☠️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY CLOSE-UP: When He Isn’t Busy Appointing Hate Groupers To Immigration “Judgeships,” The Lies Just Keep Flowing From Billy The Biogot’s Mouth — Laura Coates Reports On His Latest Whoppers For CNN!

Laura Coates says AG Bill Barr has some explaining to do

CNN Tonight

CNN’s Laura Coates argues that Attorney General Bill Barr has some explaining to do about a number of issues surrounding him and how he runs the US Department of Justice.

Source: CNN

Watch Laura’s report here:https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/07/25/laura-coates-case-attorney-general-bill-barr-has-explaining-to-do-ctn-vpx.cnn

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

Lies to Federal Courts, cover-ups, brutality, First Amendment violations, pretexts, misrepresentations, racism, it all just in a few days’s work for Billy.

The worst Attorney General in modern U.S. history, toady to the worst President in U.S. history, just keeps getting worse!

PWS

07-25-20

BIA SHOOTS UNREPRESENTED RESPONDENT ON “DIVISIBILITY” ANALYSIS — MATTER OF P-B-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 43 (BIA 2020) — Like Shooting Fish 🐟 In A Barrel 🛢!

MATTER OF P-B-B-, 28 I&N Dec. 43 (BIA 2020)

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1296956/download

BIA HEADNOTE:

Section 13-3407 of the Arizona Revised Statutes, which criminalizes possession of a dangerous drug, is divisible with regard to the specific “dangerous drug” involved in a violation of that statute.

PANEL: Board Panel: GREER and O’CONNOR, Appellate Immigration Judges; SWANWICK, Temporary Appellate Immigration Judge.

OPINION: O’CONNOR, Appellate Immigration Judge

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

You think this isn’t “Theater of The Absurd?” Let’s check out Fns 5 & 6 from the opinion:

5 We recognize that the Ninth Circuit, in whose jurisdiction this case arises, utilized a modified categorical inquiry in Alvarado, 759 F.3d at 1130–33, to discern whether an alien’s conviction under section 13-3407 involved a federally controlled substance and was therefore a predicate for removal under section 237(a)(2)(B)(i) of the Act. However, the Ninth Circuit did not expressly analyze the divisibility of section 13-3407 in that decision, nor did the court have the benefit of the Supreme Court’s articulation of divisibility in Mathis. Moreover, the circuit recently certified a similar issue to the Arizona Supreme Court. See Romero-Millan v. Barr, 958 F.3d 844, 849 (9th Cir. 2020) (asking the court to resolve whether Arizona statutes proscribing possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a narcotic drug under sections 13-3415 and 13-3408 of the Arizona Revised Statutes, respectively, are divisible with respect to the identity of the drug involved in each offense). For these reasons, we do not consider Alvarado to be persuasive authority regarding the divisibility of section 13-3407, which, in light of Romero-Millan, we view as an unsettled issue in the Ninth Circuit.

6 We acknowledge that State v. Prescott, No. 1 CA-CR 15-0188, 2016 WL 611656, at *2 (Ariz. Ct. App. Feb. 16, 2016), and State v. Castorina, No. 1 CA-CR 08-0816, 2010 WL 2450117, at *4 (Ariz. Ct. App. June 17, 2010), suggest that the identity of the “dangerous drug” involved in a violation of section 13-3407 is not an element of the statute. However, the United States District Court for the District of Arizona recently reviewed both cases, found that their reasoning was flawed, and concluded that Arizona case law fails to provide a “clear answer[] as to the divisibility” of section 13-3407. United States v. Sanchez-Murillo, No. CR-19-00795-PHX-SPL, 2019 WL 3858606, at *2–3 (D. Ariz. Aug. 16, 2019) (alteration in original) (citation omitted). Accordingly, we are not persuaded that Prescott or Castorina “definitively answer[s] whether the dangerous drug requirement of [section] 13-3407[] is divisible.” Gonzalez-Dominguez v. Sessions, 743 F. App’x 808, 811 (9th Cir. 2018).

So, how do you think that the unrepresented, almost certainly detained, respondent did on these issues, assuming that he even can read the BIA’s decision or have someone accurately read It to him?

The whole Immigration Court System has become a judicially and Congressionally-enabled “Due Process Farce” befitting a third word failed state that our country now resembles under the Trump kakistocracy. 

NO, those who say our democratic institutions are “holding up” under Trump are living in a parallel universe! 

PWS

07-24-20

🤮☠️⚰️👎THE UGLY ROLE OF RACISM IN THE AMERICAN “RULE OF LAW” FICTION — Administrative Law & The Administrative State Deeply Rooted In Racism — When You Hear Racists Like Trump, Miller, Barr, Wolf, & Cotton Refer To The “Rule Of Law” They Actually Mean The Rule Of White Supremacy!

🏴‍☠️

https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/the-racial-roots-of-the-federal-administrative-state-by-jonathan-weinberg/

The Racial Roots of the Federal Administrative State, by Jonathan Weinberg

SHARE:

Federal administrative agencies have existed since this nation’s founding – the First Congress created the Patent Office, the Departments of War, Foreign Affairs, and Treasury, and more. But in the century that followed, Congress rarely tasked any of those agencies with adjudicating the status of individuals so as to hand out benefits and burdens.[1]  The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, to be sure, broke that pattern. It established a set of federal commissioners to make the most consequential determination of individual status possible – a ruling that a person was or was not an escaped slave, to be handed over to a purported owner or his agent. The procedure established for that determination bore no relation to anything we would think of as modern administrative law. Slaveholders provided testimony ex parte, and the alleged slaves could say nothing; commissioners received higher fees for ruling in slaveholders’ favor than for ruling against them.

The next important time the federal government set up an agency to adjudicate the legal status of individuals, its methods were different. Like the Fugitive Slave Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 enabled a system of racial oppression. But in contrast to the Fugitive Slave Act, which covered freewheeling lawlessness with the barest fig leaf of administrative legality, the Chinese Exclusion Act gave rise to a body of administrative law, and a body of administrative mechanisms and methods, that survived and lie at the root of today’s administrative state.[2]

The Chinese Exclusion Act reflected deep racial prejudice. U.S. Congress members and others attacked Chinese people as disease-ridden, dishonest, degraded, and incapable of self-government; “a race of people,” in the words of the California Supreme Court, “whom nature has marked as inferior.” Legislatures enacted legal attacks including state laws (many struck down in court) forbidding them from securing business licenses, working for corporations, fishing in public waters, owning real estate, working mining claims, or indeed entering the state. Mobs engaged in anti-Chinese mass violence, such as the burning of Seattle’s Chinatown in 1885.

