Journalism – immigrationcourtside.com

☠️ ⚰️ DEADLY “BIPARTISAN BORDER POLICIES” CONTINUE TO TAKE AN UGLY HUMAN TOLL 🤮 WHILE FAILING TO DETER REFUGEES FROM SEEKING PROTECTION, EVEN IF THEY DIE IN THE PROCESS! — Melissa Del Bosque Interviews Leader Of “No More Deaths” About Shocking Increase In Preventable Deaths Caused By Cruel, Costly, & Ineffective “Bipartisan Deterrence!” — As Innocents Die, The “Mainstream Media” Take A “Moral & Ethical Holiday!” 🤯

Melissa Del Bosque
Border Reporter
PHOTO: Melissadelbosque.com

Melissa reports in the latest issue of The Border Chronicle:

https://open.substack.com/pub/theborderchronicle/p/a-new-report-shows-skyrocketing-deaths?

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A New Report Shows Skyrocketing Deaths in El Paso, New Mexico Border Region

“It’s really just shocking how close to help a lot of people died,” says Bryce, who led the report for the nonprofit No More Deaths.

MELISSA DEL BOSQUE

APR 9

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Illustration from the new report. Each red dot represents a life lost.

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As safe corridors for migration disappear, more people risk their lives crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. And more people die. A new report by the nonprofit No More Deaths, along with a searchable map and database, documents the increasing number of migrant deaths at the border in New Mexico and far West Texas. Until now, not much research has been done on the deaths of people migrating through this section of the border. The project was led by Bryce, a No More Deaths volunteer (who asked that we not use his last name because the Far Right has recently been targeting the group). He, along with several others, have created the most comprehensive database to date of deaths in the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which includes New Mexico and two counties in Texas, El Paso and Hudspeth. The report covers 15 years, from 2008 to 2023, and it shows many disturbing trends, including the acceleration of deaths that has accompanied “prevention through deterrence,” the U.S. government’s strategy implemented in the 1990s to push migrants into more remote, dangerous crossings. That strategy is now morphing into something all the more tragic as people, increasingly women and children, are barred from accessing asylum and are dying at the doorstep of American cities and towns. In this Q&A, Bryce talks about documenting these deaths, and the discoveries that both shocked and angered him in creating this new report.

Why did you study this particular part of the border in New Mexico and far West Texas?

A couple of years ago, a few of us started getting interested in what’s happening in New Mexico, and whether there’s any need for humanitarian aid out there, just because we hadn’t really heard anything but assumed there must be something happening out there. Quickly, we noticed that there was not much data in general about the area. So I started doing public records requests. And pretty quickly, just with the first batch of data, we got about 20 deaths for 2022. We went to some of those locations to see if we’d see trails. And while we were checking out some of these locations, we found human remains right across the street from a cemetery and about 50 feet from a main road in Sunland Park [New Mexico]. It was not a remote place. It was right in town. So we started looking at the Sunland Park Fire Department’s social media page, and quickly realized that there was a lot happening and quickly. And then 2023 ended up being this record deadly year for the area.

It’s shocking that you found a dead person right there in the middle of Sunland Park. Can you tell me more about this person? Were they identified? How long had the person been there? And how could this have been missed by people who live there?

He was later identified as a man from Colombia. [His name was Johan Orozco Martinez, age 36.] He had been there for a couple of days. I’m not joking when I say he was right across the street from the Memorial Pines Cemetery, and near the shoulder of the road. Many cars drive this road, but I think typically people look toward the cemetery, and I guess they didn’t see him because they were looking in the other direction. He was in his 30s and so older than many of the usually young men you see, for instance, crossing through southern Arizona.

Two findings that really stand out to me from your report are the number of women who have died, and how increasingly people are dying within city limits and no longer just in remote areas that are hard to access. I mean, you found a person in the middle of Sunland Park. What’s going on, do you think?

The dynamics of migration are complex. But one thing that seems pretty clear is that the asylum policies in the last few years have led to an increase in some of these deaths, just from people trying to get asylum and being prevented either by metering or by turnbacks. And then feeling they have no choice but to cross through the desert. A lot of people who are crossing are older, they’re women, they’re people with health problems. The demographics, we found, were much different in the El Paso sector than in southern Arizona, with people being older and more than 50 percent of the deaths in 2023 being of women, which is unusual.

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When did the deaths start increasing? And has the increasing militarization of the border and Operation Lone Star in El Paso contributed to these deaths?

Up until 2015, there were very few deaths in this area. But especially since 2018, the deaths have just been ramping up every single year. We were in New Mexico watching Operation Lone Star soldiers put up a barbed-wire fence between New Mexico and El Paso in an area where a lot of people cross. So once you’re in the United States, even crossing into Texas from the New Mexico side has become more deadly. And you can see National Guard in El Paso patrolling and pushing people back. The more enforcement, the more the deaths increase. In El Paso, there are what I call “moats” because if people climb the border wall, there’s an irrigation canal right on the other side, which at times can be moving very quickly. Then beyond that there’s multiple highways and more canals. So if someone is being chased by Border Patrol or Operation Lone Star, there are multiple deadly obstacles.

In 2022 there was a two-week period when 15 people died in the canals, one right after the other. This was during irrigation season in El Paso. Water is released from a reservoir in New Mexico into the canals and the river to irrigate farmland further east of El Paso. When that happens, the water can be going like 20 miles per hour. Unless somebody physically rescues you, there’s no way of getting out once you’ve fallen in. I watched a news broadcast in El Paso where they made a public service announcement about drowning deaths in El Paso, saying like, “Irrigation season is here, stay away from the canals, watch out for drowning.” But if you read all the autopsy reports, it’s almost all migrants dying. Because the medical examiner doesn’t flag whether it’s a migration-related death, you end up getting these weird statistics about drowning deaths being on the rise in El Paso. And so they’re directing these public safety messages toward El Paso residents who are actually in very little danger of drowning. And the people who are in danger of drowning, the migrants, have no idea.

Did you also find an increase in the deaths of children?

Definitely, yes. In 2018, two eight-year-old Guatemalan kids died. There’s a lot of teenagers dying, crossing the border wall, a lot of them drowning in El Paso city itself. For instance, there was a Russian man and his teenage daughter who both fell into a canal and drowned. They were running from Border Patrol agents. I believe that happened in 2021. We saw fewer deaths of younger people in New Mexico.

You also found that Customs and Border Protection is significantly undercounting deaths related to enforcement. Can you talk about this finding?

CBP is supposed to keep track of migrant deaths and CBP enforcement-related deaths, but we found that the agency is severely undercounting them. There’s been a lot of documentation in the past, talking about that fact, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of quantifying that undercount. Aside from the Arizona data that the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner and Humane Borders have reported. For example, in one year we found 39 deaths, while CBP reported only 10 deaths.

We looked at investigator reports and so we were able to read the narratives, and learn circumstances around the deaths. We were able to see if someone was chased by Border Patrol, either on foot or by vehicle, or if they died in Border Patrol custody. We found that Border Patrol had tried to underplay some of these deaths.

We found that 15 percent of all migrant deaths in the El Paso sector were caused directly by Border Patrol due to chases or use of force, also due to custody deaths, or falls from the border wall. Humane Borders doesn’t track deaths related to Border Patrol enforcement. So this is the first instance that I’m aware of, where we are able to quantify the CBP undercount of Border Patrol-related deaths.

For 2022, for instance, we found 16 deaths that should have been reported by CBP as CBP-related deaths. CBP had only reported six of those deaths. Of the 16 we found, I think it’s still an undercount, because a lot of the investigative reports use vague or passive language about a person “jumping into the canal,” for instance. So you don’t know if the person was actually chased. So we only included cases where it’s very explicit.

What surprised you most in working on this report?

It’s really just shocking how close to help a lot of people died. I’m used to southern Arizona, where the terrain and trails are very remote. But we found people dying across the street from the cemetery, people dying a short walk from the Dollar General store. We’ve had this narrative of “prevention through deterrence” for the last few decades, which has pushed people away from cities into remote areas where they’re more prone to dying from heat exposure or something else. But now the border is militarized to the point where even Sunland Park, this suburb of El Paso, can be as deadly as the middle of nowhere in southern Arizona.

