"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández and Carlos Moctezuma García in The NY Times:
Inside an immigration court in southern Texas this week, a judge asked one of us to stand at the far end of the courtroom and not submit any documents on behalf of a client, perhaps as a health precaution. Inside a nearby federal court, dozens of migrants were being processed for violating federal immigration law. The coronavirus has paused most of our lives. But for migrants, life under a pandemic looks a lot like life before it: suffering because President Trump has an insatiable appetite for imprisoning migrants.
It’s time to shut down immigration prisons.
Across the country, the federal government locks up tens of thousands of people every day who are suspected of violating immigration law. The Border Patrol crams people into holding cells that resemble large kennels. Immigration and Customs Enforcement runs a network of hundreds of prisons — from a county jail north of Boston to an 1,100-bed facility tucked in a southern Texas wildlife refuge. While it’s good that ICE will stop some immigration enforcement, it should release the detainees in its custody. Another government agency, the Marshals Service, holds thousands more who are being prosecuted for violating criminal immigration law.
No matter which agency is in charge, there are only two reasons recognized under U.S. law to confine these people: flight risk or dangerousness. But in this moment, the risks to life and public health that come with imprisoning migrants far outweigh either reason.
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A protest against migrant detention centers in Los Angeles last year.
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Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images — LightRocket, via Getty Images
Decades of research teaches us that crime goes down as the migrant population goes up. On top of that, pilot projects going back decades show that with the right support, migrants almost always do as they are asked. Inside immigration prisons, there are children too young even to tie their shoelaces. Families of asylum seekers hold on to the hope that in the United States, they might find refuge. There are longtime permanent residents with families, careers and homes here. Few have any history of violence. Most have powerful incentives to build lives just as ordinary as the rest of ours.
More than 3,000 medical professionals are calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release detainees amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In an open letter, the clinicians said the conditions inside detention facilities make it easy for the virus to spread and difficult for those in custody to seek medical attention.
“We strongly recommend that ICE implement community-based alternatives to detention to alleviate the mass overcrowding in detention facilities,” they said. “Individuals and families, particularly the most vulnerable—the elderly, pregnant women, people with serious mental illness, and those at higher risk of complications— should be released while their legal cases are being processed to avoid preventable deaths and mitigate the harm from a COVID-19 outbreak.”
The letter points to the spread of disease public health officials have seen in places like nursing homes, such as Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash., where more than half of residents have tested positive for the virus and more than 20 percent have died in the past month.
“Considering the extreme risk presented by these conditions in light of the global COVID-19 epidemic, it is impossible to ensure that detainees will be in a ‘safe, secure and humane environment,’ as ICE’s own National Detention Standards state,” the letter added.
Since the start of the outbreak, some have raised concerns about immigration policies.
In February, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to the administration’s coronavirus task force and later led a group of Democrats asking them to stop the implementation of the “public charge” rule amid the spread of COVID-19.
On Monday the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against ICE, calling them to release migrants in civil detention at the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center who are at high risk for serious illness or death if a COVID-19 outbreak spreads to the facility.
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Read both of the foregoing articles in their entirety at the respective links.
OK, here’s my prediction:DHS will hold migrants until coronavirus breaks out “big time” in the Gulag and folks start getting sick and dying. At that point, DHS will dump them on the streets to fend for themselves. DHS will disclaim any responsibility, blaming the deaths and public health risks on the victims, their attorneys, judges, asylum laws, “sanctuary cities,” Democrats, and countries that decline to accept deportees.
Politically biased, anti-asylum decision making by “judges” who work for the regime actually kills!
And, we should never forget that the Gulag, the BIA, and many other aspects of this politically biased, irrational, unconstitutional system that threatens human lives and debases humanity only continue to operate because of the fecklessness of Congress and the complicity of Article III Courts.
Due Process Forever! The New American Gulag Never!
PWS
03-19-20
UPDATE: FROM IMMPROF: U.S. Court in Seattle stuffs ACLU’s bid to spring vulnerable migrants from Gulag!
Let’s see. We know conditions are bad in DHS facilities, and 3,000 health professionals say that the Gulag is a “coronavirus trap” waiting to happen. Many localities are releasing nonviolent criminals as a prudent measure to prevent the spread of disease.
But, the judge thinks it’s a great idea to wait and see if the disaster happens and the bodies stack up. By then, of course, it will be too late to stop the spread. But, I guess the judge is very confident that ICE practices “social distancing” and carefully wipes everything down in their Gulags. What could possibly go wrong?
As an incidental point, how would you like to be on the staff of one these high-risk prisons?
Gotta hope the judge is right for everyone’s sake. But, I greatly fear he’s wrong. Dead wrong!
PWS
03-20-20
UPDATE:
From: Matt Adams, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project [mailto:matt@nwirp.org] Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2020 5:10 PM To: Dan Kowalski Subject: NWIRP and ACLU Statement on Court Refusal to Release People at High-Risk of COVID-19
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NWIRP and ACLU Statement on Court Refusal to Release People at High-Risk of COVID-19
SEATTLE, WA — A federal district court ruled today that it will not immediately release immigrants detained at the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, as requested in a lawsuit filed Monday against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The suit — filed by Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Washington — sought the release of people in civil detention who are at high risk for serious illness or death in the event of COVID-19 infection due to their age and / or underlying medical conditions. The court indicated that it would continue to consider the case, particularly as the situation related to COVID-19 rapidly evolves.
Public health experts have repeatedly warned that release of vulnerable people from custody is critical in light of the lack of a vaccine, treatment, or cure for COVID-19 — both for the health and safety of people in detention, as well as for the staff who work at these facilities and the communities they return home to every day. As the healthcare system in the Seattle-area is increasingly overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases, this step is urgent to reducing the toll on its infrastructure.
Matt Adams, legal director for NWIRP, issued the following statement:
“We strongly disagree with ICE’s assertion that the harm is not imminent simply because ICE has not yet publicly confirmed any cases of COVID 19 at the NWDC,” said Matt Adams. “We will continue pushing forward to challenge the detention of our vulnerable clients during this pandemic. I just hope our clients do not succumb to severe illness or death before we can procure their release.”
Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, issued the following statement:
“We will continue to fight for our clients, who face tremendous danger to their health while in detention. Public health officials are in agreement — it is not a matter of if there is a COVID-19 outbreak in immigrant detention centers, but when. ICE should heed their warning. By refusing to immediately release our clients, ICE is jeopardizing their lives and the lives of its staff and their families.”
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP) is a nationally-recognized legal services organization founded in 1984. Each year, NWIRP provides direct legal assistance in immigration matters to over 10,000 low-income people from over 130 countries, speaking over 60 languages and dialects. NWIRP also strives to achieve systemic change to policies and practices affecting immigrants through impact litigation, public policy work, and community education. Visit their website at www.nwirp.org and follow them on Twitter @nwirp.
As the United States responds to the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration has made sweeping changes to the country’s immigration apparatus, altering daily operations and disrupting the lives of thousands.
In a little over a week, there have been a dozen changes, ranging from postponing immigration hearings to pausing deportation flights to certain countries and suspending refugee admissions. The tweaks to the system are being made incrementally, though rapidly, as the pandemic spreads across the country.
Against the backdrop of the coronavirus outbreak, the Trump administration is also trying to move forward with some of its most restrictionist policies that have struggled to be put into practice, including blocking entry to asylum seekers.
President Donald Trump confirmed he’s planning to bar entry to migrants during a White House briefing Wednesday. “The answer’s yes,” Trump said when asked if he was planning to take that step, which he said would come “very soon,” adding, “Probably today.”
Below is a list of the changes to the immigration system over recent days:
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Read the complete article with Priscilla’s list at the link.
What if our “immigration bureaucracy” provided information in such a clear and timely manner as Priscilla? Thanks, Priscilla for your constant excellent reporting and for all you do for our society. Truly, one of many “heroes” out there!
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump imposes sweeping entry restrictions in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus — and considers still more — he’s relying on an agency to help implement them that has been hollowed out at the top ranks in a revolving door of leadership, potentially hampering his administration’s response to the crisis.
It has been nearly a year since the Department of Homeland Security has had a Senate-confirmed leader. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, the fourth person to lead the agency in three years, has been on the job less than six months.
In addition, 65 percent of top jobs in the department are vacant or filled by acting appointees, more than in any other federal agency, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that advocates for more effective government. Among the vacancies are the No. 2 official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the department’s top lawyer and the head of the country’s immigration system.
That has led to a cascade of other unfilled jobs, a vacuum of leadership causing major decisions to be deferred and a drop in morale at the agency that was born out of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to coordinate the government’s response to threats, said people close to DHS. After a chaotic rollout over the weekend of restrictions on many travelers from Europe — where those returning to the U.S. were held for hours in cramped conditions — there are new concerns that the agency isn’t prepared to manage what’s to come.