The 1882 federal statute forbade the entry of most Chinese into the United States, and directed the deportation of any Chinese person who had entered in violation of its requirements. This performance of racism, though, required a new bureaucracy facing new challenges.  The U.S. had never before enacted a large-scale restriction on entry of free persons. It had no passport or visa infrastructure; the law would not require white noncitizens arriving on our shores to present passports for another 35 years. So the bureaucracy had to break new ground in enforcing the statute and the fine distinctions it drew.

How were officers to adjudicate whether a person seeking to enter the U.S. was a forbidden Chinese laborer or a permitted upper-class “merchant”? a forbidden new entrant or a permitted returning resident?[3] or, indeed, whether the person was a U.S. citizen, since lower courts had ruled as early as 1884 that anyone born in the U.S. was a citizen with full rights to leave the U.S. and return?

For that matter, how were federal officers to know whether any ethnically Chinese person living in the U.S. had legal status? The system’s underlying assumptions, repeated over and over by policy-makers, were first, that Chinese people would routinely lie to gain immigration benefits; and second, that they were physically nearly indistinguishable from one another. What sort of bureaucracy could be put in place to make their status visible?

To answer those questions, Congress and the agency (first the Customs Bureau, then the Bureau of Immigration in the Treasury Department, then the same Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor) developed new techniques of bureaucratic investigation and control.  They provided for initial adjudications by line personnel with the possibility of internal administrative appeal. They provided for agency rulemaking and federal-state partnerships.  Their targets brought challenges in sometimes-sympathetic courts, leading to battles over the availability of judicial review, exhaustion, the “jurisdictional fact” doctrine, burdens of proof, standards of review, and the demands of due process. There were controversies over the scope of government’s enforcement discretion in light of resource constraints.

We can see, in other words, the seeds of nearly all of modern administrative law in the administration of Chinese exclusion. To bolster that system, Congress mandated that every Chinese migrant in the U.S. carry federally-issued identification papers with his or her photograph and identifying information. The Bureau put in place increasingly elaborate, searchable and cross-referenced, databases of information about Chinese individuals, to be used in connection with systematic and standardized interviews of would-be entrants and applicants for immigration benefits. For a time, it mandated that some Chinese individuals be subject to a system of precise body measurement developed for identifying criminals.

The Chinese exclusion regime worked badly, and was never very good at achieving its stated goals. It was effective in enforcing racial domination.  If you were an ethnically Chinese person in the U.S. in that time period, you lived subject to the possibility of arrest on suspicion of illegal presence. The exclusion laws enabled, on a broad scale, the humiliation, labelling, and arbitrary detention of individual Chinese.

But the system of Chinese exclusion was not just an exercise in domination and humiliation. It was conceived, rather, as embedding racial hierarchy within the rule of law. Its framers hoped to achieve accurate determinations, within a legal structure, regarding the racially-motivated categories into which individuals should be sorted. That legal structure incorporated the possibility of judicial review. It required a functioning system of federal administrative law. To that end, racial exclusion laid the groundwork for much of modern public administration and administrative law. That’s our heritage. Our current system grew from that soil.

Jon Weinberg is Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School. Follow him on Twitter here.

[1]           One exception: the U.S. military pension system: Congress as early as 1776 legislated pensions for disabled Revolutionary War veterans. In 1818, it extended pension eligibility to anyone who had served in the Continental Army and needed public assistance. This required it to develop procedures for determining whether claimants were disabled, whether their injuries were incurred as part of their service, whether they were indigent, and more. Most of that work, though, was done by local judges sitting as benefits adjudicators.

[2]           Gabriel (Jack) Chin first made this point in his pioneering Regulating Race: Asian Exclusion and the Administrative State, 37 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 1 (2002).

[3]           Initially, the law allowed Chinese people already resident in the U.S. to leave here and return; the government would close that door in 1888 (stranding many U.S. residents outside the country), and then partially reopen it in 1894.

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Obvious solutions:

  • All Administrative “Courts” are inherently unconstitutional and should be abolished forthwith;
  • An expanded Article I independent judiciary;
  • Demonstrated commitment to equal justice under law and rejecting racism in all forms as an absolute requirement for future Article III Judicial appointments.

PWS

07-24-20

🤮👎🏻☠️CHILD ABUSERS ON THE LOOSE — Rosenstein & Sessions Still At Large Even As Those Whose Lives Were Destroyed By Their Unconstitutional Actions Continue To Suffer Irreparable Harm — A Complete Institutional Meltdown Across All Three Branches Leaves U.S. As A Major Human Rights Abuser! — How Low Will We Go Before We Finally Say “No” To Racist Abuses! — “The family separations that followed are seen today by experts as one of the gravest domestic human rights violations to have occurred under the Trump administration.”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/23/child-separation-migrants-prosecutors-rod-rosenstein?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

From The Guardian:

Revealed: Rod Rosenstein advised there was no age limit on child separations

Former deputy attorney general’s 2018 conference call with US prosecutors in border states shocked some participants, Guardian learns

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington

Published:

06:00 Thursday, 23 July 2020

Follow Stephanie Kirchgaessner

Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, advised US attorneys implementing the 2018 zero-tolerance policy that there could be no blanket ban on prosecuting migrant parents who had children under the age of five, the Guardian has learned.

The comments on a conference call in May 2018 privately shocked some border state prosecutors because, in effect, it meant that no child was too young to be separated from its parents under the policy, which called for all migrants entering the US illegally to face criminal prosecution.

‘Suddenly they started gassing us’: Cuban migrants tell of shocking attack at Ice prison

The family separations that followed are seen today by experts as one of the gravest domestic human rights violations to have occurred under the Trump administration.

The policy was in place for six weeks and resulted in the separation of 2,814 children from their parents and guardians, about 105 of whom were under the age of five and 1,033 under 10.

