit.

It’s insane to charge the Immigration Courts with deporting everyone! That inevitably leads to mindlessly and exponentially increasing the number of judges without thinking about the training, support, technology, and wise policies necessary for them to operate successfully, fairly, and efficiently. Moreover, at some point, aimlessly increasing the number of judges without fixing the disgraceful deficiencies in the current system merely adds to the chaos, disorder, and the gross inconsistencies for which the system has become notorious. 

Obviously, the system must be fixed before a rational decision can be made on whether or not to expand it. Fixing the current system also lays the important groundwork for the necessary creation of an independent Article I Immigration Court.

No, the answer is to invest in fixing the current system to get it operating, as it originally was intended, as a high quality, modern, efficient court system that guarantees fairness and due process for all. 

With approximately 500 Immigration Judges already on board (not, of course, all the best qualified judges to carry out the mission — but that’s a problem for later), the reasonable annual capacity of the system is around 250,000 (500 judges x 500 cases/year) to 300,000. That means that more than one million of the current “deadwood” cases currently being warehoused on the EOIR docket by politicos at EOIR and DHS with no practical plan in place for ever completing them, must be removed and returned to DHS. 

That’s actually a job for a new, non-racist, professional DHS. But, given past spotty to downright contemptuous performance by DHS field officials, the Immigration Judges must be given strong authority to, where necessary, close and remove cases even in the face of DHS opposition. 

This means, of course, reversing “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions’s absurdly wrong decision in Castro-Tum. But, return to the prior status-quo is not enough! The BIA and the Immigration Judges must be empowered to take even more aggressive actions to close cases when necessary to do justice and to force the DHS to respect and comply with docket capacities. 

Then, as Paul suggests, like all other law enforcement agencies in the U.S., DHS enforcement must be required to develop strategies and prioritize cases in a manner that will not exceed the 250,000 per year capacity of the Immigration Courts. A large scale legalization program for those already here, a much more robust overseas asylum program, particularly in the Northern Triangle, and more “user friendly” legal programs to bring in needed workers, on either a temporary or permanent basis, would be great starting points to “rationalizing” the immigration system.

We thereby could end “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” as it has been practiced and expanded by DOJ & DHS politicos for the past two decades while taking the pressure off the Immigration Courts to do anything other than their only and only mission: through teamwork and best practices, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all who come before these courts. 

The key to making this happen: Immediate disempowerment of the deadly ongoing “Clown Show” 🤡☠️⚰️  in EOIR  “management” and at the BIA and replacing them with members of the NDPA: experts in asylum law, due process, practical scholarship, problem solving, and best practices. Then, and only then, will we see the restoration and progressive advancement of due process and humanity in the disgracefully broken U.S. Immigraton Courts. Without immediate EOIR reform, there can and will be no “equal justice for all” in the U.S. justice system! And, that’s bad news  for all of us! 

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-02-20

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: ICE Contractor Operates “Gulag Within A Gulag” Near Seattle

 

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/secret-prison-within-a-prison-report-details-solitary-confinement-practices-at-northwest-detention-center-in-tacoma/

Joseph O’ Sullivan reports for the Seattle Times:

OLYMPIA — The Northwest detention center in Tacoma holds people in solitary confinement on average more than any other dedicated U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, according to a new watchdog report.

The report by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights also contends that the center — in violation of ICE’s own policies — imposes solitary confinement on inmates with mental-health issues, or who are exercising their First Amendment rights by going on hunger strikes.

The report is based on federal government records and documents by the company that operates the prison, GEO Group, which were obtained by the Center for Human Rights after years of litigation.

The privately run detention center holds as many as 1,575 immigrants accused by the government of living illegally in the U.S. and facing deportation proceedings.

In an interview, Angelina Godoy, director for UW’s Center for Human Rights, said the report “speaks to this existence of a secret prison within a prison.”

“There’s essentially no effective oversight of the practice” of solitary confinement, Godoy added. “And from the data that we were able to gather, there’s really disturbing conclusions about just flagrant violation of international human-rights norms.”

. . . .

