Economics – Page 19 – immigrationcourtside.com

NICOLE NAREA @ VOX: Sen. Booker Introduces Bill to Aid Migrant Health Care

https://apple.news/A-RCQm3FvRseAEFDQaZ6_Ug

Nicole writes:

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said he is planning to introduce legislation on Wednesday that would expand legal immigrants’ access to health care subsidy programs and allow unauthorized immigrants to buy health plans from federal insurance marketplaces.

The bill, known as the HEAL for Immigrant Women and Families Act, would permit legal immigrants to enroll in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), provided that they meet the programs’ income requirements. Rep. Pramila Jayapal introduced the bill in the House in October 2019, but it would be the first time that the Senate would consider the legislation.

The bill isn’t likely to advance in a Republican-controlled Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already rejected relief for unauthorized immigrants. But it’s the latest effort by Democrats to rectify inequalities in access to health care laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic.

Only a fraction of immigrants is eligible for Medicaid and CHIP: naturalized citizens, green card holders who have lived in the US for at least five years, immigrants who come to the US on humanitarian grounds (such as receiving asylum), members of the military and their families, and, in certain states, children and pregnant women with lawful immigration status. But many other categories of immigrants — including temporary visa holders and young immigrants who have been allowed to live and work in the US under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — would become eligible under Booker’s bill.

“Covid-19 has shined a punishing light on the unjust health care inequities that exist for communities of color broadly, and immigrant communities in particular,” Booker told Vox. “While we should always be working to expand access to health care for everyone, the dire current situation highlights the urgency of addressing these gaps in health care coverage. Health care is a right, and it shouldn’t depend on immigration status. We’re never going to be able to slow and stop the spread of the virus be if we continue to deny entire communities access to testing, treatment, or care.”

The bill also contains provisions expanding health care options for unauthorized immigrants, who are often uninsured and have so far been largely left out of Congress’s coronavirus relief efforts. Booker’s bill would allow them to buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, from which they’re currently barred. It would also allow unauthorized immigrants to become eligible for health care subsidies if they have purchased such an insurance plan and meet other criteria, including minimum income requirements.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Nicole’s always outstanding and accessible analysis at the above link.

Good luck with getting this through the Senate with Moscow Mitch and the GOP in charge! Not going to happen. And, Booker knows it!

Few groups in America have been as screwed over as migrants, regardless of status, in this pandemic. They perform some of the most difficult and essential jobs that have kept us going through this crisis. But, when it comes to safety, stimulus, health care, unemployment and pretty much anything else they are left out in the cold by the GOP nativists.

Get back to work: no PPE, social distancing, hazard pay, testing, unemployment benefits, home computers, or health care for you! This isn’t the “GOP playing Soup Nazi” – it’s the real deal, the 21^st Century version of completely expendable workers and intentional “dehumanization” of the “other.” Already, xenophobic GOP nativists are whining about the very modest economic emergency money that the State of California has provided to their migrant residents, many “essential workers,” regardless of status.

But, Booker’s HEAL bill is a significant “ready for prime-time marker” if we get regime change! Health care and immigration are huge issues in the Hispanic community. Biden needs to get out the Hispanic vote and having legislation like this “ready to roll” on “Day 1” will be key in energizing voters to “work through the obstacles” and vote Trump & the GOP Senators out in the key states to finally get some much needed aid out to the American Hispanic community and others, including folks in rural areas of so-called “Red States,” and disproportionately adversely affected African-American communities in need who are excluded from “Trump’s America” (except, of course, when the chips are down and we need workers for thankless jobs or when Trump needs votes). You can also add in Asian Americans who have been working hard for America but face a barrage of racist-inspired incidents. There’s a “community of interest” there that the Dems’ should be able to attract and build upon with “good government” that furthers the common interests.

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

PWS

05-20-20

THE WORLD CHANNELS “COURTSIDE” — A Shocked & Dismayed World Now Sees America Under The Trump Clown 🤡🤡 Kakistocracy For What It Is: A Rich, Arrogant, Willfully Ignorant, Dishonest, Dangerous “Failing State” To Be Pitied — Not To Be Trusted, Followed, Or Admired — “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/15/donald-trump-coronavirus-response-world-leaders?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

THE WORLD CHANNELS “COURTSIDE” — A Shocked & Dismayed World Now Sees America Under The Trump Clown 🤡🤡 Kakistocracy For What It Is: A Rich, Arrogant, Willfully Ignorant, Dishonest, Dangerous “Failing State” To Be Pitied — Not To Be Trusted, Followed, Or Admired — “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/15/donald-trump-coronavirus-response-world-leaders?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

From The Guardian:

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is “leading the world” with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.

Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet.

“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” the columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life

The US has emerged as a global hotspot for the pandemic, a giant petri dish for the Sars-CoV-2 virus. As the death toll rises, Trump’s claims to global leadership have became more far-fetched. He told Republicans last week that he had had a round of phone calls with Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and other unnamed world leaders and insisted “so many of them, almost all of them, I would say all of them” believe the US is leading the way.

None of the leaders he mentioned has said anything to suggest that was true. At each milestone of the crisis, European leaders have been taken aback by Trump’s lack of consultation with them – when he suspended travel to the US from Europe on 12 March without warning Brussels, for example. A week later, politicians in Berlin accused Trump of an “unfriendly act” for offering “large sums of money” to get a German company developing a vaccine to move its research wing to the US.

People gather to protest the stay-at-home orders outside the state capitol building in Sacramento, California, this month. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

The president’s abrupt decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization last month also came as a shock. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister, wrote on Twitter: “There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever to help contain & mitigate the coronavirus pandemic.”

A poll in France last week found Merkel to be far and away the most trusted world leader. Just 2% had confidence Trump was leading the world in the right direction. Only Boris Johnson and Xi Jinping inspired less faith.

A survey this week by the British Foreign Policy Group found 28% of Britons trusted the US to act responsibly on the world stage, a drop of 13 percentage points since January, with the biggest drop in confidence coming among Conservative voters.

Dacian Cioloș, a former prime minister of Romania who now leads the Renew Europe group in the European parliament, captured a general European view this week as the latest statistics on deaths in the US were reported.

“Post-truth communication techniques used by rightwing populism movements simply do not work to beat Covid-19,” he told the Guardian. “And we see that populism cost lives.”

Around the globe, the “America first” response pursued by the Trump administration has alienated close allies. In Canada, it was the White House order in April to halt shipments of critical N95 protective masks to Canadian hospitals that was the breaking point.

The Ontario premier, Doug Ford, who had previously spoken out in support of Trump on several occasions, said the decision was like letting a family member “starve” during a crisis.

‘It will disappear’: the disinformation Trump spread about the coronavirus – timeline

“When the cards are down, you see who your friends are,” said Ford. “And I think it’s been very clear over the last couple of days who our friends are.”

In countries known for chronic problems of governance, there has been a sense of wonder that the US appears to have joined their ranks.

. . . .

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

Read the full article at the above link.

Are we still “to be feared,” even if no longer admired or respected? Good question!

Probably, insofar as our collapse would take down a chunk of the world’s economy with it, leave a leadership vacuum, and change the balance of power, perhaps in favor of China, Russia, South Korea, Canada, and India. We also still have a big military and lots of sophisticated weapons, although modern terrorism has shown that sophistication in expensive weaponry is not always the “be all and end all” either for winning wars or causing mass disorder, death, and mayhem.

Still, as our civil governance and international influence disintegrates, what happens with and to our military is a huge concern and a “big X factor.” Will the tradition of “civilian control over the military” also fall victim to the kakistocracy and the failure of civilian governing institutions? What’s happened to our intelligence community under the Trump kakistocracy is likely a bad omen.