Last June, for instance, something like 40 percent more people died in Doña Ana County in New Mexico than the entire state of Arizona. Most of these deaths were close to the highway or close to a town. It’s a dynamic that has not really been studied. And the fact that it’s been happening for years without anybody really noticing is really scary.

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With these findings, are No More Deaths and other humanitarian groups mobilizing to do search-and-rescue and water drops in this area?

Like Texas, much of the land in New Mexico where people are dying is privately owned land, so it’s difficult to access for humanitarian groups.

We’ve been going there about once a month for the past year to try to organize some support. There’s a group that doesn’t have a name yet that we’ve started to work with, that’s putting out water in some of these areas. There’s another group from southern Arizona that has moved over to New Mexico to search for remains in the desert.

We’re hoping the news will spread and that others will join to help. We have some money to help out some groups that are forming. We’re really hoping that groups will form on their own for search-and-rescue and putting out water. Because right now, Border Patrol is the only game in town if you call 911 as a migrant. And Border Patrol has a horrible track record of actually helping anybody.

To get involved, learn more, or support humanitarian efforts, contact No More Deaths here.

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Border Death — Too many members of the so-called “mainstream media” are ignoring their moral, professional, and ethical duties to report honestly on the known, preventable “human collateral damage” resulting from both current and proposed anti-asylum “border enforcement” policies! It’s been going on for years, largely “under the political and media radar screens!” This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Two things stand out:

A complete lack of accountability for the misguided politicos and bureaucrats who are dishonestly pushing these immoral and ineffective policies without “owning up” to both the known deadly consequences and the lack of long-term “deterrent” value (even assuming, as I do not, that effective deterrence could justify immoral and illegal policies) of the actions they are touting; and
A complete abdication of professional journalistic standards and performance from the many members of the so-called “mainstream media” who fail to include in each report on draconian “border control” proposals and “policies” the deadly, well-documented human consequences of those policies and who provide a toxic forum for politicos and supposed “pundits” spouting myths and nativist propaganda about “border enforcement,” without presenting experts like Melissa, Todd Miller and many others who have actual experience with the unending trauma and futility caused by our current misguided, often flatly illegal, and clearly immoral approach to “border enforcement.”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-10-24

🐦‍⬛JIM CROW LIVES IN TEXAS: GOP’S RACIST “CASTE SYSTEM” HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH “SECURITY,” EVERYTHING TO DO WITH WHITE NATIONALIST INSURRECTION! — 🐓🐥🐥🐥“Democrats cannot, should not, be bystanders. . . . ‘“Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing.’” — Beatriz Lopez, Narrative Intervention, on Substack!

https://open.substack.com/pub/beatrizlopez/p/this-is-texas-theres-a-holdem?r=1se78m&utm_medium=ios

Beatriz writes:

“A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups.”

― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Last year, a dangerous and despotic Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law SB 4, heralding the legislation as a form of defense in his war against President Biden’s immigration policies that have apparently left Texas unsafe and vulnerable. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth; in fact, Texas is privileged to be the second state in the union with the largest immigrant population that has contributed over $40 billion in federal and state taxes, with a spending power of more than $110 billion. According to a report by the Immigration Research Initiative and Every Texan:

Once provided a work permit, new immigrants earn an average of $20,000 in their first year, which increases to $29,000 by their fifth year living in Texas. […] For every 1,000 workers, immigrants and asylum seekers contribute $2.6 million to state and local taxes within their first year of eligibility. Far from a burden on Texas communities, newly arrived immigrants and asylum seekers are as essential to our state’s economy as they are to our families and communities.”

Abbott and the state have reaped from the contributions of immigrant families, regardless of immigration status, only to waste millions in taxpayer dollars to cruelly militarize the border against their own border communities and the children and families seeking refuge and safety. With SB 4, Abbott and Texas would make it a felony for any undocumented immigrant to enter the state and empower local law enforcement and state judges to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants.

. . . .

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

Read Beatriz’s complete article at the link.

The proposition, uncritically reported by many in media and mindlessly repeated by politicos of both parties, that effectively eliminating asylum at the border, thereby turning the ability to seek protection in the U.S. over to smugglers, cartels, and thugs, will “enhance security” is beyond preposterous! Obviously, it will do the exact opposite by improperly treating desperate individuals seeking legal protection from the U.S. the same as the small number of actual security threats who might seek to cross the border (at least some of whom are actually caught).

Just ask yourself the question that the media never presses on Abbott, DeSantis, Trump, GOP nativists, or their spineless Dem enablers: Why would a “real terrorist” spend weeks or months trying to get a “CBP One” appointment to be screened by CBP? Alternatively, why would such an individual risk the irregular border crossing and then turn themselves in to CBP for processing or wait weeks in filthy conditions to be processed by CBP? Answer: Obviously, they wouldn’t.

There are many easier ways for those smuggling or seeking to engage in criminal behavior to enter (think thousands of miles of lightly guarded Northern Border, false visas, entering legally at an airport under false pretenses, or concealing contraband in legitimate commerce — the way most fentanyl enters the U.S.). And, they are all “facilitated” by the USG’s insanely bad policy decision to concentrate “law enforcement” resources overwhelmingly on those who present no realistic threat and want only fair consideration of their legal claims! Sure it generates (largely misleading) “numbers,” but does little to actually enhance security.

Indeed, one might well suspect that the inordinate hoopla and intentionally exaggerated fears focused on asylum seekers is largely a “cover-up” and diversion from the Government’s poor record on dealing with the fentanyl crisis.

As I have repeatedly said, what if the Feds and states stopped disingenuously wasting unconscionable amounts resources on bogus enforcement and deterrence and instead invested in building a fair and timely asylum reception, screening, adjudication, and resettlement system that encouraged and rewarded those presenting themselves at ports of entry? That would make it easier for law enforcement to concentrate on those actually seeking to avoid our legal system (rather than inanely concentrating on those who merely want our legal system to fairly consider their claims)!

What would happen if the “mainstream media” actually fulfilled their professional, ethical, journalistic responsibilities to research, understand, and report honestly about the right to asylum, those seeking it, and those assisting them in presenting their claims to an intentionally hostile and dysfunctional system! What if the media stopped uncritically and irresponsibly reporting nativist propaganda, such as Abbott’s babbling, as “news,” and began concentrating on informing the public of the truth about asylum seekers, the legitimacy of many of their claims, and their great potential benefits to America!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-25-24

🤯 CATHERINE RAMPELL @ WASHPOST: BIDEN IS FAR, FAR, FAR BETTER THAN TRUMP ON THE ECONOMY BY ANY OBJECTIVE MEASURE — TRUMP’S “PLATFORM” — INCLUDING ATTACKING MIGRANTS — WOULD BOOST INFLATION & IMPEDE ECONOMIC GROWTH! — “Wait until you see what [deporting the workforce] does to produce prices.”

Catherine writes:

. . . .

Perhaps most distressing for Democrats, when survey respondents are asked to rate Biden against the likely GOP presidential nominee, Biden fares poorly.

They remember the economy under Trump as being much better than the economy is today, CBS polling found. The last year of Trump’s presidency, when unemployment reached its highest level since the Great Depression, apparently doesn’t count, or has been forgotten.

Voters are also more than twice as likely to say that Trump’s policies helped them personally as they are about Biden’s work, the New York Times-Siena poll found.

And when asked whether a second term from either candidate would lead prices to go up or down, voters are more than twice as likely to believe Trump would push prices down as they are for Biden, per the CBS poll.

This is astounding. Leaving aside the faulty premise of that question — the overall price level almost never goes down; it merely rises more slowly — Trump’s policy agenda would likely worsen inflation. Why? Consider his main economic proposals:

• An additional 10 percent tax on all global imports, plus 60 percent on Chinese goods. As I’ve cited before, four separate studies found that the costs of Trump’s prior tariffs were borne mostly or entirely by Americans via higher prices.