“You have the vacancies, the musical chairs with positions throughout the organization and policies that come down without a lot of forethought putting added stress on a workforce that already has an extremely crucial job to protect the homeland,” said David Lapan, who was a spokesman for DHS during Trump’s first year in office. “So at what point do we break them?”
To Lapan, the chaotic scenes at airports over the weekend were a reminder of what happened when, in the early days of his presidency, Trump abruptly announced travel restrictions on passengers coming from predominately Muslim countries without giving DHS time to prepare.
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Now, lets hear from the always amazing Betsy Woodruff Swan over at her “new home” Politico on how DHS has, predictably, tried to “hide the ball” on the coronavirus exposure of its own employees:
Nearly 500 Homeland Security employees are quarantined because of the novel coronavirus, and at least 13 are confirmed or presumed COVID-19 positive, according to documentation reviewed by POLITICO.
A DHS spokesperson would not to comment on the record for this story.
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The department previously revealed that eight Transportation Security Administration officers had contracted COVID-19.
But the latest numbers are higher and highlight the challenge the novel coronavirus poses to the federal workforce. More than 240,000 people work for DHS, making it the third-largest workforce in the federal government. Many of those employees interact with numerous people every day as part of their work, including employees with Customs and Border Protection and the TSA.
“The department’s leadership is going to have to pay very close attention as this public health crisis evolves,” said John Cohen, former acting undersecretary of intelligence and analysis. “It has to be concerned that its ability to carry out its core mission could be compromised if there’s a widespread outbreak of the virus among DHS personnel. And quite frankly, that’s something that federal, state, and local officials need to be concerned about across the board — that this virus will spread among first responders, law enforcement, and Homeland Security personnel, compromising the ability of those organizations to protect the public.”
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“Because of the president’s outsized focus on the immigration enforcement part of the DHS mission set — since immigration is not the only thing in DHS’ mission — the organization has been under a lot of strain over the last three years,” he said. “The focus on immigration, lots of attention, lots of presidential pressure, vacancies, changes in leadership, the government shutdown, people having to work without pay — after all of that, add on this pandemic and I think you have cause for concern about a workforce that has been under extended stress now having to endure yet more.”
So, it’s hardly surprising that faced with a genuine crisis that threatens health and safety, the DHS is rudderless, ill-prepared to respond, and continues to hide the real human consequences of its malicious incompetence, thereby endangering both its own line employees as well as the entire U.S. public.
Betsy Woodruff Swan is one of my favorite guest panelists on “Meet the Press.” Clear, concise, articulate, analytical! I assisted Betsy occasionally in the past when she was at The Daily Beast. I hope that in her new role she will get “re-involved” in immigration coverage. In any event, great to “post” you again, Betsy!
Maria Sacchetti Immigration Reporter, Washington PostArelis R. Hernandez Southern Border Reporter Washington Post
Maria Sacchetti & Arelis R. Hernandez report for WashPost:
United States immigration authorities will temporarily halt enforcement across the United States except for its efforts to deport foreign nationals who have committed crimes or who pose a threat to public safety. The change in enforcement status comes amid the coronavirus outbreak and aims to limit the spread of the virus and to encourage those who need treatment to seek medical help.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said late Wednesday that its Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) will “delay enforcement actions” and use “alternatives to detention” amid the outbreak, according to a notification the agency sent to Congress.
ICE told members of Congress that its “highest priorities are to promote lifesaving and public safety activities.”
[[Mapping the spread of the coronavirus]]
“During the COVID-19 crisis, ICE will not carry out enforcement operations at or near health care facilities, such as hospitals, doctors’ offices, accredited health clinics, and emergent or urgent care facilities, except in the most extraordinary of circumstances,” according to the notification. “Individuals should not avoid seeking medical care because they fear civil immigration enforcement.”
The agency, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, did not immediately respond to questions about how many of the approximately 37,000 detainees it has in custody will remain there. Nearly 20,000 in ICE custody have some sort of criminal history, but it remained unclear how many of those people have serious criminal violations in their past.
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Read the complete article at the link.
Finally, a ray of sanity and humanity from DHS!Still no definitive word from EOIR.
We’ve actually gotten to the sad point where DHS occasionally acts more rationally than EOIR. Nothing to write home about. But, shows how totally perverted justice has become under Barr and the toadies at EOIR. Also says loads about those in Congress and the Article III Judiciary who have allowed EOIR to continue to heap abuses on migrants in clear violation of the Due Process Clause of our Constitution.
Anger builds over virus dangers in immigration courts
After protests, Trump administration makes late-night move to scale back deportation hearings
Prior to the curtailment announced Tuesday night, a spokeswoman for the DOJ unit said: “EOIR continues to evaluate the information available from public health officials to inform the decisions regarding the operational status of each immigration court. “
However, individual scheduled hearings were not covered by the Sunday announcement nor were those for those in detention. “All other hearings proceeding,” the twitter message that night said.
One immigration judge dismissed the limitation announced Sunday as a “drop in the bucket.”
Immigration court participants complained that they were being notified by late-night Twitter posts rather than a more detailed public announcement of how the risks and benefits were being weighed.
“The immigration courts need to close. Period,” said Jeremy McKinney of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Most of these hearings can wait in order to put the safety of the public first….Close the courts for a few weeks until screening and proper testing can be done.”
Closing the immigration courts altogether would create thorny issues, particularly for immigrants who are being held in custody. Such a move would likely trigger legal challenges on due process grounds.
However, immigration lawyers said there are workarounds for many of the issues, including handling bond hearings via written filings and conducting hearings by video or teleconference. Video conferencing is already used to beam detainees into hearings in many courts.
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Still, some of the steps being promoted by lawyers for immigrants could be viewed as undermining aspects of the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement policies.
Immigrant advocates are urging the administration to “parole” into the U.S. asylum applicants sent back to Mexico under the remain-in-Mexico policy. That would be similar to the prior policy that administration officials derided as “catch and release.”
Several court participants said they found it ironic that immigration courts were largely shuttered during a government shutdown last year when their personnel were deemed non-essential, but the same personnel were told this week they are essential and must report to work despite officials at all levels of government urging Americans to remain home if at all possible.
“What is outrageous is that our non-detained courts were shut down for the government furlough, for political reasons,” said Dana Leigh Marks, a San Francisco immigration judge and former president of the judges’ union. “Yet, here we have a health emergency and no action.”
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Gee, it’s not like there aren’t thousands and thousands of us out here who have been pointing out for years the outrageous unconstitutionality and threat to our country presented by these “captive courts” under the Trump regime! It’s also not that they haven’t already killed folks: certainly their politicized misapplication of asylum and other protection laws have done just that! But, do we really have to have them mindlessly spreading an epidemic to have folks take notice!
We need regime change in November! We also need a re-examination of the composition of our Article III Judiciary, specifically on the Supremes and Courts of Appeals, to determine why so few Federal Appellate Judges have had the guts and integrity to stand up for the Constitution, the rule of law, and human decency in the time of crisis and in the face of patent Executive incompetence and tyranny. The “institutional failures” go well beyond the continuing farce in the Immigration Courts and the inexcusable failure of the regime to be better prepared for crisis.
The Immigration Judge properly determined that the respondent was a flight risk and denied his request for a custody redetermination where, although he had a pending application for asylum, he had no family, employment, or community ties and no probable path to obtain lawful status so as to warrant his release on bond.
OPINION BY:Acting Chairman Judge Garry D. Malphrus
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In a real court, with fair and impartial judges who follow the law and respect facts, this should have been a “no-brainer.”
The Government’s own statistics show that represented asylum applicants released on bond show up for hearings nearly 100% of the time, regardless of “likely outcome.”https://immigrationcourtside.com/?s=Asylum+Seekers+Appear. The respondent is a represented asylum seeker from Honduras without any criminal record or record of failures to appear. He passed the “credible fear” process. He has friend with whom he can live in the U.S. while pursuing his case. He comes from a country, Honduras, with known horrible conditions that even in this time of intentionally biased administrative anti-asylum “law” produces more than 1,000 asylum grants in Immigration Court annually, according to FY 2019 statistics from EOIR.
His case apparently is based on his status as a gay man in Honduras.According to the U.S. State Department’s 2019 Country Report, this claim has a very good chance of succeeding:
Nevertheless, social discrimination against LGBTI persons persisted, as did physical violence. Local media and LGBTI human rights NGOs reported an increase in the number of killings of LGBTI persons during the year. Impunity for such crimes was a problem, as was the impunity rate for all types of crime. According to the Violence Observatory, of the 317 cases since 2009 of hate crimes and violence against members of the LGBTI population, 92 percent had gone unpunished.