Who would have thought that Trump could do so much permanent or at least long-term damage in such a short period of time? And who would have believed that our centuries-old constitutional and democratic institutions, meant to protect individual rights, enforce the rule of law, and check unrestrained abuses of power by a megalomaniac, yet highly incompetent, dishonest, dangerous, and evil Executive would have crumbled so quickly and performed so haplessly when confronted by a President and an unscrupulous, corrupt, authoritarian regime and party of toadies perfectly willing to press aggressively inane and illegal policies and false narratives to destroy the nation and everyone in it as a means of pillaging and enhancing their own power?

Yet, here we are! Much of the rest of the world appears to “get” it. Yet tens of millions of Americans who continue to support and enable the kakistocracy don’t, or they simply don’t care about our nation and the common good.

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

PWS

05-15-20

A FAREWELL TO NORTY: Remembering My Friend, Classmate, “Bro,” & Remarkable American Journalist, Zay Nockton “Norty” Smith — 1949 – 2020 — Was “Norty the Bartender” In Famous “Mirage Tavern” Journalism “Sting” Exposing Chicago Corruption!

Zay Smith — Zay Nockton “Norty”
Smith
1949-2020
Lawrence University ’70
Noted American Journalist, Writer, Card Player

We met in the fall of 1966 at “historic” Brokaw Hall, then the freshmen men’s residence, at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. “Norty” was a “regular” at the card tables in the lounge.

Later, we became friends and “brothers” at the notorious “Sig Ep House,” then located behind the red door at 726 East John Street. That’s right across from Russell Sage Hall, then a women’s dorm. That’s also where our brother “Dick the Stick” once ran a “borrowed” Bobcat from a local construction project up the Sage steps, leaving a deep gash on one of the columns supporting the portico. I remember our kids were impressed when I showed them the then-still-existing mark decades later during an LU reunion (this would have been our “50th,” but we’ve had to “go virtual, at least for now). Something about “For it’s not for knowledge that we’ve come to college, but to raise Hell while we’re here . . . .”

All that nonsense aside, there was plenty of learning and knowledge gathering going on beneath our juvenile stupidity and hijinks. Among the things that marked Norty as one of the “characters”who stays with you for life: humor, satire, and writing. The man could write, boy could he write. Even in those days he stood out as someone who “had the talent” in the world of a small liberal arts college where writing was a “big deal” and many folks did it well.

For awhile, Norty published his own “underground newspaper,” the Bourgeois Pig, sort of an early forerunner of The Onion. I probably didn’t fully appreciate the true brilliance of “The Pig” at the time. But, I like to think that “a little Pig” still lives on at “Courtside.” If my suppressed ambition was to someday become a “gonzo journalist,” Norty actually lived his dream. He became a real journalist, and a great and famous one at that. Up until his death, his blog writings and Facebook postings would bring a chuckle to my wife Cathy who also was “one of our gang” at Lawrence.

Eventually, Norty and I along with the rest of our “happy brotherhood” — Mink, Biff, Bear, Stick, Liv, SJS, Crummy Andy, B.I., Flip the Owl, Rufus, Joe Don, Hatchell, SK, Herbie, Ma Fowls, Ski, Scottie and a host of other characters — all resided together, if not always in harmony, at “The Ep House.” There was a 24-hour “Shoss” (a/k/a “Sheepshead”) game going in the card room, which, not surprisingly, usually involved Norty. Seems to me that he finished even further “down” the semester-long “owes” tab posted on the wall than I did. But, I could be wrong about that. I’ll readily concede that he played more often and with more skill and strategy than I did.

After a stint in grad school in Iowa City, Norty settled in Chicago where he became a “big time” reporter for the Sun Times. His most famous caper, for which he received national, and perhaps international, attention was the “Norty the Bartender” sting operation in the late 1970s. It’s detailed in all its glory, along with some wonderful “period” photos, in the extensive and beautifully written Sun Times obit by Mark Brown, linked below. But, as Mark points out, there was much more to Norty’s life, career, and his writing than that one blockbuster.

Amazingly, our “band of bros,” or at least the survivors, eventually grew up and became (somewhat) respectable, accomplished, distinguished, and productive members of society: doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, executives, journalists, judges, writers, government officials, military officers, businessmen, authors, horsemen, etc. Like many of us, Norty married, and he and his wife Susy had two terrific sons, Bryant, and Zachary of whom he was exceedingly proud. Indeed, Norty’s family was kind and caring enough to keep all of “the gang” posted on his condition and how we could still share with him right up until the end.

Over the years, I sporadically kept in touch with Norty and the rest of the “Chicago branch of the gang.” I recollect that as my travels as a government, and then private, lawyer sometimes took me to Chicago, I occasionally was able to meet up with Norty, Ski, Bear and the others for a beer or two at some local watering hole.

We also had some more full-fledged “mini-reunions” in Chicago. One that Cathy and I attended around 2001 hosted by Ski and his wife involved Norty riding in the back cargo area of the station wagon as we headed to a White Sox game. Another, was hosted by “Bear & Betsy” for the Wisconsin-Northwestern football game in Evanston in November 2016. Following the inevitable Badger victory, we all repaired back to Bear and Betsy’s for a great dinner and a massive “Shoss” game with Norty in attendance. Bear “strictly enforced” the “no politics rule” — something that had been added, apparently out of necessity born out of experience, since our days in the old Ep card room.

Sadly, that was the “last hurrah” for that particular configuration of our band. The last time I spoke with Norty by phone was in July 2017. The voice message said “Wick, call me ASAP.” When I did, Norty said “Sit down, you’re not going to like this.” I remember momentarily thinking that he was about to blast me for some egregious grammatical or factual error (or both) on Courtside, or to ask me for advice for a friend on some hopeless immigration case.

But, no, it was much, much worse. Norty called to tell me that our dear friend and brother Russ “Biff Stoney” Birkos had died suddenly. I sat next to Biff at the last football game, and had rushed to his aid when he was viciously “taken out” by a knee-high metal post in the stadium parking lot. Biff’s first reaction had been: “You’re a lawyer, Wick, can we sue? If not, what good are you?” Typical “brotherhood banter.”

I never spoke with Norty again after Biff’s death, although we continued to keep in touch through our e-mail group.

So, now, yet another of us is gone. Norty, has taken his wit, wisdom, and penetrating human insights on to a “higher audience.” “It’s life,” of course. And, it was expected. But, as I have found at other times, that doesn’t make it any easier. I know how much Susy, Bryant, and Zachary miss him. We all do. A life well-lived and elegantly recounted in every way.

Farewell, Norty. And, thanks for the memories and for everything else, including wiping out my final “Shoss debt!”

A much more extensive and more eloquent obit by Mark Brown of the Sun Times is posted here:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/5/12/21255842/zay-n-smith-mirage-tavern-qt-quick-takes-obituary

Specials thanks to Bear for getting the obit around so quickly and to Ski for his always inspiring and uplifting comments!

Brothers Forever!

PWS

05-14-20

HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: Some Uplifting News For Mothers’ Day Involving the Generosity Of The NDPA, Many From The “Arlington Brigade!”😎👍

Eileen Blessinger, Esquire
Blessinger Legal PLLC
Falls Church, VA

https://www.jeffreyschase.com/blog/2020/5/8/small-acts-of-thanks-2

JEFFREY S. CHASE | OPINIONS/ANALYSIS ON IMMIGRATION LAW

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Small Acts of ThanksI would like to share a nice story (for once). It illustrates how a postscript can sometimes prove far more meaningful than the main story.

A friend and colleague in the DC area, Eileen Blessinger of Blessinger Legal, planned a series of training lectures via Zoom during the pandemic. When I initially agreed to present one of the sessions on asylum law, I was told it would be for an audience of eighteen people.

