Category: Education

TRUMP IS FULL OF IT, BUT OUR COUNTRY ISN’T – Outside The White Nationalist World, Nearly All Experts Agree That We Need More Immigration

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/upshot/trump-america-full-or-emptying.html

Neil Irwin & Emily Badger report for the NY Times:

Trump Says the U.S. Is ‘Full.’ Much of the Nation Has the Opposite Problem.

An aging population and a declining birthrate among the native-born population mean a shrinking work force in many areas.

Neil IrwinEmily Badger

By Neil Irwin and Emily Badger

President Trump has adopted a blunt new message in recent days for migrants seeking refuge in the United States: “Our country is full.”

To the degree the president is addressing something broader than the recent strains on the asylum-seeking process, the line suggests the nation can’t accommodate higher immigration levels because it is already bursting at the seams. But it runs counter to the consensus among demographers and economists.

They see ample evidence of a country that is not remotely “full” — but one where an aging population and declining birthrates among the native-born population are creating underpopulated cities and towns, vacant housing and troubled public finances.

Local officials in many of those places view a shrinking population and work force as an existential problem with few obvious solutions.

“I believe our biggest threat is our declining labor force,” said Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont, a Republican, in his annual budget address this year. “It’s the root of every problem we face.

“This makes it incredibly difficult for businesses to recruit new employees and expand, harder for communities to grow and leaves fewer of us to cover the cost of state government.”

Or if you look at a city like Detroit, “many of the city’s problems would become less difficult if its population would start growing,” said Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist. “All sorts of things like the hangover pension liability become much more solvable if you’re actually looking at new people coming in.”

A road less traveled in Rutland, Vt., last spring. Vermont’s governor has described the state’s shrinking labor force as “at the root of every problem we face.” CreditCaleb Kenna for The New York Times
Image
A road less traveled in Rutland, Vt., last spring. Vermont’s governor has described the state’s shrinking labor force as “at the root of every problem we face.” CreditCaleb Kenna for The New York Times

This consensus is visible in official government projections. The Congressional Budget Office foresees the American labor force rising by only 0.5 percent a year over the coming decade, about one-third as fast as from 1950 to 2007. That is a crucial reason that economic growth is forecast to remain well below its late 20th-century levels.

And that, in turn, is reflected in the national fiscal outlook. There are now 2.8 workers for every recipient of Social Security benefits, a rate on track to fall to 2.2 by 2035, according to the program’s trustees. Many state pension plans face even greater demography-induced strains.

In smaller cities and rural areas, demographic decline is a fundamental fact of life. A recent study by the Economic Innovation Group found that 80 percent of American counties, with a combined population of 149 million, saw a decline in their number of prime working-age adults from 2007 to 2017.

Population growth in the United States has now hit its lowest level since 1937, partly because of a record-low fertility rate — the number of children born per woman. The United States increasingly has population growth rates similar to slow-growing Japan and Western Europe, with immigration partly offsetting that shift.

The Trump administration has portrayed the surge of asylum seekers at the southern border as a crisis, and applied aggressive tactics to deport undocumented immigrants already in the United States. But it has also announced plans to issue up to 30,000 additional H-2B visas for temporary workers.

“That immigrants keep showing up here is a testament to our freedom and the economic opportunity here,” said Matthew Kahn, an economist at the University of Southern California. If immigrants weren’t trying to come — if they believed the United States to be full — that would be a problem, Mr. Kahn said.

A particular fear, said John Lettieri, president of the Economic Innovation Group, is that declining population, falling home prices and weak public finances will create a vicious cycle that the places losing population could find hard to escape.

He proposes a program of “heartland visas,” in which skilled immigrants could obtain work visas to the United States on the condition they live in one of the counties facing demographic decline — with troubled counties themselves deciding whether to participate.

Although some of the areas with declining demographics are hostile to immigration, others, cities as varied as Baltimore, Indianapolis and Fargo, N.D., have embraced the strategy of encouraging it.

“One of the key solutions is to welcome immigrants into these communities,” said Brooks Rainwater, director of the National League of Cities’ Center for City Solutions.

Many parts of the country that are growing in population and that are more economically dynamic have depended on the arrival of immigrants for that success.

Sun Belt metros like Dallas and Phoenix have been built on the logic of rapid expansion — of quickly built homes, of poached employers, of new highways paved to ever-newer subdivisions. Their economic development strategy is growth. Their chief input is people — the more, the better.

“Growth cities need immigrants to continue their growth,” said Joel Kotkin, executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism, which promotes policies to help cities grow. “The older historically declining cities need immigrants to reinvigorate their economies. And the expensive cities need them because, frankly, white people, African-Americans and middle-class people are leaving for more affordable areas.”