Clearly, he should have been released on a minimal bond, particularly given the potentially health-threatening conditions in DHS detention during the pandemic.
Thus, the BIA’s “no bond” decision in this case was an outrageous misconstruction of the commonly known facts as well as a misapplication of basic bond law. In other words, an “abuse of discretion.” At some point after the justice system resumes functioning, Ihope that a “real” Federal court will “stick it to” this disgracefully disingenuous performance by this BIA panel.
We need “regime change” and an Article I U.S. Immigration Court staffed with fair and impartial judges at all levels, with “real life” expertise, who actually understand and will fairly apply asylum laws.
Due Process Forever! Patently Unfair And Biased Immigration “Courts” Never!
Molly O’Toole and Cindy Carcamo report for the LA Times:
GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala on Tuesday became the first Central American nation to block deportation flights from the United States in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, a dramatic turnabout on Trump administration policies barring entry to asylum seekers from the region.
Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry announced that all deportation flights would be paused “as a precautionary measure” to establish additional health checks. Ahead of the announcement, President Alejandro Giammattei said in a Monday news conference that Guatemala also would close its borders completely for 15 days.
“This virus can affect all of us, and my duty is to preserve the lives of Guatemalans at any cost,” he said.
Guatemala, a major source of migration to the United States as well as a primary transit country for people from other nations headed to the U.S.-Mexico border, in recent days has blocked travelers from the U.S., as well as arrivals from Canada and a few European and Asian countries.
The Guatemalan government under Giammattei’s new administration had confirmed six coronavirus cases as of Monday morning. But it has taken a hard tack in its response to the pandemic to try to prevent the rapid spread seen in North America and elsewhere, becoming among the first in the region to bar entry of Americans.
Other nations in the Western Hemisphere, including El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile and Peru, also have taken steps to bar foreigners and, in some cases, to shut their borders, including to their own returning citizens.
Guatemala’s move to refuse deportations will have a significant impact on the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up a controversial agreement under which the United States sends migrants who are seeking asylum in the United States to Guatemala instead, even those who aren’t Guatemalan citizens.
The deal between the U.S. and Guatemala, called the Asylum Cooperative Agreement, denies the asylum seekers the opportunity to apply in the United States for refuge and instead allows them only to seek asylum in Guatemala.
Guatemala’s highest court initially blocked the agreement. Since November, the U.S. has sent Guatemala more than 900 men, women and children who have arrived at the border from El Salvador and Honduras.
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On Monday, the ACLU and other groups filed suit against ICE, seeking the release of immigrants in detention who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Immigration judges, prosecutors and lawyers also called on the Justice Department to close immigration courts.
Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, said judges had been told to continue holding hearings with immigrants during the health crisis.
“Call DOJ and ask why they are not shutting down the courts,” she said, referring to the Justice Department.
O’Toole reported from Guatemala City and Carcamo from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Maura Dolan in Orinda, Calif., contributed to this report.
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Read the full article at the link.
I suppose that the regime will just start dumping all deportees from all countries in Mexico. But, viruses know no borders.
To date, Mexico’s reported number of coronavirus cases is much lower than the U.S. However, we don’t know whether or not that is a product of there actually being fewer cases or Mexico having poor testing and reporting procedures. But, eventually what happens in Mexico will affect the U.S. Of that, we can be sure. And, no wall or Executive Order will stand in the way.
Seems like it would be a good time for some mutual cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico to determine the best mutually effective ways of handling border control issues in the time of pandemic, consistent with controlling the spread of disease in both countries. The regime did reach an agreement with Canada on border limitations today. But, when dealing with countries to our south, the regime has shown a strong preference for unilateral actions or bogus “agreements” obtained by duress and threats.
In any event, the end of direct deportations by air could be a consequence of the pandemic. And, given the limitations on detention and its health risks, the regime might be forced to come up with other approaches on how best to treat all persons within our borders, whether we like it or not. The regime’s “4-D Immigration Policy” — Detain, Deny, Deport, Distort — might be “hitting the wall.”
Still not clear what’s happening in the Immigration Courts.
Ms. Gomez and Mr. Robles are co-executive directors of LUCHA, a grass-roots organization in Arizona.
PHOENIX — First there were seven. Then 50. Then thousands of people, mostly Latino and many undocumented, who held a vigil on the lawn outside of the Arizona State Capitol in the spring of 2010, praying that Gov. Jan Brewer would not sign an anti-immigrant bill, the most punitive in generations, which had sailed through the Republican-controlled Legislature.
A dozen undocumented women, the “vigil ladies,” set up tents and a four-foot-high statue of the Virgin Mary, borrowed from a church. Students walked out of their classrooms and marched for miles to the Capitol. Abuelas put out traditional Mexican food: pozole, tamales, frijoles. At night, around 50 people slept on the lawn. In the morning, they pulled grass out of their hair, clasped hands and prayed.
The two of us were part of these protests, and we had good reason to be angry — and afraid. One night, Ku Klux Klan hoods were placed near where people prayed. Anti-immigrant groups patrolled close by. Such menaces had long found a haven under Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who ordered his deputies to target Latinos in traffic stops, workplace raids and neighborhood sweeps. Some were later deported.
Opponents of Arizona’s new immigration law prayed outside the Capitol in Phoenix in 2010.
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John Moore/Getty Images
Despite the enormous opposition to the “show me your papers” bill, which essentially turned the state’s police officers into immigration agents, Governor Brewer signed it. Arizona Republicans no doubt hoped the law would chase out every immigrant, documented or undocumented. Some did leave. But many more stayed, determined to turn their fear and anger into political power.
In less than a decade, many organizers who first cut their teeth fighting that bill are now lawmakers, campaign managers and directors of civic engagement groups like Mi Familia Vota and the Arizona Dream Act Coalition. While it’s easy to dismiss mass protests as short-lived eruptions of anger, Arizona offers a model for how this energy can become real electoral power: It happens when people learn to work with one another, build deep connections and create something bigger than themselves.
In the wake of the vigil, we built an organization called LUCHA, short for Living United for Change in Arizona, that serves as a political home for people of color. We talk to working-class families about the issues important to them and how to get involved in politics. Civic groups and political parties used to do more of this work, but they have become disconnected from real people, too focused on donors and elite influence.
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One of the authors, Alejandra Gomez, at Alhambra High School.
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Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
While the anti-immigrant bill was propelled into law by Republicans, Democrats were also to blame. They have long treated communities of color as instruments of someone else’s power rather than core progressives who should be instruments of their own power. This neglect created the space for the bill to pass so easily.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Contrary to the right-wing propaganda and the beliefs of many Dems, Trump’s cruel, racist, xenophobic, expensive, and counterproductive immigration policies are not popular with the American public outside Trump’s “base.” Democrats should make inclusive, tolerant, humane, and market-sensitive immigration reforms that will stop wasting money on misdirected immigration enforcement and help our now-sagging economy recover, a key and visible part of their program going forward.
Immigrants, of all kinds, also play an outsized role in health care, particularly for senior citizens. Maximizing the potential of all migrants and their tax paying ability will be keys to a healthy future and a robust economy for all Americans.
The needs and ambitions of “core progressives” like the Hispanic and African-American communities have much in common with the bulk of white working-class America that has been left behind by the Trump GOP’s obsession with making the rich richer, the poor poorer, working people less healthy, running up huge deficits, cutting the safety net, destroying valuable government services, letting our infrastructure crumble, undermining education and the environment, imposing harmful tariffs, and promoting hate and racial divisions among our population.
For the sake of America, we need all communities to work together for “regime change” this November!
For weeks, public health officials have warned that the coronavirus will spread rapidly in the United States but the infection rate could slow with social distancing and severe restrictions on mass gathering. The nation’s judiciary did not listen. Civil, criminal, and immigration courts continued to operate normally, with very few exceptions, until late last week. Even on Monday, after both the president and most governors had declared a state of emergency, a huge number of America’s courts continued to operate, forcing judges, attorneys, litigants, defendants, immigrants, and court staff into close quarters with potentially infected individuals. Conversations with more than two dozen lawyers and court staff (who requested anonymity to avoid professional blowback) across the country reveal a system that is disastrously unprepared for a pandemic—and facilitating the coronavirus’s spread.
Because the American judiciary is so decentralized, there is no single contingency plan that governs all courts in case of an emergency. Most state and federal courts are making up their own rules as they go. All 94 federal district courts and 13 federal appellate courts are scrambling independently to devise a strategy for COVID-19. In many states, individual trial and appeals courts are also struggling to meet their legal obligations without contributing to the spread of the virus. Immigration courts are under the control of the discombobulated and ineffectual Trump administration. So are agencies, like the Social Security Administration, that hold administrative hearings to adjudicate individuals’ access to public assistance. Meanwhile, thousands of jails, prisons, and immigrant detention facilities remain unwilling or unable to meaningfully address COVID-19, putting both detained people and staff at risk of infection. The legal system is actively jeopardizing millions of people’s health and lives.