Somehow, the number of attendees increased significantly. Because meetings of more than 100 people require an upgrade on Zoom, Eileen asked participants for a small donation. I believe the training went well, and that seemed to be the end of the story.

Later that night, Eileen informed me that because the number of attendees was well over 100, there was a surplus of donations beyond what was needed to cover the Zoom upgrade. After a brief exchange, we agreed that the surplus should go to pandemic first responders.

Realizing the virtue of what was initially an unintended consequence, the next speaker, Louisiana-based attorney Glenda Regnart, also agreed to open her session to a wider audience, who were invited to make a small donation to treat first responders. Subsequent speakers Kelly White, Himedes Chicas, Anam Rahman, Julie Soininen, Danielle Beach-Oswald, Heain Lee, and Jennifer Jaimes agreed to follow suit. Over $1300 was raised.

Eileen took over from there, inviting suggestions for recipients from her staff. So far, she has provided meals to nurses at Mass General Hospital in Boston; to employees at supermarkets in Louisiana and Virginia, and to preparers of meals for those in need in Alexandria, VA. Plans are also in the works to provide a meal for DC-area sanitation workers.

Those of us able to quarantine comfortably and work from home owe an unimaginable debt to those putting themselves at risk to keep our cities and towns running, keeping us all fed and safe. And as most of us read of infection and death rates as impersonal statistics, the nurses and other medical workers who are battling the disease on the frontlines on a daily basis, putting their own health at risk in the process, are far beyond our ability to properly thank.

It was a donation to another group that touched me in an unexpected way because of its connection to an earlier unspeakable tragedy. Eileen forwarded me the accompanying photo of FDNY firefighters enjoying the meal provided for them from the training surplus. Looking at the photo, I was suddenly transported back to the fall of 2001. My wife and I, who both worked in lower Manhattan, were physically very close to events on 9/11. What we saw still triggers traumatic memories. Among the horrible and tragic statistics is the heartbreaking fact that 343 firefighters died that day. More than 200 more have died as the result of illnesses they subsequently contracted in the rescue effort.

I walked past the firehouse on Duane Street every day on my way to and from work when I was an immigration judge. I remember the feeling of grief when passing by in the months following 9/11, and of stopping there one day in October to make a donation, and of words completely failing me as I tried to express my sadness and gratitude.

In the present pandemic, 15 firefighters in the unit pictured here (Engine 286/Ladder 135) had contracted COVID-19 as of last week. As early as April 7, 500 of New York’s Bravest had contracted coronavirus. Many more continue to be exposed as first responders to emergency calls from those stricken with the disease. And the firefighter who took the photo, Jerry Ross, was also a 9/11 responder.

So once again, we are reminded of the great debt we owe to so many. Thanks again to Eileen and all of the other speakers, and of course to all who contributed. Hopefully, these small acts of thanks will bring a little joy to these most essential and selfless heroes.

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

Go to Jeffrey’s blog at the above link for the accompanying photo of Engine 286/Ladder 135 enjoying their meal!

Thanks Jeffrey & Eileen!

So proud that in addition to Eileen, of course, so many of the wonderful pro bono attorneys highlighted in this article were “regulars” before us during my time at the Arlington Immigration Court: Kelly White, Anam Rahman, Julie Soininen, Danielle Beach-Oswald, and Jennifer Jaimes. Also, Jennifer is a former Legal Intern at the Arlington Immigration Court who was part of our daily “run the stairs challenge” (at the former Ballston location) with then Court Administrator Judges Bryant and Snow, and me. Ah, those were the days!

Jennifer Jaimes, Esquire — Jennifer Jaimes Esquire
Jaimes Legal, LLC
Baltimore, MD

Happy Mothers’ Day and Due Process Forever!😎👍🥇

PWS

05-10-20

THE BAN ON STIMULUS PAYMENTS TO US CITIZENS WITH UNDOCUMENTED FAMILY MEMBERS IS STUPID, CRUEL, & UNFAIR — Now, Its Constitutionality Is Being Challenged In Federal Court, Reports Nicole Narea @ Vox News!

https://apple.news/AgDswic0ERvCIlHoCI2oyaA

Nicole writes:

Immigrant advocates are arguing in court that American citizens who are married to unauthorized immigrants should still be eligible for stimulus checks along with their children.

The $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, gives most taxpayers up to $1,200 and $500 for each of their children under the age of 17. But even if they pay taxes, unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for the stimulus checks, which the government started sending out in April. Neither is anyone else in their household, including their spouses and children, even if their spouses and children are US citizens.

Advocates from Georgetown Law and Villanova Law filed a class action lawsuit in Maryland federal court on Wednesday challenging the CARES Act on behalf of seven US citizen children of unauthorized immigrant taxpayers. They argued that it unfairly discriminates against these children based on their parents’ immigration status and denies them equal protection under the law in violation of the US Constitution’s due process clause.

Immigrant advocates at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund also filed a lawsuit last week arguing that the CARES Act is unconstitutional because it “discriminates against mixed-status couples.”

“The refusal to distribute this benefit to US citizen children undermines the CARES Act’s goals of providing assistance to Americans in need, frustrates the Act’s efforts to jumpstart the economy, and punishes citizen children for their parents’ status — punishment that is particularly nonsensical given that undocumented immigrants, collectively, pay billions of dollars each year in taxes,” Mary McCord, legal director of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said in a statement.

How the CARES Act penalizes unauthorized immigrants and their families

The bill excludes those in households with people of mixed immigration status, where some tax filers or their children may use what’s called an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN).

The IRS issues ITINs to unauthorized immigrants so they can pay taxes, even though they don’t have a Social Security number. If anyone in the household uses an ITIN — either a spouse or a dependent child — that means no one in the household will qualify for the stimulus checks unless one spouse served in the military in 2019.

If the law is allowed to stand, it could impact an estimated 16.7 million people who live in mixed-status households nationwide, including 8.2 million US-born or naturalized citizens.

The exclusion for mixed-status households defies current practices: Many other federal programs are designed in such a way that US citizen children of unauthorized immigrants can access necessary benefits, including the child tax credit, food stamps, housing assistance, welfare benefits, and benefits from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

But there is a precedent for this kind of exclusion. Amid the global financial crisis in 2008, Congress handed out tax rebates to most American taxpayers, except for the spouses of immigrants who didn’t have Social Security numbers.

. . . .

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Read the rest of Nicole’s outstanding analysis at the link.

Three cheers for Georgetown Law & Villanova Law!

PWS

05-07-20

DEATH IN THE GULAG⚰️: ICE Notches First Known COVID-19 Prisoner Fatality ☠️ — Advocates Have Been Warning 🆘 Of Dangers & Seeking Releases — How Many More Will Die ⚰️ in Captivity?

https://apple.news/AF9ZwIjhuQY2ICw31DyPnug

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman reports for HuffPost:

An immigrant being held in detention at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in San Diego has died of COVID-19.

A 57-year-old detainee at ICE’s Otay Mesa facility, which is run by private contractor CoreCivic, died early Wednesday of complications of the coronavirus disease after being hospitalized since late April, according to San Diego County officials. This is the first reported COVID-19 death of an immigrant in ICE custody.

Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia was from El Salvador, according to a government report obtained by BuzzFeed News. He’d been held by ICE since January and was hospitalized April 24 after exhibiting coronavirus symptoms. He had hypertension and self-reported diabetes but was denied release from custody in mid-April by an immigration judge.

ICE and CoreCivic did not immediately respond to a request for further details.

Advocates had been warning about unsafe health conditions at the Otay Mesa detention center for weeks. The facility currently has the biggest outbreak of COVID-19 of any ICE detention center, with at least 132 immigrants and 10 ICE employees testing positive as of last week.