• A reduction in the labor supply by slashing levels of both illegal and legal immigration. For instance, Trump would not only deport much of the agricultural workforce that’s undocumented; he also plans to dismantle the visa program that allows seasonal agricultural workers to come here legally. Wait until you see what that does to produce prices.

• Expansions of the federal deficit through more unfunded cuts to corporate and capital gains taxes (both of which disproportionately affect higher earners). Federal spending would likely rise, too, based on Trump’s (pre-pandemic) record.

• Kneecapping the Federal Reserve, the politically independent agency tasked with maintaining price stability.

Whatever you think of Biden’s record on inflation — and I have some grumbles, mostly related to Biden’s refusal to reverse his predecessor’s policies — each of Trump’s proposed measures would make inflation worse on the margin.

Don’t take my word for it. Analysts at Evercore ISI, an investment banking firm, recently analyzed the first three items above and forecast that another Trump term (relative to another Biden term) would likely require higher interest rates to counteract inflationary pressures. Likewise, Goldman Sachs Economic Research recently wrote a note to clients warning that the potential politicization of the Fed under another Trump administration would raise inflation risks.

Trump has claimed that economic and financial improvements thus far (including record-high stock markets under Biden) are because of his influence, or at least anticipation of his return. This is ludicrous, yet a large portion of the public seems receptive to this message — amnesiac about how he ended his presidency and blissfully unaware of what he’d do if granted another term.

This should be a wake-up call for journalists, who must do a better job of explaining the policy choices Americans face. It’s also a warning for voters, who must think through those choices more critically.

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

Read Catherine’s full column at the link.

It appears that many of those polled don’t WANT to understand the realities of the economy. They prefer to regurgitate fictional “sound bites” fed to them by MAGA and the media!☹️

That Biden is head and shoulders above Trump on the economy should be little surprise despite “popular myths” and “false narratives” of GOP economic success. Historically, “By virtually every objective measure, Democrats do better. It’s not even close. So why doesn’t America know it?” https://newrepublic.com/article/166274/economy-record-republicans-vs-democrats.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-07-24

🤯☠️ SURPRISE (NOT): SPINELESS 🐥 DEMS, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, REPORTERS AFRAID TO CONSULT EXPERTS, HEAR FROM THOSE THEY DEHUMANIZE & CONDEMN! — Report By Todd Miller @ The Border Chronicle! — “It is for those who view politics as merely a game to be won rather than a moral terrain to advance the greatest good of all people. If you were to take this logic to its extreme, Democrats could also support an abortion ban or decertify the 2020 election. I mean, where does it end? President Biden could get that face-off surgery and become Trump himself.”

Spineless Dem politicos think that by ignoring the deadly human consequences of their sell-out to the nativist right, they will escape moral accountability. This is a monument for those who have died attempting to cross the US-Mexican border. Each coffin represents a year and the number of dead. It is a protest against the effects of Operation Guardian. Taken at the Tijuana-San Diego border.
Tomas Castelazo
To comply with the use and licensing terms of this image, the following text must must be included with the image when published in any medium, failure to do so constitutes a violation of the licensing terms and copyright infringement: © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.

Todd Miller
Border Correspondent
Border Chronicle
PHOTO: Coder Chron

https://open.substack.com/pub/theborderchronicle/p/the-bipartisan-border-consensus-moves?r=1se78m&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

The Bipartisan Border Consensus Moves Right: A Q&A with Media Analyst Adam Johnson

“I went through dozens of reports, scores of articles, on the discussion of this migration bill, and the reporters talked to zero migrants and zero migrant rights groups.”

TODD MILLER

FEB 22

In recent weeks, longtime media analyst Adam Johnson has been looking through scores of articles and analyzing Democrats’ rhetoric to see how the border was being framed. One of the texts he looked at was the emergency national security supplemental bill that emerged for a vote on the Senate floor. This bipartisan border bill had been at the negotiation table for months, and it included provisions for military aid for Ukraine and Israel. The bill was ultimately voted down, after Donald Trump rejected it and the Republican Party followed suit. In our conversation, Johnson talks about his deep dive into the coverage surrounding the deal, and he speculates on what that means in this election year: that Democrats have entered new political terrain around the border and immigration enforcement. This interview is based on articles Johnson wrote for The Real News (“Media ‘Border Deal’ Coverage Erases Actual Human Stakes ”) and The Nation (“The Democrats’ Hard-Right Turn on Immigration Is a Disaster In Every Way”), both places that he contributes to regularly. He also wrote “Top 10 Media Euphemisms for Violent Bipartisan Anti-immigrant Policies,” at his Substack, The Column. Johnson cohosts the popular podcast Citations Needed, where they discussed the border on their February 21 edition. Johnson’s media analysis spans back nearly a decade, much of it for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.

Adam Johnson

Let’s start with the “border deal.” In The Real News you write that it dehumanizes migrants. Can you tell us a little bit about what the border deal is, and some key points about the coverage?

It’s a Republican border deal by framing and admission. Senators Chris Murphy, Tina Smith, and Mark Warner have framed it as a Republican border deal. Almost entirely. It is a 90 to 95 percent Republican deal in nature. They’ve repeatedly said that Republicans demanded XYZ and they gave them XYZ. This is how they’re framing it, because otherwise the hypocrisy gotcha doesn’t really work.

Can you clarify what you mean by “hypocrisy gotcha”?

If it’s not an overwhelming Republican bill, then the idea that they’re abandoning their won bill in service of Trump—which has been their primary gotcha—doesn’t make sense.

But let’s look at the substance of what the bill is.

Among other things, it has $8 billion in emergency funding for ICE, which more than doubles ICE’s enforcement budget. Do you remember “abolish ICE,” back five years ago or so?

It includes $3 billion in increased detention, a mechanism to shut down the border, and $7 billion to Customs and Border Protection, including the continuation of Trump’s wall. And so this is both objectively and how the Democrats describe a far-right Republican bill. That’s the appeal of it.

And the clever idea behind this is that a typical triangulation, that is, if you take a right-wing policy and adopt it as your own, you therefore take away that issue a little quicker come election time. It is for those who view politics as merely a game to be won rather than a moral terrain to advance the greatest good of all people. If you were to take this logic to its extreme, Democrats could also support an abortion ban or decertify the 2020 election. I mean, where does it end? President Biden could get that face-off surgery and become Trump himself.

. . . .

All this is laundered through euphemism, which I wrote about on my Substack and in The Real News, where I talk about the various ways in which the human costs are obscured. According to the International Organization for Migration, the U.S.-Mexico border is the deadliest land crossing in the world. And so if you double the enforcement, and triple the broader security apparatus, bring in more surveillance drones, more weapons, invariably more people will die. There is a real human cost to this type of militarization.

. . . .

Keep in mind, too, that Biden in 2020 mobilized a lot of the immigration activists who opposed Trump’s policies. He rode that wave to pick up a lot of young votes, a lot of progressive voters, a lot of people who are sympathetic to or adjacent to immigrant communities. And this cruel policy shift has really moved them to the right. In the days after Democrats embrace this hard-right bill, Trump began to double down on things like internment camps, shipping off immigrants, because he has to differentiate himself from the Democrats, at least rhetorically.

We’re gonna have this fortress America mentality. No one wants to deal with any of the underlying issues. And we have to deal with global inequality. No one wants to deal with climate change. That’s too egg heady and academic and difficult. We’re just going to do what we always do, which is cops and cages. And cops and cages are the solution to every social ill, whether it’s homelessness, crime, or whatever. That’s the order of the day. The bipartisan consensus. Democrats and Republicans both want it. The worst place for a vulnerable group to be is on the business end of a bipartisan consensus.

. . . .

Many Border Chronicle readers are interested in shifting the narrative. But how do you shift the narrative? Is it just too entrenched?