***************
Read the full article at the link.

The Biden-Harris Administration must eliminate the “New American Gulag” (NAG”). The money could be “repurposed” for grants to encourage legal representation of migrants and to train more and better Accredited Representatives (non-attorneys) to represent individuals in immigration proceedings. 

Contrary to the bogus narratives spread by DHS and White Nationalist restrictionists, reputable research and studies show that individuals with legal representation appear for hearings at an extraordinarily high level. Thus, punitive private “faux civil” detention in the NAG should, in a rational, properly operating system, be unnecessary.

In those relatively few cases where detention is necessary because the DHS demonstrates a danger to the community or high risk of failure to appear, the Government should provide it in humane, professionally run, closely monitored, and accountable non-punitive facilities.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-30-20

☠️⚰️✈️DEATH FLIGHTS: 🏴‍☠️ DHS RACISTS RAMP WRONGFUL REFUGEE REMOVALS, ILLEGALLY TARGETING BLACKS IN WANING DAYS OF KAKISTOCRACY!🤮  — “Christmas Death Spree” Among Final Acts Of Hypocrisy For Regime After Four Years Of Hate Mongering, Dehumanization, Lies, Illegality, & Disdain For Human Life! — “It’s a death plane. Even if there was a means to make that plane crash that day, we would’ve done it.”

Molly O’Toole
Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times
Source: LA Times website
Andrea Castillo
Andrea Castillo
Immigration Reporter
LA Times
Source: LA Times website

Molly O’Toole & Andrea Castillo report for the LA Times:

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-11-27/black-asylym-seekers-trump-officials-push-deportations

By MOLLY O’TOOLEANDREA CASTILLO

NOV. 27, 20204 AM

WASHINGTON —  Owning a small business in Cameroon selling French products was enough to trap the young man between the English-speaking minority and French-speaking majority government in the warring West African nation.

In July 2019, he was kidnapped by armed rebels, who tortured him for months in the jungle, demanding $10,000 ransom from his family, he said. Then, shortly after they paid, government forces arrested and tortured him for another month — for “financing” the separatists.

But what shocked him most, he said, was that after he escaped through a dozen countries and claimed asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, American officials detained him for almost a year, then threatened and assaulted him and put him in solitary confinement before deporting him back to Cameroon in late October.

“At that point, it’s like the end of the world,” he said, requesting anonymity because he is in hiding. “It’s a death plane. Even if there was a means to make that plane crash that day, we would’ve done it.”

During President Trump’s last weeks in office, Black and African asylum seekers say, the administration is ramping up deportations using assault and coercion, forcing them back to countries where they face harm, according to interviews with the immigrants, lawyers, lawmakers, advocates and a review of legal complaints by The Times.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security headquarters did not respond to requests for comment.

The allegations have shed light on a group of immigrants that has been targeted by the president’s rhetoric and his policies to restrict asylum, but that is often overlooked. Relative to Mexicans and Central Americans, asylum seekers from Africa and the Caribbean make up a small but fast-growing proportion of the more than 16,000immigrants in detention today across the United States, particularly in the for-profit prison archipelago in the American South that has proliferated under Trump.

Despite Trump’s all-out assault on asylum, explicit bias against Black asylum seekers, and border closures under the pretext of the pandemic, some 20,000 Haitians and Africans have journeyed from South America, largely on foot, to claim protection at the U.S.-Mexico border during Trump’s time in office, according to Mexico’s migration statistics.

President-elect Joe Biden has said he will end the use of for-profit immigration detention, reverse many of Trump’s policies that restrict asylum, and reform the U.S. immigration system. But Trump has left his successor with decades-long private-prison contracts; more than 400 executive actions on immigration; a record immigration court backlog of more than 1.2 million cases; and record-high asylum denial rates, reaching around 70% last month.

Since October, lawyers have filed multiple complaints with the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Inspector General’s Office documenting the cases of at least 14 Cameroonian asylum seekers at four detention facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi who say ICE subjected them to coercion and physical abuse to force their deportations.

The complaints call for investigations and an immediate halt to the deportations, arguing that officials are violating U.S. and international law, including due process rights and the Convention Against Torture.