(CoreCivic in mid-April said it had given masks to detainees at Otay Mesa and was quarantining positive cases in “housing pods” and separating those at high medical risk.)

Of nearly 30,000 immigrants in ICE detention centers nationwide, the agency has so far tested only 1,460 for COVID-19, and more than 705 immigrants have tested positive.

Activists have been calling for the release of all people from immigration detention, warning that there is no realistic way to keep immigrants safe during a pandemic in such facilities, which have long been reported to have substandard health care and sanitation.

“This is a terrible tragedy, and it was entirely predictable and preventable,” Andrea Flores, deputy director of immigration policy at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement Wednesday.

“For months, public health experts and corrections officials have warned that detention centers would be Petri dishes for the spread of COVID-19 — and a death trap for thousands of people in civil detention,” she added. “Unless ICE acts quickly to release far more people from detention, they will keep getting sick and many more will die.”

. . . .

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Read the rest of Sarah’s article at the link.

This illustrates the point recently raised by Don Kerwin at CMS in an article posted on Courtside. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/05/03/don-kerwin-cms-detention-should-not-be-a-death-sentence-☠%EF%B8%8F☠%EF%B8%8F⚰%EF%B8%8F⚰%EF%B8%8F/

According to Sarah’s article, this victim was denied bond by an Immigration Judge, despite exhibiting “high risk” factors in an inherently unhealthy and unsafe detention center. Judge Jeffrey Chase and I have pointed out before that a functional Immigration Court, including a BIA committed to fair and impartial justice and willing to reign in unjustified policies and poor judgment on the part of ICE, could have avoided such tragedies. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/04/06/hon-jeffrey-s-chase-matter-of-r-a-v-p-bond-denial-maximo-cruelty-minimal-rationality-idiotic-timing-bonus-my-monday-mini-essay-how-eoir/

But, we have just the opposite these days. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/03/18/latest-outrage-from-falls-church-bia-ignores-facts-abuses-discretion-to-deny-bond-to-asylum-seeker-matter-of-r-a-v-p-27-in-dec-803-bia-2020/

That means that responsibility for meaningful custody review passes to the U.S. District Courts.

Why have an Immigration Court at all if it’s going to function as a mindless “rubber stamp” on DHS Enforcement driven by White Nationalist extremist politicos like Miller? If the Immigration Courts are no longer willing or able to guarantee fair and impartial adjudications, which unfortunately appears to be the case under Billy Barr, maybe all removal proceedings and bond hearings should just be held before U.S. Magistrate Judges and U.S. District Judges until Congress establishes an independent Article I Immigration Court!

Due Process 🧑🏽‍⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️ Forever! More Deaths ⚰️ in the New American Gulag, ☠️ Never!

PWS

05-07-20

JOURNALISM: STAR ⭐️ IMMIGRATION REPORTERS O’TOOLE (LA TIMES) & GREEN (VICE), & NPR’S “THIS AMERICAN LIFE” WIN PULITZER 🏆 FOR REPORTING ON HUMAN WRECKAGE ☠️ CREATED BY TRUMP’S “LET ‘EM DIE IN MEXICO” ⚰️ PROGRAM (A/K/A “Migrant Protection Protocols”)

Molly O’Toole
Immigration Reporter
LA Times

Emily Green
Latin America Reporter
Vice News

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=2c0813d6-09a3-48f9-9e01-69b91e9dd934&v=sdk

Joe Mozingo reports for the LA Times:

The Los Angeles Times has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for art critic Christopher Knight’s watchdog coverage of plans for the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and reporter Molly O’Toole’s audio story about U.S. asylum officers’ discontent with President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.

The prizes were awarded Monday in the criticism and audio reporting categories. O’Toole and The Times shared the audio prize with journalists from “This American Life” and Vice.

. . . .

The Pulitzer judges cited O’Toole and Vice freelancer Emily Green for “The Out Crowd,” broadcast on NPR’s “This American Life,” for “revelatory, intimate journalism that illuminates the personal impact of the Trump administration’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy.”

O’Toole, 33, had covered immigration and border security for a decade and decided to look closely at a new policy targeting asylum seekers, not just people who had illegally crossed the border.

She found veteran asylum officers deeply troubled by directives that in effect forced them to push many Mexican and Central American immigrants back to deadly violence in their home countries.

“The officers felt very strongly about refugee asylum and the idea of the U.S. as a safe haven,” she said. “Now they were taking part in a policy that they felt was wrong, morally and legally. But they had few choices, either continue being part of this administration or quit and lose their career.”

Audio reporting is a new Pulitzer category in 2020.

. . . .

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

Read Joe’s full report at the link.

Congrats and thanks to Molly, Emily, and the folks at “This American Life” for all they do!👍

They are making a permanent record of the disgusting Human Rights abuses ☠️ and lawlessness of the Trump regime for posterity, even as the Supremes and Congress gutlessly look the other way 👎!

Due Process Forever! Complicity Never!

PWS

05-05-20

🏴‍☠️NEW JIM CROW: Miller Uses Pandemic To Revive Racist Myths & Stereotypes About Dangers Of Immigrants! — A White Nationalist’s Dream Comes True!

James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism

Stephen Miller Cartoon — Stephen Miller & Count Olaf
Evil Twins, Notorious Child Abusers

Caitlin Dickerson and Michael D. Shear report for The NY Times:

From the early days of the Trump administration, Stephen Miller, the president’s chief adviser on immigration, has repeatedly tried to use an obscure law designed to protect the nation from diseases overseas as a way to tighten the borders.
The question was, which disease?
Mr. Miller pushed for invoking the president’s broad public health powers in 2019, when an outbreak of mumps spread through immigration detention facilities in six states. He tried again that year when Border Patrol stations were hit with the flu.
When vast caravans of migrants surged toward the border in 2018, Mr. Miller looked for evidence that they carried illnesses. He asked for updates on American communities that received migrants to see if new disease was spreading there.
In 2018, dozens of migrants became seriously ill in federal custody, and two under the age of 10 died within three weeks of each other. While many viewed the incidents as resulting from negligence on the part of the border authorities, Mr. Miller instead argued that they supported his argument that President Trump should use his public health powers to justify sealing the borders.
On some occasions, Mr. Miller and the president, who also embraced these ideas, were talked down by cabinet secretaries and lawyers who argued that the public health situation at the time did not provide sufficient legal basis for such a proclamation.
That changed with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic.
Within days of the confirmation of the first case in the United States, the White House shut American land borders to nonessential travel, closing the door to almost all migrants, including children and teenagers who arrived at the border with no parent or other adult guardian. Other international travel restrictions were introduced, as well as a pause on green card processing at American consular offices, which Mr. Miller told conservative allies in a recent private phone call was only the first step in a broader plan to restrict legal immigration.
But what has been billed by the White House as an urgent response to the coronavirus pandemic was in large part repurposed from old draft executive orders and policy discussions that have taken place repeatedly since Mr. Trump took office and have now gained new legitimacy, three former officials who were involved in the earlier deliberations said.
One official said the ideas about invoking public health and other emergency powers had been on a “wish list” of about 50 ideas to curtail immigration that Mr. Miller crafted within the first six months of the administration.
Latest Updates: Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S.
President Trump stepped up criticism of China, part of an international backlash over the outbreak.
J. Crew becomes first major retailer to declare bankruptcy; Disney’s empire faces vast challenges.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments by conference call, and the public will be able to listen.
See more updates
Updated 48m ago
More live coverage: Global Markets New York
He had come up with the proposals, the official said, by poring through not just existing immigration laws, but the entire federal code to look for provisions that would allow the president to halt the flow of migrants into the United States.
Administration officials have repeatedly said the latest measures are needed to prevent new cases of infection from entering the country.
“This is a public health order that we’re operating under right now,” Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told reporters earlier this month. “This is not about immigration. What’s transpiring right now is purely about infectious disease and public health.”
The White House declined to comment on the matter, but a senior administration official confirmed details of the past discussions.
The architect of the president’s assault on immigration and one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers inside the White House, Mr. Miller has relentlessly pushed for tough restrictions on legal and illegal immigration, including policies that sought to separate families crossing the southwest border, force migrants seeking asylum to wait in squalid camps in Mexico and deny green cards to poor immigrants.
Mr. Miller argues that reducing immigration will protect jobs for American workers and keep communities safe from criminals. But critics accuse him of targeting nonwhite immigrants, pointing in part to leaked emails from his time before entering the White House in which he cited white nationalist websites and magazines and promoted theories popular with white nationalist groups.