The legal system is actively jeopardizing millions of people’s health and lives.
State judiciaries’ sluggish response to the crisis was on display Monday in courtrooms around the country. Slate spoke with defense attorneys in Florida, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Washington state, and the District of Columbia who witnessed large groups of defendants congregating in courthouses after police arrested them for low-level offenses. Many people had been jailed for at least one night for crimes like driving without a permit and possession of drug paraphernalia. In northern New Jersey, according to an attorney who was present, a prosecutor argued on Monday that defendants are, in fact, safer from the virus behind bars. But a defense attorney in the region told Slate that her clients in jail have no access to soap or toilet paper.
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As of Monday, federal district courts around the country were still in operation, though many had suspended jury trials. Chief Justice John Roberts, the head of the federal judiciary, has not issued public guidance to these courts, leaving them to fend for themselves. The chief judge of each federal district court must decide when, and if, to shutter completely. Similarly, the chief judge of each federal appeals court must determine how, and if, to hold oral arguments, and how to keep deciding cases in spite of the interruption. The Supreme Court has canceled March’s oral arguments.
Many immigration courts, which are controlled by the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the U.S. Department of Justice, were still operating on Monday too. EOIR cancelled all master calendar hearings on Sunday—these are short hearings, scheduled months or years in advance, that typically begin the deportation process. But courts are still holding other kinds of hearings, except in Seattle, whose immigration court has shut down entirely. According to a DOJ official at the Los Angeles Immigration Court, the agency has failed to provide employees with any meaningful guidance. This official told Slate that last week, a court administrator told staff that COVID-19 is “like the flu” and “not a big deal.” All last week, she said, “people were coming into courtrooms sick.” EOIR was just beginning to develop a telework plan on Monday and was withholding all information about future operations from staff.
An employee at the New York City Immigration Court spoke of similar disarray. This individual told Slate that her supervisor ignored repeated pleas to mitigate the risk of infection to staff. Immigrants with symptoms of COVID-19 have repeatedly appeared in court. When judges canceled hearings for the day to limit exposure to these individuals, this supervisor reportedly expressed anger that they had not simply moved to a different courtroom.
On Sunday, the union representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutors joined immigration judges and lawyers to call on the Department of Justice to shutter immigration courts entirely. This unprecedented alliance of frequent foes condemned the DOJ’s response as “insufficient” and “not premised on transparent scientific information.” (The agency has yet to answer this letter.)
There are currently more than 50,000 individuals in immigrant detention. There are already coronavirus outbreaks cropping up at these detention facilities. But the government has put forth no comprehensive plan to test and treat patients. The same is true for inmates in state and federal facilities. A defense attorney in King County, Washington—a COVID-19 hot spot—told Slate on Monday that “there is no plan to protect people in jail from coronavirus. People are still held on nonviolent charges, and people are still cycling through on all sorts of minor charges.” As long as police continue to arrest individuals for low-level offenses, these people will be put in jail and then sent to a courthouse. Even if prosecutors decline charges, these individuals may have already been exposed to the virus and could spread it.
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Read the complete article at the link.
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Laura Lynch Senior Policy Counsel AILA
Here’s the latest from Laura Lynch over at AILA:
The Honorable William P. Barr Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
James McHenry
Director
Executive Office for Immigration Review
Matthew T. Albence
Deputy Director and Senior Official
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Submitted via email
March 16, 2020
Dear Attorney General Barr, Director McHenry, and Deputy Director Albence,
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is writing to follow up on our March 12, 2020 letter requesting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immediately implement procedures for the prevention and management of COVID-19 and our March 15, 2020 statement calling for the emergency closure of the nation’s immigration courts, sent in conjunction with the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 511 (the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Professionals Union).
We appreciate the important measures already taken by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), including the suspension of non-detained master calendar hearings. However, the evolving nature of this crisis demands more aggressive action. Since our initial letter to ICE, President Donald Trump proclaimed that the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States constitutes a national emergency, beginning March 1, 2020. States and localities across the country have suspended school, put in place restrictions on the size of gatherings, closed restaurants and bars, and shut down tourist activities.
DOJ and DHS must acknowledge the severity of this pandemic, and take the following steps to protect DOJ employees, DHS employees, respondents, representatives, interpreters, experts, and other immigration court stakeholders, as well as the general public:
• Immediately Close Immigration Courts: DOJ should immediately close immigration courts for a minimum of two to four weeks so that public health officials have an opportunity to test and gain valuable information about who can transmit the COVID-19 virus and to reassess how to ensure a safe environment for immigration court hearings.
AILA Doc. No. 20031666. (Posted 3/16/20)
• Hold Telephonic Bond Hearings and Stipulate to Bond in Writing: DOJ should proceed with fully telephonic bond hearings so that detained individuals who are eligible can be released from custody as soon as possible and allow supporting documents to be faxed and emailed to the appropriate clerk. When possible, ICE OPLA should stipulate to bond in written motions so it is not necessary to hold hearings.
• Cancel ICE Check-Ins: ICE should cancel and/or reschedule all OSUP and/or ISAP appointments that are scheduled for at least the next 60-90 days and extend the same for several months as conditions warrant.
• Immediately Release Anyone With Vulnerabilities from Custody: ICE should immediately release vulnerable populations from ICE custody, including people 60 and over, pregnant people, and people with chronic illnesses, compromised immune systems, or disabilities, and people whose housing placements restrict their access to medical care and limit the staff’s ability to observe them.
• Decrease the Number of People in Detention to Limit Exposure: ICE should liberally use its discretion to release individuals from custody and decrease the overall ICE population, including through the increased use of parole authority, stipulating to bond in written motions, and use of alternatives to detention (with no check-in requirements for thirty days or more).
• Take Proper Care to Prevent Transmission in Custody: ICE should immediately test detainees who exhibit any symptoms and/or present risk factors, as delayed confirmation of cases will necessarily be too late to prevent transmission. ICE should also provide proper hygienic supplies at all ICE detention and check-in facilities, allowing easy access to all detained persons, the population under ICE supervision, and ICE staff. ICE should halt transfers from facility-to-facility and to out-of-state locations in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus throughout individual states and the U.S.
• Allow Stays of Removal and Other Emergency Motions to Be Submitted Via Mail: ICE should allow requests for stays of removal, and other emergency motions, to be submitted by mail instead of requiring an in-person filing with the applicant present.
• Issue a Blanket Extraordinary Circumstances Exception for One-Year Filing Deadlines: DOJ should issue a blanket extraordinary circumstances exception for asylum one-year filing deadlines that fall from March 1, 2020 (the beginning of the National Emergency) through the reopening of immigration courts.
2
AILA Doc. No. 20031666. (Posted 3/16/20)
• Provide Flexibility on All Deadlines: ICE and DOJ should liberally agree to and/or grant requests to extend filing deadlines based on imposition of remote work, loss of staff, necessity for child, elder, and family care based on school and institutional closures.
• Commit to Flexibly and Favorably Addressing COVID—19-Caused “Age Outs” on a Case-By-Case Basis. In the context of cancellation of removal for nonpermanent residents under INA § 240A(b), the Board of Immigration Appeals has acknowledged its ability to review the particular facts in a case in addressing a respondent’s argument that the age of qualifying relative should be “frozen” prior to the final administrative decision. Matter of Isidro, 25 I&N Dec. 829, 832 (BIA 2012) (rejecting respondent’s contention that age should be locked where there was no “undue or unfair delay” in the course of proceedings); see also Martinez-Perez v. Barr, No. 18-9573 (10th Cir. 2020) (BIA has jurisdiction and authority to interpret cancellation statute in a way that fixes the age of respondent’s daughter in light of undue or unfair delay).
• Stipulate to Relief When Appropriate, Especially in Detained Cases: ICE should stipulate to relief in cases where individual hearings are already scheduled, but must be re-calendared based on COVID-19 disruptions, and where the record in itself demonstrates that the respondent has meaningfully met her burden of proof based on a well-developed record of proceedings and evidentiary submissions that compel a grant of relief from removal.
• Parole Respondents in the Remain in Mexico Program: DHS should parole all respondents in the Remain in Mexico program (also known as MPP) into the U.S. on the date of their scheduled immigration court hearing date and provide them with a new hearing date in a non-detained court. At a minimum, EOIR must work with CBP to issue a new EOIR hearing notice and CBP must provide the respondent with both the new EOIR hearing notice and an MPP tear sheet. If the respondent does not have an MPP tear sheet containing a future U.S. immigration court date, the respondent would be out of status in Mexico and Mexico’s migration institute (INM) will likely refuse to renew the individuals’ temporary status in Mexico.