As many industrial cities have lost population since the mid-20th century, Americans have built whole new metropolises on land that was virtually empty then. The Las Vegas metropolitan area, with more than two million people today, had barely 50,000 in 1950.

Still, only about 3 percent of the country’s land is urbanized.

America’s metropolitan areas remain among the least dense in the world, said Sonia Hirt, a professor of landscape architecture and planning at the University of Georgia. Nationwide, the United States has less than one-third of the population density of the European Union, and a quarter of the density of China.

“Factually speaking, the country is not actually full — that’s impossible,” Ms. Hirt said. “The real question is, if you continue on the current path of immigration, does this bring more benefits than it brings costs?”

Economists, too, argue that countries, or even cities, can’t really fill up. Rather, communities choose not to make the political choices necessary to accommodate more people. At the local level, that means neighbors may be unwilling to allow taller buildings or to invest in more schools or improved infrastructure. At the national level, it means that politicians may be unwilling to take up immigration reform, or to address workers who fear unemployment. The president’s comments echo such local fights.

“We’re full” has often been a motto for people to keep out poorer renters, minority households or apartment buildings, among both conservatives and liberals. The claim can be a way of disguising exclusion as practicality. It’s not that we’re unwelcoming; it’s just that we’re full.

When it comes to the economy, at least, the country looks more like one that is too empty than too full.

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The White Nationalist agenda, which is being pushed not only by the White House but also by a number of GOP Senators and Representatives, prevents us from having the discussion we really must have: how many more individuals should we admit through our legal immigration system and how should we allocate those admissions to:

  • Best respond to market needs;
  • Reduce the need for a “black market system” that will continue to flourish as long as our system is out of whack with supply, demand, and humanitarian needs and obligations; and
  • Assist legitimate law enforcement by shifting the focus away from (often futile and always wasteful) efforts to prevent entry of those we should be welcoming through our legal immigration system.

PWS

04-10-19

 

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. NOLAN’S LATEST IN THE HILL: “Undocumented immigrants shouldn’t replace legal ones”
  3. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  4. WALL? WHAT WALL? – BUREAUCRATIC BARRIERS BEST BAR TO (NEEDED) IMMIGRATION (Hey, I Could’ve Told ‘Em That!) – But, White Nationalist Goal Of Returning To A “White America” Ultimately Doomed — “You can slow the rate of Latino and Asian immigration, but it won’t make the population whiter,”. . . “It will just become less white at a slower pace.”

MY SCARFF DISTINGUISHED VISITING PROFESSORSHIP LECTURE @ LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY, April 4, 2019 — “EXISTENTIALISM AND THE MEANING OF LIFE IN THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT: FROM LAWRENCE TO THE WORLD BEYOND”

EXISTENTIALISM AND THE MEANING OF LIFE IN THE U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT: FROM LAWRENCE TO THE WORLD BEYOND

By

Paul Wickham Schmidt

Retired U.S. Immigration Judge

Lawrence University

Appleton, Wisconsin

April 4, 2019

KEY EXCERPTS:

. . . .

In that respect, September 13, 2018 was a highly significant day in Lawrence history. For, on that day President Burstein delivered his Commencement address posing the question “Can We Stand With The Statue of Liberty?” This wasn’t your usual “namby-pamby “welcome to college and life in the big time” sleeper. By comparison, one of the introductory speeches at another institution attended by one of our children focused on the protocols for “stomach pumping” in the emergency detoxification ward of the local hospital. Important information to be sure, but not very inspirational or reassuring.

President Burstein made an urgent call to value knowledge and learning, improve our national dialogue, recognize our undeniable immigrant heritageand culture, and use the learning and skills developed at Lawrence and other great institutions to create a better and more socially just future for all of mankind. Never, in the nearly 50 years since I left Lawrence have I seen those basic, common-sense concepts and universal values of Western liberal democracy under greater attack and daily ridicule by those for whom facts and human decency simply don’t matter!

. . . . 

Folks, unknown to most of you in this room there is an existential crisis going on in our U.S. Immigration Courts, one of America’s largest, most important, little known, and least understood court systems. It threatens the very foundations of our legal system, our Constitution, and our republic. In the words of country singing superstar Toby Keith, tonight “It’s me, baby, with your wake-up call!”

. . . .

Lawrence taught the humane practical values of fairness, scholarship, timeliness, respect, and teamwork which have guided me in life. Lawrence emphasized critical thinking — how to examine a problem from all angles and to appreciate differing perspectives.