. . . .

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

As America suffers, immigrants, both legal and “undocumented,” are on the front lines of those “essential workers” risking their lives to keep us healthy, safe, fed, and clothed.

Meanwhile, neo-Nazi Miller remains “on the dole” — publicly funded for putting out a steady stream of discredited and xenophobic actions designed to exploit, dehumanize, and demean many of the most courageous and necessary among us.

Can it get any more vile and disgusting?

Nearly 55 years after the end of WWII, Trump & Miller are reviving many aspects of the racist ideology and actions that we supposedly fought to end forever. Raises the question of who really won the war.

Always the opportunists, Trump and Miller now see the crisis that their “malicious incompetence” helped to aggravate as a chance to target both “Optional Practical Training” (“OPT”) for foreign students and Chinese students, one of the largest groups of those studying in the U.S. You can read about it in this article by Stuart Anderson in Forbes.https://apple.news/ADkCNTe_gTje__BlQ8c-8pg

Stuart Anderson
Executive Director
National Foundation for American Policy

OPT unquestionably benefits our country as well as the students, many of whom remain and become important parts of our society. The targeting of Chinese students certainly fits with the far right’s Anti-Asian movement that has helped spike a notable increase in hate crimes directed against Asian Americans during the pandemic. Could the revival of the Chinese Exclusion Act be far beyond on the Trump/Miller Jim Crow agenda?

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

PWS

05-04-20

PAUL KRUGMAN: WE MUST CALL OUT TRUMP’S EVIL MOTIVES: “When you’re confronting bad-faith arguments, the public should be informed not just these arguments are wrong, but they they are in fact being made in bad faith. . . . Trump has assembled an Administration of the worst and the dimmest.” — I/O/W “A Kakistocracy”

Charles Kaiser
American Author, Journalist, Academic Administrator

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/03/arguing-with-zombies-review-paul-krugman-trump-republicans?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Charles Kaiser writes about Krugman in The Guardian:

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has four essential rules for successful punditry:

Stay with the easy stuff

Write in English

Be honest about dishonesty

Don’t be afraid to talk about motives

Active Measures review: how Trump gave Russia its richest target yet

Those maxims have consistently made Krugman the most intelligent and the most useful New York Times pundit, at least since Frank Rich wrote his final must-read column 11 years ago. A new collection of Krugman’s pieces, therefore, is a timely reminder that actual knowledge and ordinary common sense are two of the rarest qualities in mainstream journalism today.

Krugman’s enemies are the “zombie ideas” of his book’s title, especially the belief that budget deficits are always bad and the notion that tax cuts for the rich can ever benefit anyone other than the plutocrats who never stop pleading for them.

The same tired arguments in favor of coddling the rich have been rolled out over and over again, by Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, even though there has never been a shred of serious evidence to support them.

These relentless efforts over five decades culminated in the Trump tax cut, memorably described by the political consultant Rick Wilson as a masterwork of “gigantic government giveaways, unfunded spending, massive debt and deficits, and a catalogue of crony capitalist freebies”.

Wilson also identified the billionaires’ effect on the nation’s capital. Washington, he wrote, has become “the drug-resistant syphilis of political climates, largely impervious to treatment and highly contagious”.

Krugman’s columns act like a steady stream of antibiotics, aimed at restoring the importance of the economic sciences that have been so successfully displaced by brain-dead Republican ideology.

Very few political columns are worth reading 12 months after they are written – the New York Times grandee James Reston accurately titled one of his collections Sketches in the Sand. But Krugman’s book proves that he, a Nobel-prize winning economist, shares two rare qualities with George Orwell, the novelist who also wrote much of the best journalism of the 20th century: deep intelligence and genuine prescience.

The modern GOP doesn’t want to hear from serious economists, whatever their politics. It prefers charlatans and cranks

Krugman is at his Orwellian best here: “When you’re confronting bad-faith arguments, the public should be informed not just these arguments are wrong, but they they are in fact being made in bad faith.”

It’s “important to point out that the people who predicted runaway inflation from the Fed’s bond buying were wrong. But it’s also important to point out that none of them have been willing to admit that they were wrong.”

Krugman also writes that “even asking the right questions like ‘what is happening to income inequality’” will spur quite a few conservatives to “denounce you as un-American”. And it’s worse for climate scientists, who face persecution for speaking the truth about our continued dependence on fossil fuels, or social scientists studying the causes of gun violence: “From 1996 to 2017 the Centers for Disease Control were literally forbidden to fund research into firearm injuries and deaths.”

The history of the last half-century is mostly about how the unbridled greed of the top 1% has perverted American democracy so successfully, it has become almost impossible to implement rational policies that benefit a majority of Americans.

To Krugman, an “interlocking network of media organizations and think tanks that serves the interests of rightwing billionaires” has “effectively taken over the GOP” and “movement ‘conservatism’ is what keeps zombie ideas, like belief in the magic of tax cuts, alive.

“It’s not just that Trump has assembled an administration of the worst and the dimmest. The truth is that the modern GOP doesn’t want to hear from serious economists, whatever their politics. It prefers charlatans and cranks, who are its kind of people.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Hopefully, Joe Biden has Krugman and others like him on “speed dial.” He’s going to need lots of help and ideas from “the best and the brightest” to undo the damage inflicted by the Trump kakistocracy and Moscow Mitch.

And, the “best and the brightest” should also be the plan for rebuilding an independent Immigration Judiciary and the Article III Judiciary. The severe damage inflicted by Trump, Mitch, and the White Nationalists can’t be undone overnight, but “gotta start building for a better future somewhere.”

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

PWS

05-03-20

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON: The “Reopen America” Movement Has Been A Haven For White Supremacists & Neo-Nazis!

http://email.mg2.substack.com/c/eJxtkc1u4yAURp8m3iXCYDvOgkWbvyaKPeooTTuziTDc2CQ2ZADXtZ–JJnNSCOBkA4X3ct3OHNQatPTq7YuaC2YoxQ0DlOEUhIIGokwjdNA2uPJADRM1tSZFoJrW9SSMye1uj3AKCYkqGiMyOw0Dac4CpFgiIkZ4uKUwjSNOCpOKLi1ObJWSFAcKHyC6bWCoKaVc1c7Ik8jvPKrAuYqMFx_GckrZoTVamLbwjrGLxOuG19z9bth_RiPMcJoRFZOX0CNyAL6bcjxof_A9WVz1mG2L7tsUQ67-bYrSI7-cpSd33C2yOymqSsx3yTZ_i36sXiN8mEZ57KT7CMffJ3kLwe522-6fJ8NG885Ocg7X88GMQ_73–rs1jXn4XcziYh-nWWccTquWsO789DuX593o1TxNo8X-2Xf5z8mZrP5Zd4eQokvU2OfGgowQlJJuGkunRKJ9a4uB1FqCnxP78ODN2CUlKVNsT-nun6jr2Noz-bVknXH0GxogbxEOUeZu-5u_4KVEFna3AOzAN6exGOE0QC30lor1jR_8X_Df8lvRc

Heather writes:

. . . .