Rosenstein issued his guidance to US attorneys from states on the Mexican border about two weeks after the then attorney general, Jeff Sessions, issued an order that there would be an “escalated effort” to prosecute all illegal entries into the US along the southern border, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to the Guardian under the condition of anonymity.

Previously, under the Obama administration, most families who crossed the border illegally were detained together if they were arrested or were released pending an immigration trial, but were only separated if authorities deemed children to be in danger.

There were questions among the border state US attorneys at that time about how the zero-tolerance policy would be implemented and the conference call with Rosenstein sought to address those issues.

On the call, one US attorney, John Bash of the western district of Texas, said he had declined to prosecute several cases that had been referred to him by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that involved children under the age of five.

In response, sources familiar with the matter said Rosenstein told the US attorneys that they could not decline to prosecute cases based on the age of the children who would be separated from their parents because there was “no categorical exemption” under the order.

During the call, Rosenstein was also asked whether prosecutors could decline to prosecute parents with children who only spoke indigenous languages, meaning they were unable to communicate in English or Spanish, or those whose children had intellectual disabilities. Rosenstein said that prosecutors could opt to decline to prosecute individuals with children under those two circumstances on a case-by-case basis, sources said.

The comments were met with shock by some of the US attorneys, sources said, because there was concern that children who were under the age of five would not know their own names or their parents’ names and that it posed a risk of children potentially getting lost in the system.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

What does this say about firms like King & Spaulding who offer employment and “cover” to human rights abusers like Rosenstein? Why is serving a racist, neo-Nazi, would-be authoritarian regime considered “OK” by “big law” and other supposedly “legitimate” employers? Where’s the outrage?

If human lives and human dignity matter, why is Rosenstein on anyone’s payroll? Why is he still licensed to practice law?

On the bright side: Unapologetic White Nationalist racist “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions is finally off the public dole, hopefully for good.

PWS

07-23-20

 

 

 

PWS

07-23-20

👍IT’S A START, BUT STILL A LONG, LONG WAY TO GO: House-Passed Bill To Begin Removing The Stain Of Trump’s White Nationalism Is Also A Long-Overdue Exposure & Put Down Of Roberts’ Court’s Abject Failure To Stand For Equal Justice For All & Against Trump’s Overtly Unconstitutional Bigotry & “Dred Scottificaton” Of The Other!  

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/23/house-votes-remove-moral-stain-trumps-immigration-policies/

Jason Rezaian writes in WashPost:

In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged sweeping changes to immigration policy. As president, Trump has succeeded — despite a broad public outcry and many legal roadblocks — in implementing many of his proposed restrictions through a series of executive orders.

Now Congress is pushing back. On Wednesday the House passed the No Ban Act, legislation introduced last year by Sen Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). The act aims to repeal Trump’s ban on arrivals from majority-Muslim countries and prevent future presidents from issuing discriminatory bans on foreign nationals or followers of specific religions.

“Throughout the history of the U.S., we’ve had a series of tragic nativist chapters in our history,” Coons told me this week. “Did I think we’d be facing another one? No. But when Donald Trump announced his candidacy, I remember thinking I am so glad I live in a country where a man like this couldn’t be president. I was wrong, and we’ve seen how damaging that has been.”

In recent months, the novel coronavirus pandemic, the associated economic downturn, and protests over police killings of African Americans have diverted public attention from Trump’s immigration policies. But they must not be forgotten.

Trump’s plans for an immigration ban have inspired widespread outrage. Some dismissed Trump’s words as empty threats, noting that they were probably unconstitutional. But Trump pressed ahead as soon as he took office.

The first iteration of what became known as the Muslim ban halted entry into the United States of citizens from seven countries, five of which are majority-Muslim.

Since then we’ve watched as immigration officials have separated kids from their parents in detention centers, with at least one of them dying in custody. The images of children in cages provoked an intense backlash and could end up costing Trump at the polls — to the extent that his policies have led his own voters, especially college-educated white Republican women, to question his xenophobic and racist policies.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Jason’s op-ed at the above link.

Somewhat like Sen. Coons, I originally thought that there would be some institutional integrity and moral courage even among the more conservative members of our Judiciary, particularly among the Supremes. After all, there have been at least a few times in our history when judges across the ideological and political spectrum have stood together against the evils of racism, religious bigotry, and hate.

It’s not like Trump, Miller, Bannon, Sessions, Ross, and their hate-mongering cronies were ever particularly subtle about their invidious intent (although, to be fair, I was at the very beginning willing to give Sessions “the benefit of the doubt,” until I saw that his assurances to the Senate were lies under oath in the face of the deep moral corruption and bigotry that infected his whole being).

Boy was I wrong! Right from the git go, even with the advantage of clear evidence of invidious intent, ridiculously transparent and overtly dishonest “pretexts,” (some publicly contradicted by Trump in mid-stream) and the vast majority of lower Federal Court Judges pointing the way with cogent opinions standing up to the Trump charade and endless parade of hate, the Supremes majority tanked. Where the rights of “the other” particularly Muslims and persons color are concerned, they fully embraced Trump’s unconstitutional and tyrannical program of hate and bias thinly disguised as legitimate exercises of Executive Power.  They became willing “Dred Scottifiers!”

Perhaps just as seriously, the Supremes’ “normalized” demonstrable lies, false narratives, and dishonesty as attributes that were to be expected and tolerated from our Chief Executive. What a crock! Ordinary persons are held to basic standards of honesty and candor when dealing with the Government and with Government tribunals. But the President is above it all. While, later on, the Supremes fecklessly claimed that “nobody is above the law,” their actions have shown a disturbing and intellectually dishonest unwillingness to require Trump and his regime to comply with the basics of the rule of law and to act with even a minimal level of candor and honesty.

We can’t vote the “JR Five” out of their lifetime sinecures. But, our democracy does enable us to take the actions necessary to insure that folks like the “JR Five” and other Federal Judges who embrace racism, bigotry, and political corruption over the “equal justice and real due process for all persons” required by our Constitution are not selected to serve in the future in positions requiring legal experiences and moral qualifications that they so obviously lack.

Better judges for a better America. This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!

 

Due Process Forever!