Some members of Congress have pushed back on this. But I think they’ve been pretty quiet. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushed back in an interview, but I don’t think she’s really tweeted about it. Once you have this “we have to defeat Trump in 2024 above all else,” then everybody shuts up and goes along with it.

And I think that’s absolutely wrong. I think now is the time to stand up to this demagoguery. Adopting a Republican bill is not the solution. And, hopefully, if enough people stand up to this, then it can become politically costly for Democrats to continue doing this.

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

Read the full report at the link.

The worst place for a vulnerable group to be is on the business end of a bipartisan consensus.

These days, on immigration issues the term “bipartisan consensus” is actually a euphemism for “Dem giveaway of others’ rights to GOP nativists.” And, of course, even after the giveaway, the GOP shows absolutely no interest is such one-sided “bipartisanship” because Der Fuhrer tells them they must vote it down.

Yet, the disingenuous media and pundits keep misusing the term “bipartisanship” as if it had real meaning! And, although holding power in two of the three political branches, while the GOP struggles mightily to cling to its narrow margin in one, Biden and the Dems “wimp out” time after time on immigration, human rights, and racial justice.

The GOP proudly advertises that it has no values beyond whatever Trump wants on any particular day.

By contrast, Dems claim to have values. But a campaign being run against those professed values and their own core voters suggests that they too have become a “transactional party of no enduring values.”

Does America really need two political parties that stand for nothing beyond gratuitous cruelty to others and getting elected?

“Go along to get along.” Unhappily, that’s what today’s Dems appear to stand for.

Frankly, that has been at the heart of many of the problems at EOIR, particularly in Dem Administrations that were afraid of taking the bold and sometimes controversial actions necessary to change culture, institutionalize due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices. Current AG Merrick Garland is a classic example of this failed Dem model. As a result, EOIR is a dramatically dysfunctional and unjust agency.

Will the Democratic Party keep mindlessly following in EOIR’s footsteps? What’s it going to take for the next generation of Democrats to halt the slide into moral vapidity and political irrelevance?

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-23-24

🤯 DEBUNKING THE MYTHS: GOP CLAIMS BIDEN DOESN’T ENFORCE IMMIGRATION LAWS — FACT: WITH 9 MONTHS TO GO IN FY 2024, BIDEN HAD ALREADY INITIATED MORE EOIR CASES THAN TRUMP DID IN ANY FULL YEAR OF HIS TENURE! — Latest TRAC Report!

Pinocchio @ ICE — Meet the chief spokesman for the GOP’s nativist immigration agenda! Creative Commons License

https://lnkd.in/gsyGuv_s

As of December 31, 2023, only the first quarter of FY 2024, the Biden Administration had already initiated 696,400 cases at EOIR. That’s more than the highest FULL FY (12 mo.) of the Trump Administration, 2019, in which 694,771 cases were started.

Moreover, in FY 2023, Biden filed an astounding 1,485,769 cases, more than twice the number that Trump did in FY 2019. Biden’s numbers in FY 2023 topped Trump’s other three years (278,218; 356,034; 216,589) BY MULTIPLES. In fact, Biden instituted approximately as many Immigration Court cases in FY 2023 as Trump did in his entire FOUR YEARS and is on a path to greatly exceed his 2023 total in FY 2024!

So the Trump/GOP blather about Biden not enforcing immigration laws is complete BS!

Biden’s muscular immigration enforcement efforts give lie to the GOP’s “open borders” claims, a point seldom made by the “mainstream media.” But, such over the top enforcement is NOT necessarily good news for America.

Even with more Immigration Judges under Biden — going on 700 — the annual decision-making capacity at EOIR is somewhere between 350,000 to 550,000. So, the Immigration Courts will not come close to keeping up with the flow of incoming cases, let alone reducing the backlog that has now mushroomed to more than 3,000,000.

There is no apparent plan for controlling the EOIR backlog and improving the much-criticized quality of decisions, which disproportionately harms legal asylum seekers of color while often adding to the backlog when rejected on review. That makes the Administration’s institution of new cases on a level guaranteed to create additional backlog appear irresponsible.

Moreover, it hasn’t helped that Attorney General Garland ignored pleas from most experts to make EOIR reform one of his highest, ideally his highest, national priority. Nor has Congress paid much attention to the glaring, chronic dysfunction at EOIR, despite pending legislation to create an Article I Immigration Court!

Biden is following in the footsteps of his Dem predecessors Obama and Clinton. In their initial election campaigns they “played to their base” by criticizing harsh GOP enforcement policies and extolling the benefits of immigration. Once in office, however, they became convinced that their credibility, and perhaps manhood, depended on out-enforcing and “out-crueling” their GOP predecessors.

Of course, this naive approach never produces the apparently desired result: That the GOP will acknowledge that Dems are serious about enforcement and strike the long needed “grand bargain” on immigration reform.

Predictably, that always backfires. The GOP just keeps repeating their “open borders” big lies, and the mainstream media provide little, if any, critical analysis or pushback. As long as kids aren’t being proudly exhibited in cages, the “mainstreams” quickly lose interest in the suffering, dehumanization, and death piling up on both sides of the border and in the “New American Gulag” as a result of the disastrously (and predictably) failed “enforcement-only” approach.

What Biden’s effort to “out-Trump Trump” REALLY shows is that more enforcement and attempting to use anti-immigrant legal decisions and a hopelessly backlogged adjudication system that keeps legal asylum seekers waiting indefinitely with a significant chance of wrongful denial if and when they are reached as a “deterrent,” doesn’t work, and in fact never has worked!

What’s needed is actually painfully obvious: A balanced approach that combines a properly generous asylum adjudication system, more avenues for legal immigration (both permanent and temporary), and an independent, functioning, expert, due-process oriented Immigration Court with reasonable, targeted, humane enforcement. That’s a message that both parties and the mainstream media are ignoring, to our national detriment. Too many Americans seem to have forgotten that in the process of dehumanizing and demonizing “the other” we degrade ourselves.

Or, put another way, we can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-23-24

🇺🇸 COURTSIDE POLITICS: DEMS BAIL OUT McCARTHY, SAVE AMERICA (FOR NOW)! — NATIVIST IMMIGRATION NONSENSE STRIPPED OUT, BUT GOP THROWS UKRAINE 🇺🇦 UNDER THE BUS!🚌

Matt Gaetz (R-Outer Space)
The so-called mainstream media has seen fit to anoint this evil clown as the official spokesthing for the insurrectionist GOP.
PHOTO: X (formerly Twitter)

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

October 1, 2023

Saturday, at the 12th hour, GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy (D-CA) finally did the obvious — reached out to Dems to save America from insurrectionist, anti-American GOP extremists by passing a last-minute continuing resolution that will fund American government until Nov. 17.

All Dems except one (who was protesting the GOP’s pro-Putin defunding of Ukraine aid) voted for the House bill, while 90 GOP insurrectionists voted to tank America and manufacture a needless crisis. The bill passed the nominally Dem-controlled Senate in about 30 seconds, and was signed by President Biden before midnight. The message about which party is serious about governing for the common good is obvious to all real patriots, even if a shocking number of GOP voters have foisted these far-right GOP clowns upon the rest of us.

The mainstream media uses the namby-pamby misnomer “border security,” to refer to the GOP’s proposed racist-nativist attack on immigration, destruction of the long-established right to asylum, and bogus attempts to reinstate “proven to fail,” draconian deterrence measures. As happened when tried unsuccessfully in the past, the GOP would turn over control of border migration policies to cartels, smugglers, and organized crime, while deflecting attention and undermining law enforcement efforts to control human and drug smuggling.

A true accounting for the GOP extremist agenda would clearly show how firmly on the side of Putin and border bandits today’s dangerous, “destroy America” GOP has become. Too bad the so-called “mainstream media” has so little interest in digging beyond the cosmetics on the border issues and Ukraine aid.