The political conversation is also shifting to benefit the president in a second way: the now repeated warnings that the coronavirus might have a “second wave” and peak again in the fall. Here’s the thing: we never finished the first wave. Our highest daily number of deaths was… yesterday, when 2,909 Americans died. We are still very much in the heart of this first wave, but by shaping this conversation as looking ahead to concern in the future, it rhetorically accomplishes what Trump set out to do just a week ago—convince us that we have successfully lived through the worst part of the pandemic and that it is safe to reopen the economy.

Finally, the political conversation is shifting in way that undermines our nation’s deepest principle. People are actually arguing about whether it might be a good thing to kill off society’s weakest members. A member of a planning commission from the San Francisco area took to Facebook to suggest we should just let coronavirus take its course. Lots of people would die, he wrote, primarily old and sick people, but that would take the pressure off Social Security and lower health care costs. There would be more jobs and housing available. And as for homeless people, when they died it would “fix what is a significant burden on our society….”

This man was removed from office, but his sentiments are not isolated. It is impossible to overlook that the people demanding states ease restrictions are overwhelmingly white, when both African Americans and Native Americans are badly susceptible to Covid-19. In Chicago, for example, 32% of the population is African American; 67% of the dead have been black. Further south, the Navajo Nation is behind only New York and New Jersey for the highest infection rate in the US.

White supremacists are celebrating these deaths, and calling for their supporters to infect minorities with the virus. But even those who insist they simply want society to open up again are demanding policies that will disproportionately kill some Americans at higher rates than others. Some are overt about their hatreds—like the Illinois woman who carried a sign with the motto from Auschwitz and the initials of the Jewish governor—and others simply sacrifice minorities in the course of business, as Trump did when he used the Defense Production Act to keep infected meat processing plants operating, plants overwhelmingly staffed by black and brown people.

If we accept the idea that some of us matter more than others, we have given up the whole game. This country was—imperfectly, haltingly—formed on the principle that we are all created equal, and equally entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we are willing to admit that our founders were wrong, that we are not equal, that older Americans, Black Americans, Brown Americans, sick Americans, all matter less than healthy white Americans, we have admitted the principle that we are not all created equal, and that some of us are better than others.

This is, of course, the principle of white supremacy, but it does no favors to most white people, either. Once we have abandoned the principle of equality, any one of us is a potential sacrifice.

And then it will not matter anymore what our political narrative is, for it will be as much as our lives are worth to disagree with whatever our leaders say.

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

Read the latest installment of Heather’s “Letters From An American” at the above link.

A real President might have used the Defense Production Act to order “Big Meat” 🥩 to immediately take the necessary steps to insure the safety of its workers in accordance with Federal guidelines so they could return to work. He could have ordered companies to prioritize the production of personal protection equipment for meat workers to the same degree as that for “first responders.”

Instead, he basically ordered the workers, usually low paid and heavily made up of minorities, immigrants, and undocumented residents to return to their dangerous and low paying jobs while absolving “Big Meat” 🥩 of responsibility for negligent disregard of their workers’ health and welfare.

Clearly, for Trump and his band, concern for human life stops at birth. The whole premise of Trumpism and the modern GOP has been that some lives matter more than others.

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

PWS

05-03-20

ANOTHER BLOW TO THE REGIME SCOFFLAWS, AS MORE WILL BE REVIEWED FOR RELEASE FROM THE GULAG: Judge Dana Sabraw, USDC SD CA, Orders Further Review, After Plaintiffs Show Undercount In Original DHS Affidavit Submitted To Court!

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2020-04-30/judge-orders-review-for-release-of-ice-detainees-at-otay-mesa-detention-center

Kate Morrissey reports for the San Diego Union Tribune:

The facility’s warden had initially given the judge an undercount of how many detainees were at high risk of complications due to COVID-19

By KATE MORRISSEY

APRIL 30, 202012:04 PM

A San Diego federal judge ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to review for release a list of newly identified detainees at the Otay Mesa Detention Center who would be at high risk for serious health complications if they get COVID-19.

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw granted the American Civil Liberties Union’s request to create a subclass of people at high risk under the pandemic, which has spread widely within the facility. The judge made his decision after learning that the facility’s warden had undercounted the number of people in that category in his initial declaration for the case.

“That information is significant,” Sabraw told attorneys during a telephonic hearing Thursday. “It does change measurably the underlying facts and whether or not the petitioners are entitled to relief.”

A spokeswoman for CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs the facility, said that the initial report sent to the judge was compiled with data from ICE Health Service Corps, which provides the medical care at the facility, and the report “was made with the best available information we had from our partners at the time.”

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Kate’s article at the link.

There was a time, long ago, when a Government agency’s submission of false, materially incomplete, or misleading information to a Federal Court would have earned sanctions up to and including threats of contempt from a U.S. District Judge. Sadly, bending the truth, omitting material information, and outright lies have become “the norm” for DHS and DOJ under Trump.

Indeed, the burden is now on the plaintiffs, often serving pro bono and stretched to the limit, to show and document for the courts each false, incomplete, or misleading affirmation from the Government. Against reason and the clear record over the past three years, Federal Courts continue to presume the proven unlikely — nay, likely impossible — that a regime led by a pathological liar and his toadies will provide them true, accurate, and complete information about anything!

Instead of asylum applicants being given “the benefit of the doubt,” as our law is supposed to require, that benefit of the doubt is now being given to an overtly bigoted and dishonest Executive who in no way has earned or deserved it. Everything has been turned upside down.

But, until the Article III Courts take actions to insure that this regime respects the integrity of the process, the practice of “lie, obfuscate, and mislead first and see if they catch you” will continue largely unabated. Vulnerable migrants aren’t the only victims here. Failing to force the regime to act in an honest, ethical, and professional manner in Federal litigation is eroding the integrity of the Article III Courts all the way up to the complicit Supremes.

Remember, several years ago, the DHS and DOJ lied to Federal Courts and the public about the existence of Sessions’s “child separation policy.” Two years later, they continue to feed erroneous information to the courts with impunity. But, who’s surprised when in the meantime the Supremes’ majority has sent such a powerful and consistent message that “Brown Lives Don’t Matter” and they won’t examine the truth or actual motivation behind any Executive attack on the rights, lives, and safety of migrants.

Here’s a report from a member of the NDPA and a Courtside reader on the front lines of the battle to save humanity: “[T]wo of our clients detained in Otay Mesa Detention Center were finally released after a Federal Judge issued a TRO. I am relieved. ICE has been unreasonable and in my opinion reckless with the lives of people in detention and even their own employees. . . . And the attorneys at the ACLU are the true heroes here and . . . students.”

Why is this abject failure of responsible Government and absence of powerful, coordinated, courageous judging that puts an end to these human rights abuses acceptable? Why isn’t our Supreme Court delivering a powerful message that Executive dishonesty, denials of due process, systemic detention abuses, and disregard of established human rights principles aren’t acceptable in 21st Century America? Why is “Dred Scottification” the new policy endorsed by the “JR Five” on the Supremes?

Until we get better Federal Judges willing to stand up to Executive abuses and a Congress that retakes its responsibility to legislate and oversee the Executive in the area of immigration and human rights, it will continue to fall to the private bar and NGO lawyers to force officials among our failed institutions in all three Branches to do their jobs in accordance with the law and the Constitution. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. But, it’s the only way it does work in today’s America. Thank goodness for the (non-regime) lawyers!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-02-20

NDPA NEWS: JUST IN: MORE GOOD VIBES FOR THE GOOD GUYS: US District Judge Vince Chhabria “Rips DHS A New One” Over Grossly Deficient Treatment Of Detainees In Gulag: DHS Intransigence “speaks volumes about where the safety of the people at these facilities falls on ICE’s list of priorities.”☠️🤮⚰️☠️🤮⚰️

Hon. Ilyce Shugall
U.S. Immigraton Judge (Retired)
Director, Immigrant Legal Defense Program, Justice & Diversity Center of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco.