 

PWS

 

07-23-20

 

 

🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️👎🤮KAKISTOCRACY KORNER:  Chase, Schmidt Rip Billy The Bigot’s Appointment Of Hate Grouper To Arlington “Bench” – Failed System Drops All Pretenses Of Fairness & Due Process As Feckless Congress & Complicit Article IIIs Flunk Constitutional Duties! –

 

https://www.law360.com/immigration/articles/1293543/ex-fair-research-director-among-46-new-immigration-judges

Hannah Albarazi
Hannah Albarazi
Federal Courts
Reporter
Law360
Jeffrey S. Chase
Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Retired Immigration Judges
Me
Me

Ex-FAIR Research Director Among 46 New Immigration Judges

By Hannah Albarazi

. . . .

“It would be impossible for one to receive a fair hearing before Matthew O’Brien,” Jeffrey Chase, a New York City immigration lawyer and former immigration judge, told Law360. Chase said O’Brien has expressed a view of asylum law that is at odds with the controlling circuit case law that he would be tasked with applying from the bench.

Chase said O’Brien has “basically spouted propaganda for an organization openly hostile to immigration.”

His appointment, Chase said, shows that the Trump administration doesn’t want a fair and independent immigration court and is proof that the Executive Office for Immigration Review needs to be taken out of the control of the Department of Justice, an enforcement agency.

The administration “has repeatedly emphasized to classes of new immigration judges that they are above all employees of the attorney general, who does not believe most asylum seekers are deserving of protection,” Chase said.

These appointments could negatively impact the immigration courts for decades, Chase said.

Paul Wickham Schmidt, a retired U.S. immigration judge who chaired the Board of Immigration Appeals in the Clinton administration, also slammed the recent wave of appointments.

“The idea that these are the 46 best qualified individuals in America to discharge these awesome responsibilities in a fair, impartial and expert manner, in furtherance of due process of law and with recognition of the human rights and human dignity of the individuals whose lives are at stake, is beyond preposterous. It’s a fraud on American justice,” Schmidt told Law360.

Schmidt didn’t mince his words about O’Brien’s appointment either.

“As someone who has helped FAIR spread its racially biased, anti-immigrant, and anti-asylum propaganda and false narratives, O’Brien is not qualified to be a fair and impartial quasi-judicial decision maker as required by the due process clause of our Constitution,” Schmidt said.

.  .  . .

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

Those with Law360 access can read Hannah’s complete article at the link.

The U.S. Justice system, once the envy of free nations throughout the world, is disintegrating before our eyes. If there is no justice for those whose lives are at stake, there will be no justice for any of us in the Trump/Barr Third World kakistocracy.

Due Process Forever! Corrupt & Feckless Institutions Parodying Justice, Never!

 

PWS

 

07-21-20

DRED SCOTTIFICATION OF “THE OTHER” — Supremes’ Anti-Constitutional “De-Personification” Of Asylum Applicants of Color With Lives At Stake Shows Why America Is In A Constitutional & Racial Mess Right Now — Analysis of Thuraissigiam By Professor Elliott Young!

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/176454

Elliott Young is a professor of History at Lewis & Clark College and the author of a forthcoming book Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the Largest Immigrant Detention System in the World (Oxford University Press).

. . . .

For more than one hundred years, the entry fiction has enabled the US government to deny immigrants due process protections that the 14th Amendment clearly indicates apply “to any person within its jurisdiction.” Although Justice Alito seems to restrict the ruling to people who entered the country within the previous 24 hours and within 25 yards of the border, the logic of the decision poses a more ominous threat to all immigrants who were not lawfully admitted.

 

As Justice Sotomayor writes in her dissent, “Taken to its extreme, a rule conditioning due process rights on lawful entry would permit Congress to constitutionally eliminate all procedural protections for any noncitizen the Government deems unlawfully admitted and summarily deport them no matter how many decades they have lived here, how settled and integrated they are in their communities, or how many members of their family are U. S. citizens or residents.”

 

It is this threat to more than 10 million immigrants living in the United States without authorization that makes the Thuraissigiam decision such a blow to the basic principles of freedom and justice. It would be odd for a country that imagines itself to be a beacon of hope for people around the world to deny basic constitutional protections to asylum seekers when they finally cross our threshold.

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

Read the full article at the link.

It’s not rocket science. The Constitution is clear. The “fog” here has to do with the disingenuous “reasoning” and legal gobbledygook cooked up by the majority Justices to deny Constitutional rights to people of color. Better judges for a better America! From voting rights to immigration, the current Supremes’ majority has too often undermined the right of all persons in America to equal justice under law. That’s exactly what institutionalized racism looks like.

Without major changes in all three branches of our failing Federal Government, equal justice for all in America will remain as much of an illusion as it has been since the inception of our nation. We have the power to do more than talk about equal justice — to start taking the necessary political action that will make it a reality. But, do we have the will and the moral courage to make it happen?

This November vote like your life and the life of our nation depend on it! Because they do!

PWS

07-21-20

MICA ROSENBERG @ REUTERS: “Latest from Reuters — ICE detention transfers exacerbate the spread of COVID-19”🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️

Mica Rosenberg
Mica Rosenberg
National Immigration Reporter, Reuters

In our most recent story (https://reut.rs/2ZFjksB) about the dangers of coronavirus in U.S. immigration detention centers. Using immigration court records and ICE data we found 268 transfers of detainees between detention centers in April, May and June, half that involved detainees who were either moved from centers with COVID-19 cases to centers with no known cases, or from centers with no cases to those where the virus had spread.

At least one transfer resulted in a super-spreading event. On June 2, 74 detainees were transferred to a detention center in Farmville, Virginia from three detention centers in Florida and Arizona, two of which had confirmed COVID-19 cases.  Before the transfer the center only had only 2 positive cases (also from transferees from another nearby detention center). After the transfer, more than half of the detainees moved tested positive for the virus. Now Farmville is the hardest hit detention center in the country, with 315 cases.

 

Previously we reported on how hospital resources are scarce in many rural areas where detainees are held, and how some asylum seekers are giving up their claims because they fear catching the virus in detention and how one couple faced double jeopardy both inside and outside of immigration lock up.

 

Please keep in touch about other stories we should be pursuing in these difficult times!

Best,

Mica

………………………………………………….

Mica Rosenberg

Reuters News

National Immigration Reporter

www.reuters.co

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

Than is so much, Mica! Go on over to Reuters at the above links to get all of Mica’s great, very timely reporting on this topic!