The mainstream media is also salivating about the bogus prospect of MAGA-maniac Matt Gaetz (R-Outer Space) unseating McCarthy. The fact that Gaetz is an extremist idiot who has nobody to replace McCarthy with doesn’t seem to have dawned on the “mainstreamers.” (“Matt Gaetz’s Motto is, ‘I’m an Asshole, What are You Going to Do About It?’” https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjnkLH8h9WBAxXPkYkEHcr5CdoQFnoECBIQAQ&url=https://buzzflash.com/articles/matt-gaetz&usg=AOvVaw2XoHad3KzJeQitggMsTve3&opi=89978449).

In perhaps the ultimate example of clueless, Fox News inspired, “mainstream journalism,” CBS’s “This Sunday” saw fit to inflict Gaetz and his bombastic nonsense on hapless viewers today. NBC, on the other hand, maybe still smarting from new-host Kristen Welker’s disastrous, totally uncalled for, “inaugural” interview with a raving, incoherent, lie-spouting Trump, gave us wall-to-wall coverage of the Ryder Cup in place of “Meet the Press.” Honestly!

Look forward to more clownish theatrics and anti-American posturing from the GOP and their “Chief Clown” Trump, and more insipid reporting from the mainstreamers as America careens toward another likely GOP-generated “crisis” in mid-November. It’s NOT a “Washington problem! It’s purely a GOP that lacks any interest whatsoever in responsible governing.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-01-23

🤯HOW LONG DID IT TAKE THE USG TO GRANT A “SLAM DUNK” 🏀 ASYLUM CASE OF A MEXICAN JOURNALIST? — 15 YEARS! — No Wonder This Dysfunctional, Unfair System Has Endless Backlogs!

Low Hanging Fruit — Harvesting the “low hanging fruit” — the many clearly grantable asylum cases — has proved remarkably elusive for EOIR — under Administrations of both parties!
IMAGE: Creative Commons 2.0

From The National Press Club:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QhiXmsGEBd6YQn8lYieaP8GUt7QiEnWJ/view?usp=sharing

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

That Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists is hardly “rocket science.” 🚀 See, e.g., https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/annihilating-journalism-mexican-reporters-work-attacks-killings-rcna14196. Yet, an EOIR Judge was allowed to twice wrongfully deny this “slam dunk” case — on specious grounds such as making the absurd finding that Mr. Gutierrez was not a journalist — over six years before the BIA finally ended the farce!🤡

Even today, there is no BIA precedent to expedite the granting of these meritorious cases and to curb rogue judges from mindlessly denying everything that comes before them (according to TRAC, the IJ in this case had a “facially ludicrous” 95.6% asylum denial record). It’s also no coincidence that AILA attorneys in El Paso, where this case originated, have long complained about anti-asylum bias among the Immigration Judges. See, e.g., https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjphqPxn62BAxW4EVkFHUz3CEkQFnoECBEQAw&url=https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/immigration/2019/04/03/complaint-alleges-misconduct-el-paso-immigration-judges/3357416002/#:~:text=The%20complaint%20alleges%20that%20one,reason%20she%20was%20being%20persecuted.&usg=AOvVaw0FywozGcr8pn-K2ytfZkCT&opi=89978449.

So, let’s put this into a real world context. 15 years, two wrong IJ decisions, and two trips to the BIA to complete (actually it’s still not complete, because it was remanded for “background checks,” but that’s another saga), a case that should have taken a well-qualified Immigration Judge about 15 minutes to grant. So, what chance is there that without major leadership, personnel, structural, and substantive changes, EOIR could do “justice” on asylum cases put on an ”expedited docket.” Slim and none, as actual experience shows!

The necessary first step toward meaningful immigration reform is a complete overhaul of EOIR. Without that readily achievable administrative action, no attempt at legislative or regulatory reform can succeed. It’s not rocket science! 🚀 Just common sense, moral courage, and “good government.”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-16-23

☠️🏴‍☠️🤮⚰️ AS THEIR OVERHYPED AND LARGELY SELF-CREATED “BORDER CRISIS” WANES, “MAINSTREAM MEDIA” IGNORES THE HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE THEY HELPED CREATE & INFLAME! — Racist Repubs & Cowardly Dems Have “Normalized” Gratuitous Cruelty, Scofflaw Behavior, Racism, & Restrictionism — Migrants & Future Generations Will Pay The Price!

James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism — Why are the Biden Administration and some Dem pols embracing this guy when it comes to asylum seekers — primarily individuals of color, merely seeking to exercise their legal rights and to be treated fairly and with human dignity?

Border Lines has published one of the best analyses of the Title 42 charade and its ongoing impact on our Government’s cruel, lawless, and misguided border policies. Given the cosmic impact of bad border policies, they have made it available “outside the paywall.”

https://borderlines.substack.com/p/special-editiontitle-42-is-dead-long?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=17175&post_id=122261190&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

. . . .

Ultimately, Title 42 has ended, but the asylum restrictionist approach that it was the apex of has clearly not. For now, there’s no return to normal Title 8 processing — which, as regular readers of our historical analyses know, has never been impartial or apolitical, but at least provided some semblance of access and cursory due process. Title 42 is dead. Long live Title 42.

. . . .

This version of the transit ban is also, like its predecessor, under acute legal jeopardy. The ACLU has already sued to stop it, and some legal analysts are predicting that, given the precedents and legalities involved here, the administration’s efforts to make it compliant — including the very limited exceptions — won’t be enough. The CBP One exception is, after all, just another version of metering, another policy that was struck down. If there’s an injunction or even a final ruling and the transit ban goes down, then what? There’s at least some likelihood that word will spread and the surge of arrivals that was expected in the immediate aftermath of Title 42 will actually materialize then. How does the administration respond? Does it rush to enact an overlapping asylum restriction, as the Trump administration so often did? It’s hard to say.

A federal judge in Florida recently issued a restraining order blocking a Biden policy that would have allowed the administration to issue parole to some arriving families and instruct them to check in with ICE instead of placing them directly in removal proceedings, removing another option to control the immigration court backlog and avoid detaining families. It seems relatively unlikely that the administration will be happy to accept a defeat of its asylum restrictions that will then force it back into the uncomfortable position of detaining more families. In the meantime, market analysis site Seeking Alpha has upgraded the stock of private detention conglomerate GEO Group to “strong buy” in anticipation of strong profits from growth in detentions, not to mention GEO’s piece of all sorts of surveillance technologies used in the administration’s alternatives to detention programs.

In the meantime, an eight-year-old girl died yesterday in Border Patrol custody after having what is vaguely described as a “medical episode.” The machine churns on.

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

Read the complete article at the link.

There’s lots of of “disturbing stuff” here. But, perhaps the worst and most discouraging is the role of the Biden Administration and some Dem pols in aiding, abetting, and even encouraging this 21st Century version of Jim Crow.

The poor and superficial reporting of the “mainstream media” — which performed like an adjunct Fox News — also has had life-threatening consequences. Inaccurately and cynically treating the Title 42 farce as “the norm,” and the return to applying some semblance of the rule of law (the Refugee Act has been in effect for more than four decades) as some type of radical “change” also has contributed mightily to the human tragedy and carnage at the border. Highly irresponsible!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-18-23

📰 IMMIGRATION JOURNALISM: ATLANTIC’S CAITLIN DICKERSON WINS PULITZER FOR REPORTING CRUELTY & OFFICIAL LIES BEHIND FAMILY SEPARATION!

https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2023/05/caitlin-dickerson-wins-2023-pulitzer-prize-explanatory-journalism/673986/

May 8, 2023—The Atlantic’s staff writer Caitlin Dickerson has won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism for the September 2022 cover story, “‘We Need to Take Away Children,’” an exhaustive investigation that exposed the secret history of the Trump administration’s policy to intentionally separate migrant children from their parents; the incompetence that led the government to lose track of many children; and the intention among former officials to separate families again if Trump is reelected. Her reporting, one of the longest articles in The Atlantic’s history, laid out in painstaking detail one of the darkest chapters in recent U.S. history, exposing not only how the policy came into being and who was responsible for it, but also how all of its worst outcomes were anticipated and ignored. The investigation was edited by national editor Scott Stossel.

. . . .