I was introduced to informed dialogue and spirited debate as keys to problem solving, techniques I have continued to use. I also learned how to organize and write clearly and persuasively, skills I have used in all phases of my life.

I found that my broad liberal arts education, ability to deal with inevitable ups and downs, including, of course, learning from mistakes and failures, and the intensive writing and intellectual dialogue involved were the best possible preparation for all that followed.  

. . . .

Among other things, I worked on the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the Cuban Boatlift, the Refugee Act of 1980, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (“IRCA”), the creation of the Office of Immigration Litigation (“OIL”), and establishing what has evolved into the modern Chief Counsel system at Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”).  

I also worked on the creation of EOIR, which combined the Immigration Courts, which had previously been part of the INS, with the BIA to improve judicial independence. Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, the leadership and impetus for getting the Immigration Judges into a separate organization came from Iron Mike and the late Al Nelson, who was then the Commissioner of Immigration. Tough prosecutors by position and litigators by trade, they saw the inherent conflicts and overall undesirability, from a due process and credibility standpoint, of having immigration enforcement and impartial court adjudication in the same division. I find it troubling that officials at today’s DOJ aren’t able to understand and act appropriately on the glaring conflict of interest currently staring them in their collective faces.

. . . .

Now, let’s move on to the other topics:  First, vision.   The “EOIR Vision” was: “Through teamwork and innovation, be the world’s best administrative tribunals, guaranteeing fairness and due process for all.” In one of my prior incarnations, I was part of the group that developed that vision statement.  Perhaps not surprisingly given the timing, that vision echoed the late Janet Reno’s “equal justice for all” theme.  

Sadly, the Immigration Court System now is moving further away from that due process vision. Instead, years of neglect, misunderstanding, mismanagement, and misguided political priorities imposed by the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) have created judicial chaos with an expanding backlog now exceeding an astounding one million cases and, perhaps most disturbingly, no clear plan for resolving them in the foreseeable future.  There are now more pending cases in Immigration Court than in the entire U.S. District Court System, including both Civil and Criminal dockets, with fewer U.S. Immigration Judges currently on board than U.S. District Judges.  

This Administration has added hundreds of thousands of new cases to the Immigration Court docket, again without any transparent plan for completing the already pending cases consistent with due process and fairness. Indeed, over the past several years, the addition of more judges has actually meant more backlog. In fact, notably, and most troubling, concern for fairness and due process in the immigration hearing process has not appeared to be a priority or a major objective in the Administration’s many pronouncements on immigration.

Nobody has been hit harder by this preventable disaster than asylum seekers, particularly scared women, children, and families fleeing for their lives from the Northern Triangle of Central America.  

. . . .

My good friend and colleague, Judge Dana Leigh Marks of the San Francisco Immigration Court, who is the President of the National Association of Immigration Judges, offers a somewhat pithier description: “[I]mmigration judges often feel asylum hearings are ‘like holding death penalty cases in traffic court.’”

. . . .

From my perspective, as an Immigration Judge I was half scholar, half performing artist. An Immigration Judge is always on public display, particularly in this “age of the Internet.”  His or her words, actions, attitudes, and even body language, send powerful messages, positive or negative, about our court system and our national values. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of those who fail at the job do so because they do not recognize and master the “performing artist” aspect, rather than from a lack of pertinent legal knowledge.  

. . . .

Next, I’ll say a few words about my judicial philosophy.  In all aspects of my career, I have found five essential elements for success that go back to my time at Lawrence:  fairness, scholarship, timeliness, respect, and teamwork.  

​Obviously, fairness to the parties is an essential element of judging.  Scholarship in the law is what allows us to fairly apply the rules in particular cases.  However, sometimes attempts to be fair or scholarly can be ineffective unless timely.  In some cases, untimeliness can amount to unfairness no matter how smart or knowledgeable you are.  

​Respect for the parties, the public, colleagues, and appellate courts is absolutely necessary for our system to function.  Finally, I view the whole judging process as a team exercise that involves a coordinated and cooperative effort among judges, respondents, counsel, interpreters, court clerks, security officers, administrators, law clerks and interns working behind the scenes, to get the job done correctly.  Notwithstanding different roles, we all shared a common interest in seeing that our justice system works.

​Are the five elements that I just mentioned limited to Immigration Court?  They are not only essential legal skills, they are also necessary life skills, whether you are running a courtroom, a law firm, a family, a PTA meeting, a book club, or a soccer team.  

. . . .