We respectfully request a response as soon as possible given the emergent circumstances. Please feel free to contact Kate Voigt (kvoigt@aila.org) with questions.
Sincerely,
THE AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAWYERS ASSOCIATION
CC: Barbara M. Gonzalez, Assistant Director, ICE Office of Partnership and Engagement; Richard A. Rocha, ICE Spokesperson; Lauren Alder Reid, Assistance Director, EOIR Office of Policy.
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AILA Doc. No. 20031666. (Posted 3/16/20)
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So, the spread of the coronavirus worldwide was months in the making. Why didn’t Roberts convene a meeting of the Judicial Conference, the Administrative Office, and the ABA to come up with an emergency plan?
Why didn’t EOIR, which has time for endless counterproductive “management” (actually “mismanagement”) nonsense (how about “judicial dashboards” for a mindless waste of time and money?), get together with the NAIJ, ICE, and AILAmonths ago to develop an emergency response plan for the Immigration Courts? No, the “powers that be” at EOIR were too busy trying to “decertify” the NAIJ with frivolous and unethical litigation.
Once this emergency is over, America also needs a top to bottom re-examination of the leadership and administration of our diverse judicial systems. As a whole, they are obviously “not quote ready for prime time” (“NQRFPT”) when it comes to protecting the public or using technology for the common good.
Obviously, at many levels, Federal, State, and Local, we have some of the wrong people serving as judges. First and foremost, the law is about humanity and protecting and saving lives to the greatest extent possible. That’s a fundamental human message that Roberts and many other right wing judicial zealots, out of touch with the needs of the public and wedded to stilted semi-absurdist and contrived interpretations of the law, simply don’t get. America needs better judges, with some empathy, humanity, and common sense! Again, it won’t happen overnight, but we have to start somewhere to get anywhere in the future!
WASHINGTON — Seattle’s immigration court will close down as the nation continues to grapple with managing the coronavirus pandemic, and several other large immigration courts will postpone certain hearings for immigrants who are not detained that often involve large groups.
The court in Seattle was temporarily shut down earlier this week over a report of a second-hand exposure to the virus and will remain shut until April 10. Seattle is among the areas hardest hit so far, with a cluster of deaths and dozens sickened. The number of cases in the U.S. was put at around 1,700 Friday, with about 50 deaths. But by some estimates, at least 14,000 people might be infected.
According to a statement obtained by The Associated Press from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which manages the immigration court system, other courts will remain open where the virus has struck, including Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Newark, New Jersey, and Sacramento, California. But “master calendar” dates for those who are not detained will be postponed. Those hearings can include dozens of people in a single courtroom.
“The agency continues to evaluate the dynamic situation nationwide and will make decisions for each location as more information becomes available,” according to the statement from EOIR, which is a division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
There are 68 immigration courts nationwide; the others will operate as scheduled but officials with EOIR said they are evaluating and will adjust as needed.
There have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the immigration system, but it’s not clear how frequently tests are being performed, if at all.
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Associated Press Writer Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report from El Paso, Texas.
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I suppose some action is better than none.
But, let’s take a more rational and practical look at this. The regime’s own expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other public health experts have been all over the media this weekend with a straightforward message: This is going to get worse before it gets better, so take advance precautions.
There is a “zero percent” chance that those appearing in Immigration Court have had access to coronavirus testing. Consequently, there is no way of knowing who or how many might be infected.
We also know that a significant number of those appearing in Immigration Court will be seniors or those with pre-existing conditions.
Therefore, closing down the non-detained dockets at all Immigration Courts right now shouldbe a “no brainer.” There are few, if any, genuine “emergencies” on an out of control “non-detained docket” of over one million cases with hearing dates stretching into 2024 and beyond in some locations.
By moving too slowly, EOIR virtually guarantees that by the time it finally gets around to the inevitable, many individuals and their families, fearing EOIR’s often mindless penchant for “in absentia hearings,” will not get the news in time. They will have already traveled and made arrangements to stay near Immigration Courts. Also, a disproportionate number of those appearing in Immigration Court must rely on public transportation, another health risk in addition to the disruption or curtailing of service in many localities.
Thus, EOIR’s inadequate response, notably released late on Friday when attention was focused elsewhere, combined with the regime’s total lack of credibility on all things immigration, is likely to make things worse.
There are all sorts of reasons why we need an independent Article I Immigration Court with competent, professional management focused on the public good. This is just the latest example of of how politicized, dysfunctional “courts” (that aren’t courts at all, as they are controlled by the prosecutor) hurt America and endanger all of us.
Dahlia Lithwick Legal Reporter SlateHonorable James Dannenberg Retired State Judge Hawaii
Dahlia Lithwick reports for Slate:
James Dannenberg is a retired Hawaii state judge. He sat on the District Court of the 1st Circuit of the state judiciary for 27 years. Before that, he served as the deputy attorney general of Hawaii. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law, teaching federal jurisdiction for more than a decade. He has appeared on briefs and petitions as part of the most prestigious association of attorneys in the country: the Supreme Court Bar. The lawyers admitted to practice before the high court enjoy preferred seating at arguments and access to the court library, and are deemed members of the legal elite. Above all, the bar stands as a sprawling national signifier that the work of the court, the legitimacy of the institution, and the business of justice is bolstered by tens of thousands of lawyers across the nation.
On Wednesday, Dannenberg tendered a letter of resignation from the Supreme Court Bar to Chief Justice John Roberts. He has been a member of that bar since 1972. In his letter, reprinted in full below, Dannenberg compares the current Supreme Court, with its boundless solicitude for the rights of the wealthy, the privileged, and the comfortable, to the court that ushered in the Lochner era in the early 20th century, a period of profound judicial activism that put a heavy thumb on the scale for big business, banking, and insurance interests, and ruled consistently against child labor, fair wages, and labor regulations.
The Chief Justice of the United States
One First Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20543
March 11, 2020
Dear Chief Justice Roberts:
I hereby resign my membership in the Supreme Court Bar.
This was not an easy decision. I have been a member of the Supreme Court Bar since 1972, far longer than you have, and appeared before the Court, both in person and on briefs, on several occasions as Deputy and First Deputy Attorney General of Hawaii before being appointed as a Hawaii District Court judge in 1986. I have a high regard for the work of the Federal Judiciary and taught the Federal Courts course at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s. This due regard spanned the tenures of Chief Justices Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist before your appointment and confirmation in 2005. I have not always agreed with the Court’s decisions, but until recently I have generally seen them as products of mainstream legal reasoning, whether liberal or conservative. The legal conservatism I have respected– that of, for example, Justice Lewis Powell, Alexander Bickel or Paul Bator– at a minimum enshrined the idea of stare decisis and eschewed the idea of radical change in legal doctrine for political ends.
I can no longer say that with any confidence. You are doing far more— and far worse– than “calling balls and strikes.” You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.
The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.
Without trying to write a law review article, I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party, as vetted by the Federalist Society. Yes, politics has always been a factor in the Court’s history, but not to today’s extent. Even routine rules of statutory construction get subverted or ignored to achieve transparently political goals. The rationales of “textualism” and “originalism” are mere fig leaves masking right wing political goals; sheer casuistry.
Your public pronouncements suggest that you seem concerned about the legitimacy of the Court in today’s polarized environment. We all should be. Yet your actions, despite a few bromides about objectivity, say otherwise.
It is clear to me that your Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessy. The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.
I predict that your legacy will ultimately be as diminished as that of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who presided over both Plessy and Lochner. It still could become that of his revered fellow Justice John Harlan the elder, an honest conservative, but I doubt that it will. Feel free to prove me wrong.
The Supreme Court of the United States is respected when it wields authority and not mere power. As has often been said, you are infallible because you are final, but not the other way around.
I no longer have respect for you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.
Please remove my name from the rolls.
With deepest regret,
James Dannenberg
**********
So true. I’d also compare JR’s subservience to a transparently racist, White Nationalist, authoritarian agenda to White Supremacist darling Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision. Roberts is knowingly enabling the “Dred Scottifing” of Hispanics, African Americans, Muslims, political opponents, the LGBTQ community, journalists, minority voters, and a host of others on the authoritarian regime’s “enemies” list.
At a time when America needs a Chief Justice with the courage and integrity to stand up for our Constitution, the rule of law, and the lives of the most vulnerable among us, we instead get Roberts.
J.R. Is quick to stand up for the rights of corporations, guns, and the Executive. But, when it comes to the rights of individuals — things like due process, human rights, and the right to be treated with human dignity, he’s nowhere to be found.