In awarding Dickerson journalism’s top honor, the Pulitzer Board cited: “A deeply reported and compelling accounting of the Trump administration policy that forcefully separated migrant children from their parents resulting in abuses that have persisted under the current administration.”

The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote to staff: “This is a wonderful moment for everyone, but particularly for Caitlin, Liz, and Xochitl. There is much to say about their talents, and the talents of their editors. This is also a very proud moment for all of you who worked on these stories. Caitlin’s piece, one of the longest and most complicated stories The Atlantic has published across its 166-year history, required the unflagging work of a good portion of our comparatively small staff—from the copy-editing and fact-checking teams to our artists and designers and lawyers. Our ambitions outmatch our size, but I’m proud to say that our team rises to every challenge.”

Dickerson’s investigation exposed that U.S. officials misled Congress, the public, and the press, and minimized the policy’s implications to obscure what they were doing; that separating migrant children from their parents was not a side effect of the policy, but its intent; that almost no logistical planning took place before the policy was initiated; that instead of working to reunify families after parents were prosecuted, officials worked to keep families apart longer; and that the architects of the legislation will likely seek to reinstate it, should they get the opportunity. Over 18 months, Dickerson conducted more than 150 interviews––including the first extensive on-the-record interviews on this subject with Kirstjen Nielsen, John Kelly, and others intimately involved in the policy and its consequences at every level of government––and reviewed thousands of pages of internal government documents, some of which were turned over only after a multiyear lawsuit.

. . . .

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

Read the complete article at the link.

Many congrats and thanks Caitlin! Unfortunately, the message still doesn’t seem to have gotten through to politicos and policy-makers of both parties who continue to promote, tout, and sometimes employ illegal, immoral, and ineffective measures directed at migrant children and families!

Most important — no accountability for the perpetrators! Indeed, if the GOP gets power again they plan to repeat their crimes! And the Dems aren’t that much better — happily touting policies that can have the same effect, whether intended or not.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-09-23

☠️🤮 “ANTI-WOKE” IS A COWARDLY SLOGAN FOR JIM CROW, WHITE SUPREMACIST, RACISM — So, Why Is The So-Called “Mainstream Media” Giving 21st Century GOP “Dixiecrats” Like Ron DeSantis & Greg Abbott A “Free Pass?”

Allison Wiltz writes in Medium:

https://link.medium.com/eUKQHqxW1xb

The anti-woke crusade is rooted in fear and ignorance, a mnemonic placeholder for the bigoted things most people wouldn’t dare say aloud. Black Americans have been using the term “woke” since the 1940s to describe a state of awareness toward racist policies and worldviews that negatively impact the Black community. However, many White people now use the term as a derogative slur, a cowardly way of spilling the beans while denying any beans were spilled.

. . . .

Saying you are anti-woke is a way of admitting you are anti-Black without feeling the backlash many outspoken racists receive. Likewise, anti-woke crusaders are promoting anti-democratic policies by controlling what topics schools and businesses can read and discuss without getting labeled a fascist for circumventing the First Amendment of the Constitution. America was founded by White men interested in securing their rights while denying that same access to Black people, women, and racial and ethnic minority groups. We don’t have to worship the founding fathers blindly, nor should any American. It seems many conservatives are afraid of saying the quiet part out loud, of admitting that their crusade on “woke” is really an attempt to diminish the gains made by the Civil Rights Movement, of framing progress as regressive. Americans should challenge more conservatives to define “woke” on their own terms because the more descriptions they provide, the more we can see through the smoke and mirrors.

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

Those with Medium access can read the complete article at the link.

Here’s one of my favorite comments on this article, from Walter Rhein: “When people say they are ‘anti-woke,’ I interrupt them and say ‘You mean ‘anti-black.’ They become enraged and act like they’re the victims (like racists always do).”

Cowardly insurrectionist racist oppressors and chronic liars bogusly claiming they are “victims,” perhaps of “the biggest witch hunt on history?” Sound familiar?

The far right’s war of hate directed against the “other” started with the White Nationalist war on immigrants. It’s called “Dred Scottification” of the other. Yet, the mainstream media downplays the real message and “normalizes” these vile attacks on our democracy. They “whitewash” the dangerous message of hate being promoted by DeSantis, Abbott, and their ilk.

Ron DeSantis Dave Grandlund PoliticalCartoons.com Republished under license Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are “campaigning” on an agenda of racism, hate, and White Supremacist grievance not seen since the late Gov. George Wallace. Yet, mainstream media has largely “normalized” that which would have been unacceptable and unthinkable only a few years ago! — Ron DeSantis
Dave Grandlund
PoliticalCartoons.com
Republished under license
Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are “campaigning” on an agenda of racism, hate, and White Supremacist grievance not seen since the late Gov. George Wallace. Yet, mainstream media has largely “normalized” that which would have been unacceptable and unthinkable only a few years ago!

Even the Biden Administration fails to “connect the dots” between the White Nationalist restrictionist war on asylum seekers of color they have adopted from Trump and Miller and the extremist right’s attack on Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, LGBTQ, women, teachers, Jews, Muslims, health care professionals, journalists, and everyone else “White Supremacist nation” perceives as a threat to their kakistocracy. In that way, this Dem Administration becomes part of problem, not the solution.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-09-23

☠️⚰️ “STORY KILLERS” — TAYLOR LORENZ @ WASHPOST REPORTS ON WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN & HOW FEMALE JOURNALISTS ARE PARTICULAR TARGETS FOR ABUSE — Biden Administration Largely MIA, Failing To Effectively Address Systemic Problems For Women Seeking Refuge From Gender-Based Persecution!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/02/14/women-journalists-global-violence/

Taylor Lorenz writes:

. . . .

The ordeal of Farooqi, who covers politics and national news for News One in Pakistan, exemplifies a global epidemic of online harassment whose costs go well beyond the grief and humiliation suffered by its victims. The voices of thousands of women journalists worldwide have been muffled and, in some cases, stolen entirely as they struggle to conduct interviews, attend public events and keep their jobs in the face of relentless online smear campaigns.

Stories that might have been told — or perspectives that might have been shared — stay untold and unshared. The pattern of abuse is remarkably consistent, no matter the continent or country where the journalists operate.

Farooqi says she’s been harassed, stalked and threatened with rape and murder. Faked images of her have appeared repeatedly on pornographic websites and across social media. Some depict her holding a penis in the place of her microphone. Others purport to show her naked or having sex. Similar accounts of abuse are heard from women journalists throughout the world.

. . . .

This article is part of “Story Killers,” a reporting project led by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories, which seeks to complete the work of journalists who have been killed. The inspiration for this project, which involves The Washington Post and more than two dozen other news organizations in more than 20 countries, was the 2017 killing of the Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh, a Bangalore editor who was gunned down at a time when she was reporting on Hindu extremism and the rise of online disinformation in her country.

New reporting by Forbidden Stories found that shortly before her slaying, Lankesh was the subject of relentless online attacks on social media platforms in a campaign that depicted her as an enemy of Hinduism. Her final article, “In the Age of False News,” was published after her death.

. . . .

Until news organizations recognize the purpose of harassment campaigns and learn to navigate them appropriately, experts say, women will continue to be forced from the profession and the stories they would have reported will go untold.

“This is about terrifying female journalists into silence and retreat; a way of discrediting and ultimately disappearing critical female voices,” Posetti said. “But it’s not just the journalists whose careers are destroyed who pay the price. If you allow online violence to push female reporters out of your newsroom, countless other voices and stories will be muted in the process.”

“This gender-based violence against women has started to become normal,” Farooqi said. “I talk to counterparts in the U.S., U.K., Russia, Turkey, even in China. Women everywhere, Iran, our neighbor, everywhere, women journalists are complaining of the same thing. It’s become a new weapon to silence and censor women journalists, and it’s not being taken seriously.”

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

“Not being taken seriously” aptly describes the attitude and actions of the Biden Administration toward some women seeking asylum on the basis of gender-based violence. Certainly, our Government could and should do better at recognizing and prioritizing refugee and asylum status for this vulnerable group.