In that time, more than 100 asylum seekers also have reported ICE using or threatening force to put them on deportation flights, in particular to Haiti and West Africa, according to lawyers and calls received on a national immigration detention hotline run by the nonprofit Freedom for Immigrants.

The Times has interviewed nine asylum seekers, most from Cameroon, others from Haiti or Ethiopia, many of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. Five have been deported in the last month, and three remain detained after ICE attempted to remove them in recent weeks. One Cameroonian was released Monday after roughly 20 months in immigration detention.

They include teachers, law students, mothers, fathers, a 2-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl, who have fled corrupt governments, political persecution, gang rape, torture by security forces, assassination attempts and arbitrary detention.

For many, deportation from the United States is a death sentence.

“I came to U.S. because I need to save my life because my life is in danger,” said a high school teacher who fled Ethiopia in 2017 after being jailed and beaten for supporting an opposition political party and student protests.

The teacher claimed asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on the California-Mexico border in 2018. But last month, while being held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility, after he refused to sign deportation papers, six ICE officers assaulted and forcibly fingerprinted him, he said, then sent him to the medical clinic.

His asylum case had been denied but was pending an appeal. Two days after the assault, he said, officers told him he’d be transferred. Instead, they took him to Los Angeles International Airport and deported him to Ethiopia, where he was immediately rearrested and now awaits a court hearing.

“ICE is something like racist because they are doing excessive force,” the teacher said. “In [a free] country I don’t expect these things.”

Many asylum seekers are well aware of Trump’s disparagement of Black immigrants. And many believe that ICE officials and detention guards share his prejudices.

As Trump leaves office, the “pattern and practice of physical and verbal coercion” by ICE officers and guards to force Black asylum seekers to sign deportation papers is worsening, according to the complaints filed to Homeland Security’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Inspector General’s offices.

Beyond threats, the tactics include shackling the immigrants, stripping them naked, holding them down and choking them, resulting in injuries, according to the complaints. Officials often committed the assaults out of sight of facility cameras, and in several instances filmed the assaults themselves, the complaints state.

Immigration detention is civil, not criminal, and ICE has the discretion to release detainees at any time. Most of the asylum seekers have family in the United States, and all have exercised their right to seek protection under U.S. law — meaning that many are being detained for years even though they have U.S. sponsors and haven’t committed a crime.

Of the deportation flights to West Africa in October and November, at least a dozen on board had pending cases, according to lawyers.

In interviews with The Times, the asylum seekers said they sought protection in the United States because they believed it was the only place where they could be safe and free.

“We believe in freedom and in this country as a country that provides protection for people who are running for their lives — and instead upon arrival, for us to be imprisoned and caged?” said a Haitian mother detained with her husband and 2-year-old son at a Pennsylvania ICE facility.

Police officers in Haiti had targeted her and her husband for their involvement with the political opposition, beating and sexually assaulting her while she was pregnant, according to sworn legal statements. She miscarried before she fled.

Despite many countries shutting their borders amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ICE has recently increased the pace of deportations, including sending a flight to West Africa just days after the Nov. 3 election. In October, there were nearly 500 ICE Air Operations flights, a more than 10% increase since September, according to Witness at the Border. More than 1,300 Haitians were deported, said Guerline Jozef, president of the Haitian Bridge Alliance in California.

In recent years, Cameroonians have increasingly accounted for one of the largest groups of what U.S. officials call “extracontinental” migrants, as the conflict in Cameroon has widened.

One man, going by the initials K.S., said he fled because officials in Cameroon had asked him to work with them to capture Anglophone people. He refused; his wife and three children are from the English-speaking side.

He had been detained at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility east of San Diego for over two years when the final appeal on his asylum claim was denied — making him so depressed that he spent a week under medical observation.

He said the ICE officer assigned to his case advised him to sign paperwork agreeing to be deported. The officer said that if the Cameroonian government didn’t accept ICE’s request to take him back, as was likely, he would be released to his U.S. sponsor after 90 days.

On Oct. 6, after 97 days had passed, six guards stood by as K.S. was ordered to pack up his things to leave.