Round Table Member Judge Ilyce Shugall & Genna Beier, Deputy Public Defender report:

Hi all,

I write with wonderful news from the Zepeda Rivas crew. Judge Chhabria granted our motion for provisional class certification and motion for temporary restraining order. See attached!

He found that “the plaintiffs have demonstrated an exceedingly strong likelihood that they will prevail on their claim that current conditions at the facilities violate class members’ due process rights by unreasonably exposing them to a significant risk of harm.”

He also faulted the government for failing to be ready with basic information about class members:

“[C]ounsel for ICE asserted that it will take a significant amount of time for the agency to prepare a list of detainees with health vulnerabilities because it is ‘burdensome.’ The fact that ICE does not have such a list at the ready, six weeks after Governor Newsom shut down the entire state and one week after this lawsuit was filed, speaks volumes about where the safety of the people at these facilities falls on ICE’s list of priorities.” (emphasis added). ZING!!

He ordered ICE to provide records. Then, we will begin a process of individualized “bail” applications (“[T]his Court—likely with the assistance of several Magistrate Judges—will consider bail applications from class members over a roughly 14-day period.”). We don’t know yet what that process will look like, and we’ll have an opportunity to discuss it at a case management conference tomorrow. We’ll update you, of course.

If you haven’t already, please fill out the attached form for your clients! At tomorrow’s hearing want to be able to give the judge a survey of the individuals for whom we have clear release plans, for example. (Tips: try to use Adobe; if all else fails, save as PDF and email to me).

Lastly, we’ve got an amazing team of ACLU, SFPD, LCCR and UC Berkeley Law School people ready to take calls from unrepresented people in detention to start gathering info for bail applications. Please tell your clients to spread the following Lyon pin to others in their dorm who do not have attorneys to fill out these forms for them.

NUMBER TO CALL FOR UNREPRESENTED FOLKS: 7654

Folks will be on shifts taking calls from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm. Spread the word!

Genna

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

Congratulations, Team!👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

Thank goodness! Another courageous U.S. District Judge refusing to “buy into” the regime’s disingenuous, immoral “no problem until the bodies start piling up, it’s only the lives of migrants, not ‘real humans’” approach.

Imagine what would happen if all Federal Judges were willing to act on their oaths of office and uniformly reject all aspects of the regime’s unlawful, unconstitutional “Dred Scottification” program directed at “deterrence through death, disease, and dehumanization.” What would it take? What if the families of Federal Judges were treated with the same basic disregard for due process, life, health, and human dignity as the regime inflicts on migrants? What if the corrupt officials carrying out these programs and the lawyers who defend them were actually held accountable for their actions by the Federal Courts rather than largely being given “free passes”?

What if we had a Government that actually respected our Constitution rather than seeking to shred it?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-01-20

“CRUEL & UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT” ☠️☠️⚰️⚰️ — U.S. District Judge In Miami Orders DHS To Release Prisoners From Krome, Two Other Gulag Locations!

https://apple.news/AQjDZoC6NTGeXbpOQtpY2NA

Monique O. Madan reports for the Miami Herald:

Citing conditions that amount to ”cruel and unusual punishment,” a Miami federal judge ordered U.S. immigration authorities Thursday night to release most detainees held at three South Florida detention centers.

In a 12-page order filed late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must report to her within three days how it plans to cut its non-criminal and medically vulnerable populations by the hundreds.

The judge also ordered the agency to submit weekly reports for accountability. After 10 days, ICE is to begin filing twice-weekly reports. Within two days, she ordered, ICE shall also provide masks to all detainees and replace them once a week.

“There is record evidence demonstrating that ICE has failed in its duty to protect the safety and general well-being of the petitioners.,” Cooke wrote. “For example, the Magistrate Judge found that social distancing at Krome is not only practically impossible, the conditions are becoming worse every day. Further, ICE has failed to provide detainees in some detention centers with masks, soap and other cleaning supplies, and failed to ensure that all detainees housed at the three detention centers can practice social distancing.”

The judge added: “Such failures amount to cruel and unusual punishment because they are exemplary of deliberate indifference…. Accordingly, there is sufficient evidence in this record to determine that the present conditions at the three detention centers constitute a violation of the Petitioners’ Fifth and Eighth Amendment rights.”

Those with underlying health conditions or non-violent criminal records who qualify for release would be subject to detention alternatives like parole, telephone monitoring, physical check-ins or GPS monitoring through an electronic ankle bracelet.

The judge’s decision comes about a week after Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman filed a 69-page recommendation to her stating that ICE need to “substantially” reduce detainee populations as COVID-19 positive cases continue to climb behind bars, but that the court does not have the authority to issue such an order.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

This is one of the largest populations yet to be ordered released by a Federal Judge. Judge Cooke’s rationale is amazingly clear and straightforward. Keeping so-called “civil” prisoners in jail in conditions where infection with disease or death is a reasonable possibility is “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore unconstitutional.

I’m sure the DHS will appeal and ask for a stay claiming that not being able to create deadly situations for non-criminals going through the legal system is an “emergency.” After all, what would American be without our Immigration Gulag?

I find it extremely refreshing that Judge Cooke wasn’t taken in by the DHS’s “it’s not a problem until they actually die” argument.

Due Process Forever! Trump’s New American Gulag Never!

PWS

04-30-20

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE DEAD? ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️ — Certainly, Not Jared! ☠️☠️☠️ — As U.S COVID-19 Death Toll, Already By Far The World’s Highest, Exceeds 60,000, Jared Declares “Success!” — Bess Levin @ Vanity Fair Says “Not So Much!”

Bess Levin
Politics & Finance Writer
Vanity Fair

https://link.vanityfair.com/view/5bd67c363f92a41245df49ebc0e54.tmz/4e6714c1

Bess writes in The HIIVE for Vanity Fair:

Earlier this week a devastating statistic emerged from the coronavirus crisis: in a matter of months, more Americans have died from the virus than in the Vietnam War. While the Trump administration certainly did not cause the pandemic, it is fairly widely accepted—outside of the West Wing—that its shambolic response to COVID-19—from ignoring the early, dire warnings, to declaring them fake news, to putting a dog breeder in charge of the Health and Human Services task force, to listening to literally anything the first son-in-law had to say on the matter— allowed the deadly disease to gain a foothold in the United States, where, to date, more than one million people have tested positive and more than 58,000 have died.

Most people, regardless of their political allegiance, would probably agree that almost 60,000 dead Americans constitutes a lot. Particularly in light of the fact that in February, Donald Trump claimed that no more than 15 Americans would even test positive for the disease. And then you have Jared Kushner.

Appearing on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, the Boy Prince of New Jersey was asked about “two questions [that kept] coming up over the weekend on the Sunday shows,” the first one being, “Where’s the national strategy?” and the second, “Why did you guys collapse the pandemic office when you guys took over?” Claiming that the pandemic office “was an NSC situation,” and anyway, “there’s a lot of different parts of the government that are responsible for that and all those have been functioning”—fact check: not so much—the sentient jar of cold cream then boldly proclaimed: “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this and I think that we’ve achieved all of the different milestones that are needed, so the federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. And I think that that’s what really needs to be told.”

Aaron Rupar

✔

@atrupar

· Apr 29, 2020

Replying to @atrupar

“We’ve done more tests than any other country in the world, so we’ve gotta be doing a lot of things right” — Jared Kushner (the ability to test people when the virus was silently spreading across the country in February and March would’ve been nice … )

Aaron Rupar

✔

@atrupar

Jared Kushner, as the US coronavirus death toll surpasses the Vietnam War and approaches 60,000: “This is a great success story, and I think that’s really what needs to be told.”