The truth is out, and, predictably, it’s ugly for the “malicious incompetents” in Trump’s outrageous immigration kakistocracy. 

While the Administration has falsely claimed that draconian, clearly illegal and unnecessary, immigration restrictions are required to “protect” America from COVID-19 (a threat that they otherwise downplay or deny through false narratives and pseudo-science), it’s actually ICE that is a key spreader of disease, both in the U.S. and in other countries!☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-17-20

🇺🇸👍🏼🗽😇THE FUTURE WILL BELONG TO NATIONS THAT WELCOME IMMIGRANTS: Getting Rid of Trump, Miller, Cotton, & The Other GOP Racist Restrictionists Is A Key First Step To A Better America For All!

https://apple.news/ApxPyJV3cSBOtEU7c4Xlk4A

Frida Ghitis @ CNN:

The only way the United States can remain the world’s most prosperous, powerful country is by embracing immigration. That’s the inescapable conclusion from a new study published on Tuesday in the Lancet that predicts the world’s population will peak far sooner than anticipated, and start shrinking before the end of this century.

There is, however, no guarantee that the US will embrace immigration, even to save itself. Domestic politics, currently inflamed by divisive nativist leaders, have turned immigration into a contested topic. A country that rose to historic heights of influence and prosperity by welcoming immigrants, is now led by a President who has weaponized the issue with unfathomable cruelty.

One example: At this moment, hundreds of migrant families held in detention facilities face the wrenching choice of whether to let their children be released to third parties, or stay together in detention. This awful decision comes as the result of court order last month that called for the children’s release in light of the coronavirus pandemic — and it is essentially a new version of the family separation policy that tore apart thousands of children from their parents earlier in the Trump administration.

Such heartless political measures flout America’s founding principles — but are also out of step with public opinion on immigration: an overwhelming majority of Americans — 77%, according to a recent 2020 Gallup poll- say it is good for the country. The prospect of falling birth rates predicted by study — from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine — may be a thumb on the scale in favor of more immigration. After all, businesses will need workers. Even the military will likely feel the pressure of contracting numbers of people of military age.

The new study shows how far off the mark earlier assumptions about exploding population growth fell. Some among you, my dear readers, may remember when intellectuals were gripped by the fear of a “Malthusian catastrophe,” fear that population growth would outpace our ability to feed ourselves. But it turns out that Thomas Robert Malthus, the 18th century economist and demographer, got it all wrong.

Not only did agricultural advances undercut his thesis, it turns out the world’s population will start contracting before long, with powerful economic, geopolitical and environmental implications.

. . . .

The result will be increased friction over immigration, with the arguments of immigration advocates bolstered by demographers, economists and a business community anxious to see consumption increase and workers available.

The present may be blazing with the demagogues’ sturm und drang about keeping immigrants out. But the future belongs to the country that welcomes them.

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Immigration is both an unstoppable human force and good for America. The sooner we end the current regime’s cruel and stupid White Nationalist policies and develop a robust, thoughtful, inclusive, realistic approach to legal immigration (including refugees), the better off we will be as a nation.

An immediate benefit would be a sharp reduction in the amount of resources and goodwill wasted on counterproductive and often both illegal and immoral restrictionist enforcement gimmicks. That would actually align immigration enforcement with the national interest, rather than undermining it as is now the case with many of the misguided enforcement efforts, particularly “civil” imprisonment and deportations of refugees and long time residents.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-17-20

🤮👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY REPORT: Racist, Misogynist Regime Fires, Disciplines CBP Agents For — Racism & Misogyny — Hmmm, Why Is It Not Surprising That A Culture Of Racism & Misogyny Flourishes In An Administration Where Trump, Miller, Sessions, & Other Officials Have Glorified & Promoted Both?

Molly O’Toole
Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times

Molly O’Toole reports for the LA Times:

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-07-16/border-patrol-fired-for-secret-facebook-group-with-violent-sexist-posts

By MOLLY O’TOOLESTAFF WRITER

JULY 16, 202012:35 PM UPDATED3:35 PM

WASHINGTON —  The largest federal law enforcement agency has fired four employees for their participation in secretive social media groups that have featured violent, sexist and racist posts against migrants and members of Congress, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

More than a year after launching an internal investigation into 138 employees for “inappropriate social media activity,” Customs and Border Protection — the parent agency of the Border Patrol — has removed four employees, suspended 38 without pay and disciplined an additional 27 “with reprimands or counseling,” according to data provided to The Times by the agency.

Investigators from Customs and Border Protection‘s Office of Professional Responsibility determined that 63 of the cases — roughly half — were “unsubstantiated.” Six cases remain open, and the Homeland Security Department‘s inspector general is also investigating.

Last July, the office began looking into more than 60 current employees and eight former staff following reports of a secret Facebook group in which members used dehumanizing and derogatory language regarding Latina members of Congress and deceased migrants.

The existence of the group, known as “I’m 10-15,” the code used by Border Patrol for migrants in custody, was first reported by ProPublica, and at one point had 9,500 members. The group’s vulgar posts included an illustration of Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being sexually assaulted by President Trump and others that mocked migrants who drowned in the Rio Grande.

Ocasio-Ortez did not immediately provide comment.

The probe, which is not criminal, ultimately doubled the number of individuals under investigation, and included several additional private social media groups.

Most of the cases deemed unsubstantiated involved personnel who reported themselves or others as part of the groups and provided information to investigators, but whose history showed they’d never posted or been active in them, an agency spokesperson said Thursday, declining to be named.

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who said on Twitter she was “one of the Latina members of Congress targeted by the hateful attacks,” but had not received information about the investigation from Customs and Border Protection, added that the investigation should include why the posts weren’t reported by the group’s members.

“This secret FB page mocked the deaths of migrants,” Escobar said, “vulnerable people dehumanized by a broken system.”

. . . .

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Read the rest of Molly’s story at the link.

“[V]ulnerable people dehumanized by a broken system.” Just say no to the racist kakistocracy and its enablers (a/k/a “normalizers”)!

This is not, and never has been, a “normal” Administration. Those who have insisted on disingenuously treating it as such, thereby covering up the obvious racism and other unconstitutional behavior, are a huge part of why our democracy and our national health and welfare are on the ropes. 