“I didn’t think about deportation,” he said. “It was the last thought on my mind. They lied to me.”

ICE officers put him on a flight to Louisiana that picked up other Cameroonian deportees and then dropped the group off at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas. On Oct. 13, K.S. said, he was cuffed and taken to the airport, where he boarded a flight with about 100 other African migrants.

He watched as ICE officers strapped in three men from their shoulders to their ankles to restrict their movement and covered their heads with bags, then laid them across rows of seats in the plane.

Just as the flight was about to take off, K.S. and three other men were removed and taken back to Prairieland, without explanation.

Three weeks later, on Nov. 11, K.S. was back on a deportation flight with 27 other men. One, who was known to have heart problems, began crying that his chest was burning, K.S. said, an account confirmed to The Times by another passenger.

ICE ultimately removed the man and put him in an ambulance.

In contrast to Central Americans largely fleeing a lethal combination of gang violence, corruption, poverty and climate change, many Haitians and Africans have more traditional asylum claims that, at least in theory, better fit the categories outlined by an outdated U.S. asylum system largely conceived in the post-World War II era: persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social group.

Yet Black and African asylum seekers are less likely than other immigrants to be released on parole or bond, or to win their asylum cases — a racial disparity that has worsened under Trump, according to lawyers and government data.

From September 2019 to May 2020, comparing hundreds of release requests from detained Cubans, Venezuelans, Cameroonians and Eritreans, the non-Africans had grant rates roughly twice as high, said Mich Gonzalez, senior staff attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Fewer than 4% of Cameroonian parole requests were granted.

ICE is also increasingly blanket-denying Black immigrants’ release for clearly bogus reasons, said Anne Rios, a supervising attorney in San Diego with the nonprofit Al Otro Lado.

For example, ICE rejected one request by claiming an applicant’s identity hadn’t been established, when the agency had the applicant and his identification documents in its custody, according to parole applications and denials provided by Rios and reviewed by The Times.

U.S. officials have faced more impediments to deporting Haitian and African asylum seekers due to limited diplomatic relationships with their homelands and more complicated deportation logistics exacerbated by coronavirus closures abroad.

But that hasn’t stopped them. The Trump administration has at times put enforcement before its own stated foreign policy, contradicting the State Department and U.S. law barring officials from returning people to harm or death.

Take Cameroon. Last year, the U.S. pulled back some military assistance amid reports of atrocities committed by security forces trained and supplied by the U.S. military for counterterrorism. The State Department travel advisory for Cameroon warns of “crime,” “kidnapping,” “terrorism” and “armed conflict.”

Rather than obtaining valid Cameroonian passports, ICE officials have issued Cameroonian deportees “laissez-passer” travel documents that are invalid, or even signed by individuals in the United States purporting to be Cameroonian officials, according to the October complaint.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

I understand the incoming Biden-Harris Administration’s desire to avoid getting entangled in the muck of the overt corruption, racism, and countless crimes of the outgoing regime. 

Nevertheless, I doubt that institutional racism can be eliminated, equal justice under law achieved, and racial harmony realized without dealing in some way with the many crimes against humanity committed in the name of racism, hate, and “Dred Scottification” by the regime and their cronies, toadies, and enablers at DHS, DOJ, DOS, and elsewhere in government. 

Also, to state the obvious, the types of cases described by Molly and Andrea could have been rapidly granted at the Asylum Office level in a functioning system. That’s a critical first step in eliminating the largely self-created backlog in the Immigration Courts, ending counterproductive litigation by the Government, and largely “zeroing out” the unnecessary and wasteful “New American Gulag” (“NAG”) of bogus “civil” detention largely abusively applied for illegal punishment and deterrence.

Fair and rational application of immigration laws and sane policies also make for efficient, fiscally responsible government. Compare that with the current kakistocracy which has run up record deficits, created endless backlogs, and left behind far, far more problems than they solved. Indeed, never has a gang of empowered malicious incompetents showed so little ability to recognize, promote, or govern in the common good.

Due Process Forever! Complicity in Crimes Against Humanity, Never!

PWS

11-29-20