Our Immigration Courts are going through an existential crisis that threatens the very foundations of our American Justice System.  Earlier, I told you about my dismay that the noble due process vision of our Immigration Courts has been derailed.  What can be done to get it back on track?  

First, and foremost, the Immigration Courts must return to the focus on due process as the one and only mission. The improper use of our due process court system by political officials to advance enforcement priorities and/or send “don’t come” messages to asylum seekers, which are highly ineffective in any event, must end.  That’s unlikely to happen under the DOJ – as proved by over three decades of history, particularly recent history. It will take some type of independent court. I advocate an independent Article I Immigration Court, which has been supported by groups such as the American Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the National Association of Immigration Judges.

Clearly, the due process focus was lost even during the last Administration when officials outside EOIR forced ill-advised “prioritization” and attempts to “expedite” the cases of frightened women and children from the Northern Triangle who require lawyers to gain the protection that most of them need and deserve. Putting these cases in front of other pending cases was not only unfair to all, but created what I call “aimless docket reshuffling” that has thrown the Immigration Court system into chaos and dramatically increased the backlogs.

Although those misguided priorities have been rescinded, the current Administration has greatly expanded the “priority” targets for removal to include essentially anyone who is here without documentation. We had an old saying in the bureaucracy that “when everything becomes a priority, nothing is a priority.”  Moreover, Attorney General Sessions stripped Immigration Judges of their authority to “administratively close” low priority cases and those that could be referred to DHS for possible legal status.  Incredibly, he also directed that more than 300,000 previously “administratively closed” low-priority cases be “restored” to dockets already backlogged for many years.

This Administration also greatly expanded the “immigration detention empire,” – I call it the “New American Gulag.” Immigration detention centers are likely to be situated in remote locations near the Southern Border, relying largely on discredited private “for profit” prisons.  Have you heard of places like Jena, Louisiana or Dilley, Texas?

Individuals detained in such out-of-the-way places are often unable to obtain legal assistance or get the documentation necessary to present a successful asylum case. So-called “civil immigration detention” is used to coerce individuals out of making or appealing claims for protection in Immigration Court and also inhibits the ability of an individual to put on his or her “life or death” case.

This Administration also wants to make it more difficult for individuals to get full Immigration Court hearings on asylum claims and to expand the use of so-called “expedited removal,” thereby seeking to completely avoid the Immigration Court process.

They also have created and recently expanded what is known as the “Remain in Mexico Program.”  Under that program, which is being challenged in Federal Court, even those who pass initial screening and are determined by an Asylum Officer to have a “credible fear” of persecution are forced to remain in questionable conditions in Mexico while their cases are pending in Immigration Court.

Before he was fired, Attorney General Sessions imposed new “production quotas” on Immigration Judges, over their objection and that of almost all experts in the field. That insures that judges will be focused on churning out “numbers” to keep their jobs, rather than on making fair, impartial, scholarly, and just decisions.

But even these harsh measures aren’t enough. As you have no doubt read or heard, the President is threatening to “close the Mexican border” notwithstanding that Mexico is our third leading trading partner. Just Monday, he said that the solution was to eliminate Immigration Judges rather than provide fair hearings in a timely manner.

Evidently, the idea is to remove without full due process those who arrive at our border to seek protection under our laws and international conventions to which we are party. According to the Administration, this will send a powerful “don’t come, we don’t want you” message to asylum seekers.

But, as a deterrent, the Administration’s harsh enforcement program, parts of which have been ruled illegal by the Federal Courts, has been spectacularly unsuccessful. Not surprisingly to me, individuals fleeing for their lives from the Northern Triangle have continued to seek refuge in the United States in large numbers.  Immigration Court backlogs have continued to grow across the board, notwithstanding an actual decrease in overall case receipts and an increase in the number of authorized Immigration Judges.

. . . .

Keep these thoughts in mind.  Sadly, based on actions to date, I have little hope that Attorney General Barr will support due process reforms or an independent U.S. Immigration Court, although it would be in his best interests as well as those of our country if he did.  However, eventually the opportunity will come.  When it does, those of us who believe in the primary importance of constitutional due process must be ready with concrete reforms.​

So, do we abandon all hope?  No, of course not!   Because there are hundreds of newer lawyers out there who are former Arlington JLCs, interns, my former students, those who have practiced before me, and others who have an overriding commitment to fair and impartial administration of immigration laws and social justice in America.

They form what I call the “New Due Process Army!”  And, while mytime on the battlefield is winding down, they are just beginning the fight!  They will keep at it for years, decades, or generations — whatever it takes to force the U.S. immigration judicial system to live up to its promise of “guaranteeing fairness and due process for all!”