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

7-15-20

☠️👎🏻🤮GOODBYE GONZO! — Notorious Racist, Bigot, Homophobe, Misogynist Loses GOP Primary — Blinded By The Fog of Hate, Gonzo Never Understood Trump’s Sole Overriding Concern — Eventually, His Failure To Put Shielding Trump’s Corruption First Made Him “the only monument to the Confederacy that Trump was eager to remove.” (Pema Levy @ Mother Jones)

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Exclusive for Courtside

July 14, 2020

Back before the 2016 election, GOP backbench Jim Crow hate monger Senator Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions saw a kindred spirit who would help him realize his whitewashed, faux Christian view of America: Donald Trump. Becoming the first Senator to endorse Trump got Gonzo a ticket to the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, where he quickly established himself as probably the worst inhabitant after the Civil War and before Billy Barr ( a period that notably includes “John the Con” Mitchell).

During his tenure, Gonzo separated families, caged kids, targeted vulnerable Latino refugee women for abuse, illegally punished “sanctuary cities,” expanded the “New American Gulag,” diverted prosecutorial resources from real crimes to minor immigration violations, expanded the “New American Gulag,” advocated discrimination against the LGBTQ community under the guise of religious bigotry, encouraged police brutality against Black Americans, aided efforts to disenfranchise Black and Latino voters, spread false narratives about immigrant crime and asylum fraud, dissed private lawyers, stripped Immigration Judges of their authority to control their own dockets, multiplied the Immigration Court backlogs, illegally tried to terminate DACA while smearing Dreamers, spoke to hate groups, issued unethical “precedent decisions” while falsely claiming to be acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, interfered with asylum grants and judicial independence, put anti-due-process production quotas on Immigration Judges, attempted to dismantle congressionally mandated “know your rights” programs, to name just a few of his gross abuses of public office. Indeed, other than Stephen Miller and Trump himself, how many notorious child abusers get to walk free in America while their victims suffer lifetime trauma?

Despite never being the brightest bulb in the pack, his feeble attempt at “legal opinions” sometimes drawing ridicule from lower court judges, Gonzo is generally credited with doing more than any other Cabinet member to advance Trump’s agenda of hate and White Nationalist bigotry. He actually was dumb enough to believe that his unswerving dedication to a program of promoting the white race over people of color and Christians over all other religions would ingratiate him with Trump. 

That would assume, however, that Trump had some guiding principle, however vile and disgusting, beyond himself. Sessions might be the only person in Washington who thought racism would trump self-protection. I’m not saying that Trump isn’t a committed racist — clearly he is. Just that his commitment to racism is subservient to his only real defining characteristic — narcissism. Just ask his niece, Mary.

Gonzo failed in the only thing that ever counted: Protecting Trump, his family, and his corrupt cronies from the Mueller investigation. It wasn’t, as some have inaccurately claimed, a show of ethics or dedication to the law.

Even Gonzo realized that participating in an investigation involving a campaign organization of which he was a member and therefore both a potential witness and target, would be an egregious ethical violation that could cost him his law license as well as a potential criminal act of perjury, given that he had testified under oath during his Senate confirmation that he intended to recuse himself. Apparently, that was on a day when Trump was too busy tweeting or playing golf to focus on the implications of that particular statement under oath by his nominee.

After Trump fired him, Gonzo’s political fortunes took a sharp downturn. A guy who polled 97% of the vote in running unopposed for the Senate in 2014, polled only 38% of the vote in overwhelmingly losing the GOP primary to former Auburn Football Coach Tommy Tuberville. Tommy, a “Trump loyalist” with extreme far-right views and no known qualifications for the job, is not much of an improvement over Sessions.

Perhaps the only good news is that Alabama currently has a very decent and competent U.S. Senator, Doug Jones (D), who represents all of the people of the state. Everybody should support Doug’s campaign to maintain decency and commitment to equal justice in Government.

For those who want a further retrospective on Sessions’s grotesque career of promoting a return to Jim Crow while on the public dole, I recommend the following articles from Mother Jones and the Advocate:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/jeff-sessions-ends-his-political-career-in-a-blaze-of-racism/

https://www.advocate.com/politics/2020/7/14/career-racist-homophobe-jeff-sessions-over

Goodbye and good riddance to one of America’s worst and most disgusting politicos not named Trump or Steve King.

Due Process Forever! 

PWS

07-15-20

🏴‍☠️🤡KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: Experienced Immigration Judges Flee America’s Star Chambers At Record Numbers As Trump Regime’s Malicious Incompetence Triples Backlog With Twice The Number Of Judges On Bench, According To Latest TRAC Report!

🏴‍☠️🤡KAKISTOCRACY KORNER: Experienced Immigration Judges Flee America’s Star Chambers At Record Numbers As Trump Regime’s Malicious Incompetence Triples Backlog With Twice The Number Of Judges On Bench, According To Latest TRAC Report!

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse

More Immigration Judges Leaving the Bench

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The latest judge-by-judge data from the Immigration Courts indicate that more judges are resigning and retiring. Turnover is the highest since records began in FY 1997 over two decades ago. These results are based on detailed records obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) which administers the Courts.

During FY 2019 a record number of 35 judges left the bench. This is up from the previous record set in FY 2017 when 20 judges left the bench, and 27 judges left in FY 2018.

With elevated hiring plus the record number of judges leaving the bench more cases are being heard by judges with quite limited experience as immigration judges.

Currently one of every three (32%) judges have only held their position since FY 2019. Half (48%) of the judges serving today were appointed in the last two and a half years. And nearly two-thirds (64%) were appointed since FY 2017.

While the Court is losing many of its most experienced judges, the backlog of cases continues to balloon. It is now almost three times the level when President Trump assumed office.

Update on Disappearing Immigration Court Records

Records continue to disappear in the latest data release for updated court records through the end of June 2020. The report provides the latest statement from EOIR Chief Management Officer Kate Sheehey about this matter.

To read the full report on Immigration Judges leaving the bench as well as the Sheehey statement, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/617/

TRAC’s free web query tools which track Immigration Court proceedings have also been updated through June 2020. For an index to the full list of TRAC’s immigration tools and their latest update go to:

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

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Look folks, I’m not disputing that Susan B. Long and David Burnham of TRAC are smart people. I’m even willing to speculate that they are smarter than most of the folks still in so-called public service (that largely isn’t any more) in all three branches of our failing Government.