Only Justice Sotomayor had the guts and intellectual integrity to stand up for the future of humanity, simple human decency, and the rule of law by voting to deny the regime’s fraudulent stay request. Typically, Roberts & Co. didn’t even have the decency and intellectual honesty to provide a rationale for their life-threatening action. A reasoned decision is one of the “minimal requirements for due process” that Roberts and the Supremes’ majority ignore on a regular basis when rolling over for Trump toady Solicitor General Noel Francisco and his transparently fabricated “emergencies.” Francisco is another one whose disingenuous role and disregard for legal ethics in carrying out Trump’s wanton cruelty and human rights abuses should never be forgotten.
The damage caused by Roberts’s failure to lead and protect humanity isn’t legalistic or academic. It’s “real harm” to “real people.”
Let’s get “up close and personal” with what happens to individuals who fled to our country seeking only due process and fair and humane treatment, just to find Roberts’s and his Supremes’ immorality and warped sense of justice.
Here’s what Roberts’s complicity looks like:
The burns from the acid attack Elizabeth endured while she was kidnapped.The acid burned all the way through to the bone in Elizabeth’s left ankle. Courtesy of Elizabeth.Courtesy of Elizabeth Elizabeth’s acid burns.
That’s right folks. Torture, proudly presented to you by Chief Justice John Roberts and the majority of the United States Supreme Court. Who would have thought it could happen here? Like Judge Dannenberg, I spent a lifetime respecting the Supreme Court and even defending their decisions, including ones with which I disagreed. That has ended with the corruption, dishonesty, and inhumanity of the Roberts Court in the Age of Trump. Unworthy of America. Unworthy by of respect.
And here’s some narrative to go with it from Adolfo Flores over at BuzzFeed News:
Elizabeth left her home in Guatemala after being brutally beaten by the father of her daughter. She went to the police who refused to help her despite filing a complaint against him. The beatings in front of her daughter continued. Fearing that one day soon he’d kill her, Elizabeth left with her daughter.
“There’s a reason why there are so many femicides,” Elizabeth said.
The pair arrived near Ciudad Juárez in late July. She got off a bus she took with her daughter that was supposed to take them to Ciudad Juárez and got into what she believed was an Uber. She asked the driver to take her to the bridge that connects the city to El Paso. But as the city lights started to fade and the streets turned to desert and cliffs, Elizabeth realized the driver was taking her away from the city.
For about 12 days she was kept inside a dirty home, occasionally fed old food, and assaulted. Different men touched her genital area and licked her breasts in front of her daughter, according to documents provided by her attorneys. She wasn’t raped, but later had brownish discharge from her vagina she believes was the result of the men hurting her with an object or fingers.
Her attorneys said they believe the men were in the cartel, but don’t know for sure. They threatened to rape her and her daughter if she didn’t provide them with a number to call family for ransom. After days of holding her for ransom that her family couldn’t pay, the men threw chemical acid on her legs that resulted in second-degree burns. Despite closing her eyes and covering her ears, her then-10-year-old daughter could hear her mother’s screams, later telling Elizabeth she would never forget the sound of them.
At one point their kidnappers went outside and her daughter realized they left the door open. Elizabeth was too weak and in too much pain from the acid burns, but her daughter persisted.
“‘I don’t want them to kill us, torture us, or do something worse,'” Elizabeth recalled her daughter saying. “‘I can’t take this anymore, I feel like I’m going to die from sadness.'”
The pair ran from the house and were eventually chased by their kidnappers, armed with large black weapons, Elizabeth said. She fainted from the pain and heat, so her daughter ran ahead and flagged down police officers who called for help. A helicopter arrived shortly after to pick up Elizabeth.
Elizabeth woke up in a hospital and was discharged after seven days despite her left ankle still bleeding and with the bone exposed. Elizabeth said the hospital was overcrowded and didn’t have enough space, but believes she was discharged quickly because she was an immigrant and not a priority for the hospital’s staff.
She was taken to a shelter that was later closed due to bad conditions. At a second shelter, the director and staff helped cure her ankle — which smelled and cause her to fear she would get gangrene — with medication and topical creams because Elizabeth was too scared to venture outside.
In November, Elizabeth had recovered enough to walk, so she went with her daughter to the Arizona border and presented herself to CBP officers to request asylum. She told them about her attack and was taken to a hospital in Tucson to be medically screened. The doctor prescribed her medication to avoid infection. Then CBP sent her back to Ciudad Juárez.
On Jan. 31, Palazzo and other attorneys walked with her to a border crossing and asked that she be allowed to fight her case in the US. She was interviewed on the phone by the asylum officer who later said she failed.
While Elizabeth was in Ciudad Juárez, the shelter operators asked her if she could watch the door while they ran an errand. A shootout occurred shortly after between criminals and police near the shelter. Men who were running from the police ran up to the shelter’s doors and told Elizabeth to let them in. She faced them and refused, but they threatened to come back for revenge before running off.
Last week, a day before Elizabeth was due at a court hearing in El Paso, she was in the streets of Ciudad Juárez when one of her kidnappers approached her and recognized her. Filled with dread, Elizabeth and her daughter quickly made their way to the shelter to hide. Her fear then was that the men would come looking for her there.
The next day, on Friday, she went to her immigration court hearing in El Paso. She joined other immigrants in MPP who present themselves at the border in the predawn hours of the day to be transported to immigration court. Her plan was to ask for another non-refoulement interview, but that same morning, a federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration policy.
For the entire day, attorneys, immigrants, and advocates tried to understand what the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ order affirming a 2019 preliminary injunction meant for people stuck in Mexico, but also what would happen to those who had court hearings in the US that day, like Elizabeth. Sending them back would surely violate the judges’ order, some immigration attorneys said.
By Friday night, the 9th Circuit stayed its initial order blocking the Trump administration from enforcing MPP and the policy was allowed to continue. Still, Elizabeth and her daughter remained in CBP custody, and attorneys weren’t sure authorities were going to release her into the US.
She was interviewed three times about her fears of being sent back to Mexico. Her daughter told a US asylum officer about the nightmares she has, how she can’t sleep, and that she had trouble eating. Eventually, Elizabeth was told she passed her interview, was released Monday with an ankle monitor, and sent to reunite with family in Kansas.
Elizabeth was worried about the costs of continuing to receive medical care in the US for her acid burns, but she is determined to start a new chapter in her life.
“I’ve suffered a lot,” she said, “but for the first time in a long time, I feel safe.”
UPDATE
March 7, 2020, at 12:54 a.m.
This post was updated to include the more than 1,000 public reports of rape, torture, kidnapping, and other violence against immigrants sent back to Mexico.
There are lots of Elizabeths out there who have been silenced, some forever, by the likes of Roberts and other “unjust judges.” But, eventually, their stories will be told in all their grim and horrifying detail. At that point, folks like Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and their enablers will attempt to “rewrite history,” to eschew moral and legal responsibility and shift the blame elsewhere with the “usual BS” like “just following the law,” “calling balls and strikes,” “just following orders.” Those are largely the same pathetic excuses offered by those who advanced the cause of human slavery, created Jim Crow, enabled genocide against Native Americans, and helped Hitler.
One of the most important tasks of the younger generation of the New Due Process Army is to bear witness and insure that J.R. & Co. don’t “get away with murder,” literally. Their job is to insure that the stories of those wronged by enablers of the Trump regime are heard loudly and clearly; to confront the complicit with the judgements of history; to insure that the descendantsof those who “stood small” and failed humanity know who their ancestors “really were” when the chips were down; and to make sure that history never again repeats itself in the form of John Roberts or anyone like him being allowed to hold positions of great trust and public responsibility in our judiciary.
Take a good like at the pictures above of Elizabeth’s legs and ankles. Those aren’t the results of somebody legitimately “just calling balls and strikes.” Roberts has “struck out.” Unfortunately, however, the rules allow him to continue to play the game to the detriment of our nation and human decency and the continued torment of those to whom he has willfully and inexcusably denied justice.
Due Process Forever; The Complicity of John Roberts, Never!
I Speak To Professor Gabriela Leon-Perez’s Class @ VCU, Professor Perez on my left, Richmond Attorney Pablo Fantl on my right Feb. 20, 2020
From VCU News:
Immigration course provides VCU students with a better understanding of a national issue
The sociology course, taught by Gabriela León-Pérez, examines the history of immigration and how the current debate ties to the past.
Gabriela León-Pérez’s class, Immigration and American Society, provides students with a more nuanced understanding of the current immigration debate. (Getty Images)
Immigration has always been a controversial topic in the United States. In the late 19th century, over 2 million Irish immigrated to the U.S. Most were Catholic and that created conflict with the largely Protestant U.S. population. The first comprehensive immigration law, the U.S. Immigration Act of 1882, contained provisions specifically designed to discourage European immigrants.