Recently, I published a “happy ending” story from my friends over at the GW Law Immigration Clinic, involving an Afghan female attorney granted asylum by the Arlington Asylum Office. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2023/02/15/🗽🇺🇸-i-hope-to-rebuild-my-life-here-i-cant-save-my-country-but-i-can-save-myself-and-my-family-gw-law-immigration-clinic-asylum-laws-save-another-l/

Yet, even this “slam dunk” case took nearly six months to adjudicate. Seems like it could and should have been granted at the interview in a well-functioning system. Better yet, most Afghan refugees could have been screened overseas and admitted in legal refugee status, thus avoiding the backlogged asylum system and freeing both USG and private bar resources for more difficult cases.

My friend and Round Table colleague Judge Joan Churchill and the National Association of Women Judges have petitioned the Biden Administration to offer refuge to as many as 250 Afghan female judges whose lives are in grave danger. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/08/19/🗽⚖️human-rights-immigration-judges-speak-out-for-afghan-women-judges-national-association-for-women-judges-call-to-protect-courageous-afghan-women-featured-in-was/

Yet, I am aware of no guidance, precedent, or directives recognizing refugee status or directing grants of asylum for Afghan women. In the meantime, several European nations have determined that all women who have fled Afghanistan can qualify as refugees. See, e.g., https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/02/09/denmark-sweden-offer-protection-all-women-girls-afghanistan.

Once, America was in the forefront of setting precedents that protected female refugees. See, e.g., Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (1996) (FGM, opinion by Schmidt, Chair). Now, not so much, despite our nation’s heavy involvement with Afghanistan. Apparently, the “powers that be” are afraid that consistently and aggressively supporting refugee protection for women fleeing Afghanistan and other dangerous countries would “encourage” them to actually seek legal protection here thereby upsetting right-wing nativists and misogynists.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for both journalists and women. See, e.g., https://monitor.civicus.org/updates/2022/05/10/mexico-vicious-attacks-against-women-journalists-and-hrds-continue/.

Yet, incredibly, the Biden Administration proposes to send up to 30,000 rejected NON-MEXICAN border arrivals per month to Mexico without fair examination of their potential asylum claims. To date, BIA precedents, regulations, and policy statements have NOT recognized the well-documented, clear and present dangers for journalists, women, and particularly female journalists, in Mexico. Consequently, I’d say that there is about a 100% chance that some female journalists seeking asylum will be illegally returned to death or danger, whether in Mexico or their native countries.

Just can’t make this stuff up. Yet, it’s happening in a Dem Administration!

AG Merrick Garland did vacate former AG Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions’s lawless and misogynistic decision in Matter of A-B-. That action “restored” the BIA’s 2014 precedent decision in Matter of A-R-C-G-, recognizing that gender-based domestic violence could be a basis for granting asylum.

However, the BIA didn’t elaborate on the many forms that gender-based persecution can take, nor did they provide binding guidance to Immigration Judges on how these cases should be handled in accordance with due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices.

Garland and his BIA have failed to follow up with any meaningful guidance or amplification of A-R-C-G- for Immigraton Judges. That’s even though many women fleeing Latin America come from countries where gender-based violence is rampant and the governments make little or no effective efforts to control it — sometimes police and other corrupt officials even join in the abuses.

Consequently, life or death protection for female asylum seekers remains a disgraceful and wholly unacceptable “crap shoot.” Outcomes of well prepared and copiously documented asylum cases often depend more on the attitude of the Immigration Judge or BIA Appellate Judge hearing the case than on the law and facts.

Also, without a knowledgeable lawyer, which the Government does not provide, an applicant has virtually no chance of winning a gender-based protection case in today’s EOIR. Additionally, those in immigration detention or placed on Garland’s “accelerated/dedicated” dockets are known to have particular difficulty obtaining pro bono counsel.

Anti-asylum IJs, some of whom were known for their negative attitudes toward female asylum seekers — many of those who actually “cheered” Sessions’s biased and wrong reversal of hard-won asylum protection for women in EOIR courts — remain on the bench under Garland at both levels.

To their credit, some have changed their posture and now grant at least some gender-based cases. But, others continue to show anti-asylum, anti-female bias and deny applications for specious reasons, misconstrue the law, or just plain use “any reason to deny” these claims, without any fear of consequences or meaningful accountability.

Trial By Ordeal — Many advocates and experts would say that female asylum applicants still face “trial by ordeal” in Garland’s “overly Trumpy” EOIR. Despite campaign promises, the Biden Administration has done little to champion the cause of gender-based refugees and asylum seekers — at the Southern Border or elsewhere. Woman Being “Tried By Ordeal”
17th Century Woodcut
Public Realm
Source: Ancient Origins Website
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/trial-ordeal-life-or-death-method-judgement-004160

Whether or not such egregious errors and non-uniform applications of asylum law get reversed at the BIA again depends on the composition of the BIA “panel” assigned to the case. (Not all “panels” have three Appellate Judges; some are “single member” panels). Significantly, and inexplicably, a group of Trump-holdover BIA Appellate Judges known for their overt hostility to asylum applicants (with denial rates approaching 100%) and their particular hostility to gender-based claims, remains on the BIA under Garland. There, they can “rubber stamp” wrong denials while sometimes even reversing correct grants of protection by Immigration Judges below! Talk about a broken and unfair system!

With an incredible backlog of 2.1 million cases, approximately 800,000 of them asylum cases, wrongly decided EOIR cases can “kick around the system” among the Immigration Courts, the BIA, and the Circuits for years. Sometimes, a decade or more passes without final resolution! Imagine being a pro bono or “low bono” attorney handling one of these cases! You “win” several times, but the case still has no end. And, you’re still “on the hook” for providing free legal services.

It’s no wonder that, like his predecessors over the past two decades, Garland builds EOIR backlog exponentially — without systematically providing justice or instituting long overdue personnel and management changes! It’s also painfully clear that, also like their predecessors, Garland and his political lieutenants have never experienced the waste and frustrations of handling pro bono litigation before the dystopian “courts” they are now running into the ground!

Meanwhile, Biden’s promise and directive that his Administration promulgate regulations containing standards for gender-based asylum cases that would promote fairness and uniformity within his OWN courts and agencies remains unfulfilled — nearing the halfway point of this Administration! Apparently, some politicos within the Administration are more fearful of predictable adverse reactions from right-wing nativists and restrictionists than they are anxious to “do the right thing” by listening to the views of the experts and progressives who helped put them in office in the first place!

Thus, abused women and other refugees and asylum seekers, and their dedicated supporters, many of whom have spent “professional lifetimes” trying to establish the rule of law in these cases, face a difficult conundrum. In America today, neither major political party is willing to stand up for the legal and human rights of refugees, particularly women fleeing gender-based persecution.

As an “interested observer,” it seems to me that something’s “got to give” between so-called “mainstream Dems” and progressive immigration/human rights advocates. The latter have devoted too much time, energy, courage, and expertise to “the cause” to be treated so dismissively and disrespectfully by those they are “propping up.” And, that includes a whole bunch of Biden Administration politicos who were nowhere to be found while immigration advocates were fighting, often successfully and against the odds, on the front lines to save democracy during the “reign of Trump.”

That was a time when immigrants, asylum seekers, people of color, and women were the targets for “Dred Scottification” before the law. I have yet to see the Biden Administration, or the Dem Party as a whole, take a strong “active” stand (rhetoric is pretty useless here, as the Administration keeps demonstrating) against those who would use misapplications of the law, ignoring due process, demonization, and refusal to recognize the humanity of migrants as their primary tool to undermine and ultimately destroy American democracy!

Immigrants, including refugees, are overall a “good story” — indeed the real story of America since its founding. That Dems can’t figure out how to tell, sell, advance, and protect the immigrant experience that touches almost all of us is indeed a national tragedy.

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-18-23

🌟HER STAR KEEPS RISING, RIGHTFULLY SO! — Tal Kopan Appointed Deputy Washington Bureau Chief @ BoGlo!