893

11:32 AM – Apr 29, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

740 people are talking about this

To be fair to Kushner, who reportedly maintained as of mid-March that the coronavirus situation was “more about public psychology than a health reality,” after a lifetime of failing upward one might actually think this was true! If you had only ever fucked up at every job you ever held, only to be rewarded with more responsibility, you, too, might observe a five-figure body count and say to yourself, “Not bad, J-man, not bad at all.” Of course, it’s actually very bad and Jared, his equally unhelpful wife, and his criminally negligent father-in-law should all be run out of town for it, but you can see where he might’ve gotten that idea that he really nailed this one.

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

Get more from Bess & “The HIVE” @ Vanity Fair @ the above link.

Let’s see, we’re the 3rd most populous country in the world; but we’re the the “league leader” in deaths. And, the two countries ahead of us in population, China and India, are ahead by multiples: 4x. Yet, China and India between them have reported fewer than 10,000 deaths.

Yes, there’s good reason to be skeptical of both China’s and India’s reporting. That’s also true to some extent of the U.S. But, even if we doubled the numbers from India & China, while accepting the U.S. statistics as accurate, we still would have approximately 400% more deaths than both of those countries combined.

Of course Trump, Kushner, and their cronies have made a career out of falsifying and fabricating numbers and misconstruing statistics to claim endless successes and “business genius.” But, this time, there’s no getting around the numbers. And with states being encouraged to “open up” right and left despite universal non-compliance with even “step 1” of the Administration’s own “guidance,” (a 14-consecutive-day decrease in new cases) we’re nowhere near the end of the dying. ☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️☠️⚰️

Obviously, Trump, Jared, Pence, Moscow Mitch, and a bunch of other science-denying right wingnuts think it’s a good and noble thing for YOU (not them) to join poor meat industry workers, first responders, and nursing home residents in laying down their lives so that they can keep on grifting, grafting, and running the country off a cliff.

Just hope you’re not the next to go “under the bus.” ⚰️🚌

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

PWS

04-30-20

Alex Nowrasteh @ The National Interest: The Trump-Miller “Rationale” For Their So-Called “Immigration Ban” Is The Usual Nativist BS — Actually, Migrants To The US Don’t Threaten Your Health, Job, Or Wages, But White Nationalist Malarkey Dims Our Future! — Sadly, New Poll Shows Majority Supports Latest Round Of Immigrant Bashing!

https://apple.news/A_TYTiiUWPDyeXNykbPNZtQ

Here’s three reasons why.

by Alex Nowrasteh

President Trump recently said that there were two reasons for virtually halting all immigration to the United States in response to COVID-19. The first was to prevent the spread of the disease domestically. The second was to save American jobs for American citizens. We’ve already analyzed the first claim, this post will look at whether reducing immigration further will help save jobs for Americans. The answer is no.

Unemployment is spiking during the COVID-19 crisis. Americans are reacting to the virus by changing their economic behavior by working at home where possible, spending less time in dense public places, and in numerous other ways that result in less economic activity – sometimes voluntarily and sometimes in response to government shelter in place orders. As a result, employment is falling. In this situation, many pundits are arguing that further restricting immigration will preserve jobs for American citizens. Further restrictions will have no such impact. I’ve written much about the economic effects of immigration before, but here are some big takeaway points related to the recent immigration ban:

First, immigrants come to the United States primarily because of economic opportunity. Even those coming today on green cards intended for family‐ reunification are primarily coming to reunite with family members who, at one point in the chain, came for economic reasons. If the benefits of coming to the United States are greater than the costs (psychological costs, cost of moving, opportunity cost, danger of migrating, etc.), then many people will do so.

The biggest benefit of coming to the United States is higher wages, which are higher here because immigrant workers have a greater marginal value product (MVP=the number of goods produced by a worker multiplied by the market price for those goods). That means that immigrants are more productive here than in their home countries, so they supply more goods and services that are sold at higher prices. The amazing thing about demand for labor is that it is entirely determined by the worker’s MVP.

Economists Michael Clemens, Claudio Montenegro, and Lant Pritchett estimate the place premium, which is the estimated wage benefit of moving to the United States adjusting for the cost of living through a measurement called purchasing power parity (PPP). For example, they estimate that a working age Mexican male with 9–12 years of education who was educated in his home country can expect a 2.6-fold increase in his wages. That’s an enormous gain.

Immigration slows during a recession because the number of jobs decreases and, oftentimes, wages also adjust or their growth slows. Thus, the big benefit of immigrating to the United States evaporates for many immigrants during a recession. Immigration falls during recessions because immigrants benefit less from coming here, but natives benefit less too so the government also typically responds by increasing immigration enforcement. Less commonly, the government restricts legal immigration like President Herbert Hoover did in 1929 at the beginning of the Great Depression. The flow of illegal immigrants into the United States changes most dramatically during a recession as they’re the most economically sensitive immigrants.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

For what it’s worth, Alex’s findings match my “anecdotal observations” over more than a decade at the U.S. Immigration Court. During the earlier recession and its aftermath, other than asylum applicants, more migrants appearing at my “Master Calendar” told me that they did not want to fight their cases and just wanted to “go home,” either voluntarily or at USG expense under a “final order.” As the US economy improved, the number of non-detained individuals agreeing to voluntary departure or “taking a final order” appeared to decrease.

While, as Alex acknowledges, immigration is not “totally market driven,” particularly for those fleeing persecution, we certainly would do better as a nation to design a robust legal immigration system that worked in harmony with market forces, rather than directly against them as has too often been the case.

Generally, markets are going to be a more effective and efficient regulators of immigration than expensive, coercive, and often ineffective, “maximum enforcement.”

Indeed, when our economy was “booming,” unemployment was low, and most of the estimated 10-11 million “undocumented individuals” in the U.S. were staying out of trouble, minding their own business, employed or studying, and contributing to our economic success. The trouble was not “failed enforcement,” as the White Nationalists like to claim, but rather a failed legal immigration system that should have found ways that these individuals who form an important part of our society could have been pre-screened and admitted legally in the first place. That also would have diminished the allure of human smugglers and facilitated even greater contributions to our tax base. The answer to a clearly failed and counterproductive policy is not to double down on its cruelest and most futile aspects — unfocused enforcement,

Even in cases where immediate immigraton isn’t possible, if there is a “real line” for legal immigration (not the bogus one invented by the nativists) and it progressed reasonably and predictably, most individuals would use it. In my experience, most immigrants and employers would much prefer to use the legal system, even if it has some delays and costs, if it presents a realistic and not-cost-prohibitive alternative to “extralegal” or “black market” migration.

If we are to continue to succeed as a nation, at some point, we must stop listening to the voices of the Trumps, Millers, Sessionses, Cuccinellis, Barrs and other White Nationalist bigots urging us to “return to the failed policies of the past” and instead develop a forward looking immigration and refugee system that sees migrants for what they are: an important and necessary element of our nation and our world. It’s the right and smart thing for a “nation of immigrants” to do.

The bad news: Despite its counterfactual basis and appeal to xenophobia and racism, the “temporary” immigration ban has widespread public support, according to today’s Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/americans-support-state-restrictions-on-businesses-and-halt-to-immigration-during-virus-outbreak-post-u-md-poll-finds/2020/04/27/763249ee-88af-11ea-9dfd-990f9dcc71fc_story.html

So, expect the ban to last indefinitely and to increase in scope regardless of what happens with COVID-19. Xenophobia, racism, and appeals to White Nationalism are once likely to be the centerpiece of Trump’s reelection strategy, particularly with the economy in ruins.

PWS

04-27-20

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