“This is not the first time the country has had anti-immigration policies, but the scapegoat group has changed over time,” said Gabriela León-Pérez, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies immigration policy.
León-Pérez wanted to give her students an understanding of the current immigration debate so she developed a course called Immigration and American Society, which covers the history of immigration and immigration policy and examines where the current debate fits into the past.
“It presents students with a context on the state of immigration today,” León-Pérez said. “A lot of people have opinions about immigration but most of them are not based on facts.”
A class to cut through the noise
When designing the course, León-Pérez wanted to be able to address current events in the news. The course uses some textbooks, but it also incorporates podcasts and blogs. The goal is to have the discussion revolve around the current state of the immigration debate.
“It definitely evolves based on current events,” León-Pérez said. “The first time I taught it was 2018, and there have been a lot of changes since then.”
John Lees, a psychology major, believes the class has given him a better understanding of immigration history. The class specifically looks at the immigration policies of presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Lees believes he now has a well-rounded perspective on the subject.
Yessica Flores, who is majoring in psychology and sociology, signed up for the class because she hears a lot of information about the subject and knew a class would help her cut through the noise.
“We are living in a world where the media is everywhere; where false news is frequent news,” Flores said. “I enrolled in the course with hopes of becoming educated in this area to help educate, inform and encourage others to better understand the reality of immigration within American society.”
As part of the class, León-Pérez teaches students how to find accurate information about immigration. The students learn to access official government data and other reliable sources. (Kevin Morley, University Marketing)
At the start of the class, León-Pérez teaches students how to find accurate information about immigration. The students learn to access official government data and other reliable sources.
“I try to present both sides of the debate,” León-Pérez said. “I want the students to have a well-rounded understanding of immigration and the debate. I don’t want them to shut down a side of the debate.”
Many students, she has observed, only understand the immigration debate from a particular vantage point. The class is a “light bulb” moment for them, and they realize that immigration is a complicated and nuanced topic. In general, immigration often comes down to economics, León-Pérez said. People against immigration are worried that new residents will take jobs, but people who support immigration say immigrants will do the type of work that many residents will not. Immigrants are looking for opportunity.
“Immigrants tend to complement American workers,” León-Pérez said. “Immigrants tend to work at lower-skilled jobs.”
Protecting due process
León-Pérez brings in guest speakers to enhance the curriculum. In February, she invited retired immigration judge Paul Schmidt. In previous semesters, León-Pérez has invited an immigration attorney as a guest speaker. This time, she wanted students to get the perspective of the person on the other side of the bench.
Schmidt served as an immigration judge from 2003 until he retired in 2016. Before that, he served on the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals. Since retiring, he has been talking about the state of the immigration courts and the lack of due process given to asylum seekers.
“The immigration courts are going through an existential crisis,” Schmidt told the class.
He understands that people have different opinions about immigration, but the courts must follow a process that protects the due process rights of asylum seekers, he said. The court functions as a division of the Department of Justice and Schmidt believes it is not given the resources to function properly. Everyone within the justice system should share a common interest in seeing the courts functioning in a fair and equitable way, Schmidt said.
Retired immigration judge Paul Schmidt speaks to León-Pérez’s class. (Kevin Morley, University Marketing)
“The immigration court now is structured in such a way that it is nothing more than a whistle stop on the road to deportation,” he said.
Schmidt offered several suggestions to the students on ways to help people who are going through the immigration courts. Immigrants, unlike citizens, are not required to have an attorney. Many do not understand the immigration process. Schmidt said students could volunteer and help them navigate the complex immigration system in the United States.
“You can join the new due process army,” Schmidt said.
Flores said she has found the class to be informative, and has enjoyed the guest lecturers. The class has not necessarily changed her views about the subject but has motivated her to become more involved.
“I have always disliked the way the immigration cases have been handled, especially the ones involving immigrant children,” Flores said. “I must say that my feelings toward being more involved in promoting change and awareness have changed in the sense that I have developed a much greater interest in getting more involved in the form of a future career.”
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And, here’s some information about one of America’s most talented and innovative professors, Dr. Gabriela Leon-Perez, who brings her rich background and scholarly research combined with innovative “student-centered, real life” teaching methods to perhaps the most important and “undertaught” subject in undergraduate, secondary, elementary, and even adult education today! Her teaching incorporates fairness, scholarship, timeliness, teamwork, respect, and lots of self-direction by the students themselves.
Gabriela Leon-Perez Assistant Professor of Sociology Virginia Commonwealth University
2012 M.A. in Sociology, Texas A&M International University
Teaching Areas
Research Methods, Immigration, Health Disparities
Research Interests
International Migration, Internal Migration, Mexico-US Migration, Immigrant Health, Health Disparities
Biography
Gabriela León-Pérez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on Mexican internal and international migration, the experiences of immigrants in the United States, and health disparities.
The underlying goal of her research agenda is to clarify the role of social, structural, and contextual factors in creating health and social inequalities, as well as to identify resources that improve the outcomes of immigrants and other marginalized populations. In her most recent project, she investigated the health trajectories of return US migrants, internal migrants, and indigenous migrants from Mexico. Other on-going projects focus on Mexican skilled migration to the US and the effects of stress, legal status, and state immigrant policies on the health and well-being of immigrants. You can read more about her current work on her personal website.
Donato, Katharine M., Gabriela León-Pérez, Kenneth A. Wallston, and Sunil Kripalani. 2018. “Something Old, Something New: When Gender Matters in the Relationship Between Social Support and Health.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 59(3):352-370.
Young, Maria-Elena, Gabriela León-Pérez, Christine R. Wells, and Steven P. Wallace. 2018. “More Inclusive States, Less Poverty Among Immigrants? An Examination of Poverty, Citizenship Stratification, and State Immigrant Policies.” Population Research and Policy Review 37(2):205-228.
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I’ll lay it on the line. If more Americans, and particularly more potential younger voters, had understood the true role of immigration and refugees in building America’s past and propelling us into an even greater future, and the dangers to them, their classmates, communities, friends, families, and colleagues posed by Trump’s race baiting “Build That Wall” and “Lock Her Up” chants – certainly pages out of the Third Reich and Jim Crow “playbooks,” – then the modest number of additional votes might well have been there to save lives (perhaps those of loved ones) and to preserve our democratic instiutions and justice system from the vicious and corrupt attacks being waged by the Trump regime, its allies, and its enablers.
We could be working together to build a better future for everyone in America, rather than engaged in a desperate struggle to save our nation and our world from authoritarianism, ignorance, wanton cruelty, and environmental and societal degradation. And, unfortunately, the “enablers” include those who don’t agree with Trump but failed to cast a vote for Clinton in the last election. Simple as that. Every vote counts. Elections have consequence. And, defeating Trump and his GOP in November could be our last clear chance to preserve America as a democratic republic!
Following the class, I did a Spanish language radio show with my good friend Pablo Fantl, Esquire, of Richmond, who was kind enough to translate for me.
Kevin Euceda, a 17-year-old Honduran boy, arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border three years ago and was turned over to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services until his request for asylum could be decided by immigration courts. During that period, he was required, as are all unaccompanied minors in custody, to meet with therapists to help him process what he had gone through.
In those sessions, Kevin was encouraged to speak freely and openly and was told that what he said would be kept confidential. So he poured out his story of a brutalized childhood, of how MS-13 gang members moved into the family shack after his grandmother died when he was 12, of how he was forced to run errands, sell drugs and, as he got older, take part in beating people up. When he was ordered to kill a stranger to cement his position in the gang, Kevin decided to run.
His therapists submitted pages of notes over several sessions to the file on him, as they were expected to do. But then, HHS officials — without the knowledge of the teen or the therapists — shared the notes with lawyers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who used them in immigration court to paint the young migrant as a dangerous gang member who should be denied asylum and sent back to Honduras. In sharing those therapy notes, the government did not break any laws. But it most assuredly broke its promise of confidentiality to Kevin, violated standard professional practices — the first therapist involved quit once she learned her notes had been shared — and offended a fundamental expectation that people cannot be compelled to testify against themselves in this country.
Kevin, whose story was detailed by the Washington Post, wasn’t the only unaccompanied minor to fall victim to such atrocious behavior, though how many have been affected is unknown. The government says it has changed that policy and no longer shares confidential therapy notes, but that’s not particularly reassuring coming from this administration. It adopted the policy once; it could easily do so again.
Last week, Rep. Grace F. Napolitano (D-Norwalk) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced the Immigrants’ Mental Health Act of 2020 to ban the practice, which is a necessary preventive measure. The bill would also create a new training regimen to help border agents address mental health issues among migrants and require at least one mental health expert at each Customs and Border Patrol facility. Both of those steps are worth considering too.