But, are they really that much smarter than Supreme Court Justices, Article III Federal Judges, and Legislators who have let this grotesquely unconstitutional, dysfunctional, and deadly Star Chamber masquerading as a “court system” right here on American soil unfold and continue its daily abuses right under their complicit noses? Or, do we have too many individuals in public office lacking both the human decency and moral courage to stand up against institutionalized racism, unnecessarily cruelty, corruption, and pure stupidity, all of which very clearly are prohibited by both the due process and equal protection clauses of our Constitution, not to mention the 13th and 15th Amendments. It’s not rocket science!

Enough with the Congressional and Court-enabled “Dred Scottification” of the other! That’s how we ended up with things like the “Chinese Exclusion Act” and “Jim Crow” and why we have an institutionalized racism problem now.

Instead of standing up for equal justice for all under the Constitution, the Supremes and Congress often have willingly been part of the problem — using the law knowingly and intentionally to undermine constitutionally required equal justice for all and an end to racism. And, we can see those same attitudes today, specifically in the Supremes’ ridiculously wrong, intellectually dishonest, and cowardly decisions “greenlighting” various parts of White Nationalist Stephen Miller’s bogus program of dehumanizing asylum seekers and immigrants of color. This is not acceptable performance from Justices of our highest Court!

We need better, more courageous, and more intellectually honest public officers in all three branches who are willing to stand up for individual rightshuman lives, and the common good over bogus right wing legal doctrines and inhumanity cloaked in legal gobbledygook. It won’t happen overnight. But, a better America starts with throwing a totally corrupt, cruel, and maliciously incompetent President and his GOP enablers out of every public office at every level of government this November.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-14-20

🛡⚔️⚖️ROUND TABLE RIPS REGIME’S FRAUDULENT PROPOSED REGS ELIMINATING ASYLUM IN 36-PAGE COMMENTARY — “The proposed rules are impermissibly arbitrary and capricious. They attempt to overcome, as opposed to interpret, the clear meaning of our asylum statutes.”

Knightess
Knightess of the Round Table

Asylum Ban Reg Comments_July 2020_FINAL

INTRODUCTION

In their introduction, the proposed regulations misstate the Congressional intent behind our asylum laws.2 Since 1980, our nation’s asylum laws are neither an expression of foreign policy nor an assertion of the right to protect resources or citizens. It is for this reason that the notice of proposed rulemaking must cite a case from 1972 that did not address asylum at all in order to find support for its claim.

The intent of Congress in enacting the 1980 Refugee Act was to bring our country’s asylum laws into accordance with our international treaty obligations, specifically by eliminating the above- stated biases from such determinations. For the past 40 years, our laws require us to grant asylum to all who qualify regardless of foreign policy or other concerns. Furthermore, the international treaties were intentionally left broad enough in their language to allow adjudicators flexibility to provide protection in response to whatever types of harm creative persecutors might de- vise. In choosing to adopt the precise language of those treaties, Congress adopted the same flexibility. See e.g. Murray v. The Schooner Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. 64 (1804), pursuant to which national statutes should be interpreted in such a way as to not conflict with international laws.

The proposed rules are impermissibly arbitrary and capricious. They attempt to overcome, as opposed to interpret, the clear meaning of our asylum statutes. Rather than interpret the views of Congress, the proposed rules seek to replace them in furtherance of the strongly anti-immigrant views of the administration they serve.3 And that they seek to do so in an election year, for political gain, is clear.

In attempting to stifle clear Congressional intent in service of its own political motives, the ad- ministration has proposed rules that are ultra vires to the statute.

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Read our full comment at the above link.

Special thanks to the following Round Table Team that took the lead in drafting this comment (listed alphabetically):

Judge Jeffrey Chase

Judge Bruce Einhorn

Judge Rebecca Jamil

Judge Carol King

Judge Lory Diana Rosenberg

Judge Ilyce Shugall

Due Process Forever! Crimes Against Humanity, Never!

PWS

07-14-20

🏴‍☠️TRUMP REGIME’S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: IMMIGRATION SUPERSTAR LINDSAY MUIR HARRIS &  ONE OF HER ASYLEE CLIENTS SPEAK OUT AGAINST MILLER’S NEO-NAZI PROPOSAL TO BAR ASYLUM! — “My husband and I may not be alive today and our daughter would have been married off as the third wife of a man in his fifties by the time she was twelve.”

Professor Lindsay Muir Harris
Professor Lindsay Muir Harris
UDC Law

https://msmagazine.com/2020/07/13/an-american-mother-on-asylum-trumps-new-rules-would-have-rewritten-my-story/

An American Mother on Asylum: Trump’s New Rules Would Have Rewritten My Story

7/13/2020 by NENE BAH and LINDSAY M. HARRIS

Asylum is not a perfect solution for families like mine, who are fleeing human rights abuses. Starting all over again in another country is not easy.

We have, at times, struggled to survive. I have worked night shifts in a factory, as a janitor for a public school system, and in retail. I have worked hard to provide for my family.

Today, I am a U.S. citizen and my children are in college. My daughter can’t make up her mind about which major to choose. Above all, we are safe from physical harm and threats to my daughter’s safety and my own that we fled in our home country.

But, if the new asylum rules proposed by the Trump administration are put into practice, others like me will not have the same protection. They will be returned to danger.

This is my story.

I fled my home country in West Africa in 2010. My husband and I had a happy life and after university I worked as a high school biology teacher.

Things became too dangerous for us to stay, however, when family and community members came after us, insisting that my young daughter be subjected to female genital cutting and early forced marriage to a much older man.

Wanting to protect my child from what I myself had endured when I was young, I decided to take a stand. My husband and I were united in our opposition to female genital cutting, which is very common in our country, especially for girls between 5 and 9 years old. Given my traumatic and painful experience and how it has affected me throughout my life, we did everything we could to protect our daughter.

This antagonized our community and families, and we both endured numerous threats, physical attacks, and beatings, in an attempt by our family to convince us to let her be cut. We lived in constant fear of my daughter being kidnapped and cut.