From Talking Biz News:

https://talkingbiznews.com/we-talk-biz-news/boston-globe-appoints-kopan-deputy-bureau-chief/

Boston Globe appoints Kopan deputy bureau chief

BY MARIAM AHMED · JUNE 16, 2022

Tal Kopan

The Boston Globe has tapped Tal Kopan as deputy bureau chief in its D.C. bureau. Currently, she is a Washington correspondent at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Before that, Kopan served as a political reporter at CNN. She worked as a breaking news reporter and cybersecurity policy reporter at Politico. She was a web producer and contributing writer at Politico Pro and also reported for C-SPAN.

Kopan has a B.A. from the University of Chicago.

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Many congrats to Tal — one of the best in the business, with strong “immigration roots!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-01-22

DISSENTING VIEW: LET THE SUN SHINE IN!☀️ — Unaccountable, Anti-Democracy, Out-Of-Touch Righty Supremes Need & Deserve Public Scrutiny Of Decision-Making! — The “Leak” Was “All Good” 😎 — The Retrograde Substance Of Alito’s “Draft,” Not So Much! 🤮

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Supreme-Court-leaks-are-good-actually-Let-s-17154277.php?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_opinioncentral&sid=5bfc15614843ea55da6b8709

Edward Wasserman writes in the SF Chron:

. . . .

No institution welcomes scrutiny. Maintaining internal cohesion and operational focus demands informational boundaries against the rest of the world. This wish deserves respect, but not automatic submission, especially when matters of vast public consequence are at stake.

That’s why news media take it as a duty to ignore organizational secrecy rules — except when disclosure would cause unwarranted harm — and insist that public awareness must outweigh institutional convenience. A document leaked from most any federal agency that upended longstanding policy would unquestionably be legitimate news, even if it was preliminary, even if exposure would gum up a cozy internal process, even if the leak broke agency rules.

But not when it comes to the Supreme Court.

Of all our governmental institutions, it is unique in the awe and deference with which our news media, for all their endless claims to seek truth aggressively, treat it.

To be sure, secrecy has a place in the judicial system. Grand juries, for example, are prosecutorial contrivances where untested evidence is presented and people suspected of wrongdoing have weak adversarial protections. Damaging the innocent by publicizing unrebutted claims is a strong possibility. Secrecy makes sense.

But the issue here is altogether different. The leak was of a 98-page draft opinion with 118 footnotes, not a filched personal email or the secondhand account of an overheard chat. It was deeply researched and carefully composed and was distributed internally nearly three months ago, and it signals a major change in an explosive area of public policy. Publishing it doesn’t endanger national security and puts no innocent lives at risk.

So should the Supreme Court, virtually alone among core public institutions, be entitled to say, “We’ll show it to you when we’re ready for you to see it?”

At best, that exceptionalist claim rests on a carefully nurtured myth of the court as a scholarly sanctuary in which big questions of public purpose are engaged through reflection, historical inquiry and quiet, reasoned debate, a process of ripening that must take place behind the sealed doors of an intellectual greenhouse.

That fiction lost credibility a long time ago, at least for anybody who was paying attention in the year 2000 when the court, with the flimsiest of pretexts, awarded the presidency to the candidate with fewer votes but of the same party as its majority.

Indeed, what standards of accountability govern the court? Its members serve life terms free from disciplinary oversight. To get aboard, nominees routinely lie before Congress — about their personal behavior and their judicial philosophy — rendering the Senate’s authority to approve candidates meaningless. Serving justices are not held to any discernible standard of independence. Their right to rule on matters in which close family have personal stakes, or on which they have clear prior leanings, is completely unregulated.

And then there’s the recent sharp increase in furtive rulings reached off-season without full briefing or oral argument — known as the shadow docket — which has further narrowed the window of public visibility. Last summer the court issued 11 such rulings, up from three in 2016, in a slapdash and opaque workaround beloved of the conservative majority that produces jurisprudence that “every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend,” as dissenting liberal Justice Elena Kagan said.

Perhaps the Roe leak will inaugurate a new era for the court. Maybe there will be more impertinent reporting that exposes the reasoning, bargaining, trade-offs and personal dynamics that drive constitutional lawmaking at the highest levels. Rather than something to be dreaded, such transparency would leave us all better informed and more fully empowered to play the role the system prescribes for us — to shape our collective future.

Edward Wasserman is professor of journalism and former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

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Read Wasserman’s full article at the link.

He says, “No institution welcomes scrutiny.” Very true. Any leader or group of leaders who claim the contrary are probably lying.

Scrutiny sometimes brings accountability. And, as our system deteriorates before our eyes, that’s something that has become rare in today’s politics and public life.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-09-22

🇺🇸🗽EIGHT DECADES AGO, “THE GREATEST GENERATION” FOUGHT A WAR AGAINST FASCISM, RACISM, HATE & AUTHORITARIANISM — Now The Succeeding Generations Are Fighting At The Ballot Box To Remove A Fascist Government From Control Of Our Country!

https://gen.medium.com/should-you-wish-a-fascist-well-1aa0b9a22d03

By Kitanya Harrison @ Medium:

. . . .

A plague was the check and balance, not the rule of law, not civility. Trump and Republicans showed hubris in the face of a force of nature that cannot be gaslit, bullied, or emotionally manipulated. A virus demands you engage with it truthfully. You can’t bluster your way out of infection. Trump’s lies and arrogance regarding Covid-19 have cost 210,000 Americans their lives. Those lies and arrogance have finally caught up with him, and he may pay a heavy price. Some people think that’s poetic justice. They are being rebuked by those who think you should never be that callous, not even to a fascist.

Fascists know how to weaponize the norms governing civility to gain and maintain control over others. They know how to exploit sympathy. They know if they pretend to play nice sometimes, people believe they’ll begin to adhere to these norms and stop their harm. It’s a con. It works, though. That’s why four years into the Trump regime, reporters and pundits are still, embarrassingly, talking about his change of tone and his becoming more “presidential” any time he displays the barest modicum of decorum. This dynamic lowers the bar all the way down to Hell. Playing along is always the wrong move.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

Excellent summary of how fascism works and how the “mainstream” keeps giving it a “pass” and normalizing severely abnormal, anti-social, illegal behavior by Trump and his toadies.

Just look at yesterday’s Courtside posting — kids and legal refugees continue to suffer while Sessions collects his pension, Hamilton continues to plan criminal enterprises on our dollar, and Rosenstein racks up the big bucks pretending like his venture into child abuse and crimes against humanity were just “normal activities of a senior Government official at the DOJ.” Not normal! Not acceptable!

History tells us what happens to those who “play along to get along.” The U.S. Olympic Committee turning an intentionally blind eye to Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism so that the U.S. could participate in “Hitler’s Big Show” — the 1936 Olympics. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain selling out the Czechs, babbling about “peace in our time” on the eve of the bloodiest war in world history, and pretending that Hitler was “just another German politician” with “traditional” nationalist aspirations.

This Fall, vote Trump and the GOP out at all levels of Government. It might be the last chance to save our democracy from fascism and to save more lives from the malfeasance, ignorance, hate, and evil of Trump and his GOP enablers.

PWS

10-08-20

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

Melissa reports in the latest issue of The Border Chronicle:

Two things stand out:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Beatriz writes:

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Catherine writes:

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Border Lines has published one of the best analyses of the Title 42 charade and its ongoing impact on our Government’s cruel, lawless, and misguided border policies. Given the cosmic impact of bad border policies, they have made it available “outside the paywall.”

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Allison Wiltz writes in Medium:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Taylor Lorenz writes:

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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From Talking Biz News:

Boston Globe appoints Kopan deputy bureau chief

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Edward Wasserman writes in the SF Chron:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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This Fall, vote Trump and the GOP out at all levels of Government. It might be the last chance to save our democracy from fascism and to save more lives from the malfeasance, ignorance, hate, and evil of Trump and his GOP enablers.

Related posts:

Brothers Forever!

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