That the government would so callously use statements elicited from unaccompanied minors in therapy sessions to undercut their asylum applications is part of the Trump administration’s broad and inhumane efforts to effectively shut off the U.S. as a destination for people seeking to exercise their right to ask for sanctuary. Jeff Sessions and his successor as attorney general, William Barr, have injected themselves into cases at an unprecedented rate to unilaterally change long-established practices and immigration court precedent.
They have been able to do so because immigration courts are administrative and part of the Justice Department, not the federal court system, and as a result they have politicized what should be independent judicial evaluations of asylum applications and other immigration cases. Advocates argue persuasively that the efforts have undermined due process rights and made the immigration courts more a tool of President Trump’s anti-immigration policies than a system for measuring migrant’s claims against the standards Congress wrote into federal law.
Of course, trampling legal rights and concepts of basic human decency have been a hallmark of the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement — witness, for example, its separation of more than 2,500 migrant children from their parents. Beyond the heartlessness of the separations, the Health and Human Services’ inspector general last week blasted the department for botching the process. Meanwhile, the administration has expanded detention — about 50,000 migrants are in federal custody on any given day, up from about 30,000 a decade ago — and forced about 60,000 asylum seekers to await processing in dangerous squalor on Mexico’s side of the border.
There are legitimate policy discussions to be had over how this government should handle immigration, asylum requests and broad comprehensive immigration reform. In the meantime, no government has the right to treat people with such abject inhumanity. History will remember Trump for this, but it will also remember the people who enable such atrocious acts.
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The LA Times is ”on top” of the grotesque perversion of the Immigration “Courts” under nativist zealot Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and Trump toady Billy Barr to carry out a White Nationalist political agenda:
They have been able to do so because immigration courts are administrative and part of the Justice Department, not the federal court system, and as a result they have politicized what should be independent judicial evaluations of asylum applications and other immigration cases.
Who’a NOT “on top” of what’s happening: The GOP-controlled U.S. Senate, Chief Justice Roberts, a number of his Supremely Complicit colleagues, and a host of Court of Appeals Judges who allow this unconstitutional travesty to continue to mock the Fifth Amendment and the rule of Law, while abusing and threatening the lives of legal asylum seekers every day!
With 2.5 Branches of our Government led by anti-democracy zealots and cowards, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is our only remaining bulwark against tyranny! Capable as she is, she can’t do it all by herself!
In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.
— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)
How soon we forget!
Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts & Other Immoral Enablers, Never!
Lynn S. Adelman, a U.S. district judge in Milwaukee, has riled conservatives by publishing a blistering critique of the Supreme Court’s record under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., focusing on a string of decisions that he argues have fostered “economic inequality,” “undermined democracy” and “increased the political power of corporations and wealthy individuals” at the expense of ordinary Americans.
Adelman also criticized President Trump, who he wrote ran as a populist but failed to deliver “policies beneficial to the general public. … While Trump’s temperament is that of an autocrat,” Adelman wrote, “he is disinclined to buck the wealthy individuals and corporations who control his party.”
The article by Adelman was all the more unusual because it went after the chief justice directly. Roberts, he said, was “misleading” in his 2005 confirmation hearing testimony when he pledged to be a passive “umpire” calling balls and strikes.
Adelman called that metaphor a “masterpiece of disingenuousness,” saying the court under Roberts “has been anything but passive” as its “hard right majority” has actively participated in “undermining American democracy.”
As president, Donald Trump has repeatedly accused federal judges of being political and beholden to the presidents who appointed them. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
The article, entitled “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy,” is scheduled for publication in an unspecified forthcoming issue of the Harvard Law & Policy Review, which describes itself as the official publication of the liberal American Constitution Society. It was published in full at SSRN this month.
Adelman, appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997, is a former Democratic state senator in Wisconsin and Legal Aid Society trial lawyer. Perhaps his best-known decision nationally was a 2014 ruling striking down Wisconsin’s voter ID law.
His broad critique of the Roberts court, with particular reference to its decisions on voting rights and campaign finance by corporate interests, is not an uncommon one — coming, that is, from liberal scholars or political leaders, including former president Barack Obama.
But coming from a sitting federal judge in a journal article accompanied by such a blunt attack on Roberts, not to mention Trump, it has attracted uncommon attention.
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Read the complete article at the link.
So I’m not the only one to note the Chiefie’s “Taneyesque” performance, particularly on issues involving the rights of migrants, refugees, Muslims, and other persons of color. He has joined the regime in “Dred Scottifying” those with brown skins who are entitled to the protection of our Constitution and our laws, which Trump has eliminated without legislation, relying largely on transparently fraudulent “national security rationales.”
But, Roberts hasn’t been much good for African Americans or other minorities either, joining his right winger activist colleagues in disingenuously dismantling key parts of civil rights and voting rights protections and turning an intentionally blind eye to partisan gerrymandering carried out by the GOP to disenfranchise minorities. Election results get skewed and folks actually die as a result of these intentional miscarriages of justice to further a toxic right wing agenda aimed at destroying America’s democratic institutions, promoting inequality, and institutionalizing privilege. As Judge Adelman said “the transformation of the Supreme Court from what he described as a defender of ordinary people and ‘subordinated groups’ to an enabler of an ‘anti-democratic’ Republican agenda.” Right on, Judge A!
I also found this comment telling:
Adelman was unapologetic. “I think it’s totally appropriate to criticize the court when there’s a basis for it,” he said. “Judges are encouraged to comment on the law because we have a particular interest, knowledge and familiarity.”
Compare that with the “muzzling” of the Immigration Judiciary by the Executive reported recently on Courtside. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/03/03/🤡🤡clown-court-report-as-due-process-goes-into-death-spiral-regime-muzzles-immigration-judges/
And, as I constantly point out, the Immigration Courts aren’t “courts” at all. They are blatantly unconstitutional “star chambers” run by the Executive Branch with the complicity of the Article III Judiciary who see their work daily and know full well that they are often “rubber stamping” final orders sending folks into potentially life-threatening exile with only a transparently thin veneer of “due process.” But, according to Roberts and his gang, brown-skinned refugees aren’t entitled to even access this process in a reasonable manner, let alone receive the fair hearings to which they are entitled before being “orbited” to potential death in foreign lands. What if it were his wife and kids? I’ll bet their lives would get more consideration.
I also appreciate Judge Adelman’s “spotlighting” the disingenuous testimony of Roberts and other right wingers under oath before the Senate when they “feigned impartiality” to disguise their anti-democracy agenda (without, of course, losing the support of the rightest Republicans who were “licking their chops” at finally getting their long-awaited “judicial wrecking crew” in place).
As one of my esteemed Round Table colleagues said recently:“In the words of Balzac, ‘to distrust the judiciary marks the beginning of the end of society.’”
Unhappily, thanks to Roberts and other complicit Article IIIs, we’re there. Which is exactly how Trump and his supporters want it!
In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.
— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)
How soon we forget!
So much for the bogus ”passive “umpire” calling balls and strikes.”
WITH CHARACTERISTIC bombast, the White House denounced a federal court ruling the other day that threatens the administration’s policy of shifting migrants across the border into Mexico while they await the outcome of their asylum claims. The ruling, said press secretary Stephanie Grisham, could “reignite the humanitarian and security crisis at the border.”Too late, Ms. Grisham. As a direct result of the administration’s policy, known as Remain in Mexico, a full-blown humanitarian and security crisis already has been raging at the border since last spring. But since the victims, violence and costs of that crisis happen to be just south of the border — sometimes nearly within view of it — U.S. officials have successfully averted their eyes. To the Trump administration, a crisis of its own making is out of sight and therefore must not exist.
Sadly, it does exist. Some 60,000 migrants, mainly from Central America, have been returned by U.S. officials to Mexico over the past year to await adjudication of their asylum claims. Many have given up. Those who remain, stranded in squalid shelters and tent camps along the frontier, are easy prey for Mexican crime cartels. More than 1,000 reported cases of kidnapping, rape torture and other violent crimes targeting migrants waiting in Mexico have been documented by Human Rights First, an advocacy group. Independent journalists have also confirmed such cases, often involving Mexican criminals who use the migrants as leverage for ransom demands aimed at their relatives at home or in the United States.
The mass victimization of asylum seekers runs afoul of U.S. law and this country’s treaty obligations, which prohibit subjecting asylum seekers to such risks. “Uncontested evidence in the record establishes that [migrants returned to Mexico under the administration’s policy] risk substantial harm, even death, while they await adjudication of their applications for asylum,” wrote Judge William A. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled against the policy but let it stand pending further appeals.
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Read the complete editorial at the above link.
It’s great to be on the right aside of history here. But, it would be better to make history by getting essential “regime change” in November – across the board.