At one point, an extended family member who insisted that we agree to let our daughter be cut ran over my husband, causing him to suffer brain damage and severe injuries. The authorities refused to intervene in what they saw as “family matters,” and the law against female genital cutting is not enforced in my country. To protect our child, I knew we had to leave.

I had visited the United States before and knew it would be a safe place to raise our family. There was no way to apply for asylum outside the U.S., so I obtained tourist visas for us. There are no direct flights from my home country to the United States, so we stopped in North Africa for a brief layover, before arriving in the U.S.

Soon after arrival, I found a lawyer, to help me with my case: Lindsay Harris, with the Tahirih Justice Center. I was lucky to find a lawyer, but the process of applying for asylum was extremely challenging—although Lindsay spoke French, one of the languages I speak comfortably, we had to complete all of the paperwork in English. I had to re-tell my story time and time again and eventually before an asylum officer.

I realize now that I was actually lucky because I had my asylum interview in 2011, and my case was granted only six months later that same year. Now, asylum seekers often wait several years before an interview, and the U.S. government just made the waiting period longer. During those six months, I lived with the constant anxiety of being sent back to my country where my daughter would be cut and our lives were in danger.

When we were granted asylum, we were finally able to live in safety and peace. My daughter was able to focus on school and have a happy childhood.

My heart sank earlier this month when I learned that other women and girls may not have the same access to safety that we did. The Trump administration wants to make major changes to the rules for asylum law. If these rules were in effect when I sought asylum in 2011, I would not have been granted.

The more I learn about these policy changes, the more stunned and saddened I am. It’s staggering to think that under these new rules, gender-based violence would not count—as if it’s not important enough to matter.

In my country, and many countries around the world, women are subjected to specific forms of harm based on their gender: gender-specific violence. Men simply are not at risk of female genital cutting and generally not child or forced marriage.

Under the new rules, what happened between my family and community members would be considered just a “private dispute”—despite the strong evidence then and now to show that my government would not intervene in what they see as family issues, even where serious physical harm and death are involved.

Part of my asylum claim was that I was targeted because of my feminist political opinion: I believe women and girls have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies. These new rules would prevent those claims too.

It’s unbelievable that things like taking a non-direct flight, as my family did—which had nothing to do with how much we needed protection or whether or not we were telling the truth—could bar someone from being granted asylum protection. That stop, briefly, at another airport in North Africa, would have undermined our entire claim for protection. My husband and I may not be alive today and our daughter would have been married off as the third wife of a man in his fifties by the time she was twelve.

It angers me that the government wants to create all of these new bars to asylum, leaving some asylum seekers with access only to something called “withholding of removal.”

For me, this would have meant separation from my husband and children—who would not have also been granted that protection as my derivatives or who would each have to have their own asylum claim—never being able to travel outside the U.S., never being able to become a lawful permanent resident or a citizen, and continually renewing a work permit and reporting to a deportation officer on a routine basis. We would be living in limbo.

Take Action

The public can comment on the proposed rules to change asylum until July 15, 2020.

It is painful and frightening for me to speak out, but I have chosen to do so.

I want to ensure that the women who come after me, seeking protection for themselves and their daughters, will not find that the United States has closed its doors and shut its eyes to human rights abuses and persecution against women and girls.

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These proposals have been developed and promoted by neo-Nazi racist xenophobe Stephen Miller. They are totally outrageous and illegal. Many entitled to our nation’s protection have already been maimed, tortured, raped, or died as a result of  our nation’s failure to stand up against this arrogant human rights abuser on our public payroll. 

The humanity of every American is diminished by Miller’s White Nationalist hate agenda and the corrupt regime that employs him.

PWS

07-14-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮THE UGLY TRUTH BEHIND TRUMP’S COVID-19 LIES: Immigrants Don’t Spread COVID-19, But ICE Spreads It Throughout The U.S. & The World, According To a New Report From The NY Times & The Marshall Project!

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮THE UGLY TRUTH BEHIND TRUMP’S COVID-19 LIES: Immigrants Don’t Spread COVID-19, But ICE Spreads It Throughout The U.S. & The World, According To a New Report From The NY Times & The Marshall Project!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/10/how-ice-exported-the-coronavirus

By Emily KassieBarbara Marcolini

This video was produced in collaboration with The New York Times.

Admild, an undocumented immigrant from Haiti, was feeling sick as he approached the deportation plane that was going to take him back to the country he had fled in fear. Two weeks before that day in May, while being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana, he had tested positive for the coronavirus — and he was still showing symptoms.

He disclosed his condition to an ICE official at the airport, who sent him to a nurse.

“She just gave me Tylenol,” said Admild, who feared reprisals if his last name was published. Not long after, he was back on the plane before landing in Port-au-Prince, one of more than 40,000 immigrants deported from the United States since March, according to ICE records.

Even as lockdowns and other measures have been taken around the world to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, ICE has continued to detain people, move them from state to state and deport them.

An investigation by The New York Times in collaboration with The Marshall Project reveals how unsafe conditions and scattershot testing helped turn ICE into a domestic and global spreader of the virus — and how pressure from the Trump administration led countries to take in sick deportees.

We spoke to more than 30 immigrant detainees who described cramped and unsanitary detention centers where social distancing was near impossible and protective gear almost nonexistent. “It was like a time bomb,” said Yudanys, a Cuban immigrant held in Louisiana.

At least four deportees interviewed by The Times, from India, Haiti, Guatemala and El Salvador, tested positive for the virus shortly after arriving from the United States.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the introduction and view the video at the link.

There is no reliable evidence that migrants and asylum seekers are a significant source of COVID-19 spread, particularly if they are properly screened, tested, and quarantined when necessary. https://www.cato.org/blog/no-mr-president-immigration-not-correlated-covid-19-united-states

On the other hand, as this report as well as numerous Federal Court actions have shown, there is powerful evidence that the “maliciously incompetent” immigration policies of the Trump regime are spreading COVID-19 in the U.S. and the world.

Consequently, Trump’s COVID-19 based immigration and asylum restrictions are a bad faith pretext for a White Nationalist, racist, xenophobic agenda. It’s a cowardly coverup for the truth that the Trump Administration threatens America’s health, not migrants and asylum seekers.

Reality is actually pretty straightforward, even if  some Federal Courts and most GOP legislators pretend otherwise.

PWS

07-13-20