What can you do to get involved now?  The overriding due process need is for competent representation of individuals claiming asylum and/or facing removal from the United States. Currently, there are not nearly enough pro bono lawyers to insure that everyone in Immigration Court gets represented.

And the situation is getting worse.  With the Administration’s expansion of so-called “expedited removal” and “Remain in Mexico,“ lawyers are needed at even earlier points in the process to insure that those with defenses or plausible claims for relief even get into the Immigration Court process, rather than being summarily removed with little, if any, recourse.

Additionally, given the pressure that the Administration exerts through the Department of Justice to “move” cases quickly through the Immigration Court system with little regard for due process and fundamental fairness, resort to the Article III Courts to require fair proceedings and an unbiased application of the laws becomes even more essential. Litigation in the U.S. District and Appellate Courts has turned out to be effective in forcing systemic change.  However, virtually no unrepresented individual is going to be capable of getting to the Court of Appeals, let alone prevailing on a claim.

. . . .

Finally, as an informed voter and participant in our political process, you can advance the cause of Immigration Court reform and due process. For the last two decades politicians of both parties have largely stood by and watched the unfolding due process disaster in the U.S. Immigration Courts without doing anything about it, and in some cases actually making it worse.

The notion that Immigration Court reform must be part of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” is simply wrong. The Immigration Courts can and must be fixed sooner rather than later, regardless of what happens with overall immigration reform. It’s time to let your Senators and Representatives know that we need due process reforms in the Immigration Courts as one of our highest national priorities.  

Folks, the U.S Immigration Court system is on the verge of collapse. And, there is every reason to believe that the misguided “enforce and detain to the max” policies being pursued by this Administration will drive the Immigration Courts over the edge.  When that happens, a large chunk of the entire American justice system and the due process guarantees that make American great and different from most of the rest of the world will go down with it. As the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

In conclusion, I have introduced you to one of America’s largest and most important, yet least understood, court systems:  the United States Immigration Court. I have shared with you that Court’s noble due process vision and my view that it is not currently being fulfilled. I have also shared with you my ideas for effective court reform that would achieve the due process vision and how you can become involved in improving the process.

Now is the time to take a stand for fundamental fairness and social justice under law! Join the New Due Process Army and fight for a just future for everyone in America! Due process forever!

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READ THE FULL TEXT OF MY SPEECH HERE:

Existentialism-—-Lawrence

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What is the Scarff Distinguished Professorship at Lawrence University?

The Scarff professorial chair allows Lawrence University to bring to campus distinguished public servants, professional leaders, and scholars to provide broad perspectives on the central issues of the day. Scarff professors teach courses, offer public lectures, and collaborate with students and faculty members in research and scholarship.

Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Scarff created the professorship in 1989, in memory of their son, Stephen, a 1975 Lawrence graduate who died in an automobile accident in 1984. In the photo, the Scarffs are pictured with G. Jonathan Greenwald (center), former United States minister-counselor to the European Union and the 1998-99 Scarff Professor.

Recent Scarff visiting professors have included William Sloane Coffin, Jr., civil rights and peace activist; David Swartz, first U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Belarus in the former Soviet Union; Greenwald; Takakazu Kuriyama, former ambassador of Japan to the United States; Charles Ahlgren, retired diplomat and educator; and George Meyer, former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Robert Suettinger ’68, Intelligence analyst and China policy expert, and Russ Feingold, former United States Senator from Wisconsin.

Stephen Edward Scarff Visiting Professors, 1989-2018

1989-90

McGeorge Bundy
National security advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson

1990-91

Edgar Fiedler
Assistant security of the treasury for economic policy

1991-92

Jiri Vykoukal
Professor/scholar of East European history at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague

1992-93

Richard Parker
Ambassador to Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco

1993-94

Donald Leidel
Ambassador to Bahrain/deputy director of management operations for the Department of State

1994-95

Karl Scheld
Senior vice-president/director of research, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

1995-96

William Sloane Coffin, Jr.
Civil rights and peace activist

1997-98

David H. Swartz
Ambassador to the Republic of Belarus

1998-99

G. Jonathan Greenwald
Minister-counselor to the European Union at the U.S. mission in Brussels

2000-01

Takakazu Kuriyama
Ambassador of Japan to the United States

2001-02

Charles Ahlgren
Retired diplomat and educator

2002-04

George Meyer
Former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

2007-08

Robert Lee Suettinger ’68
Intelligence analyst and China policy expert

2008-09

Robert (Todd) Becker
Former U.S. foreign service officer and deputy head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission in Croatia.

2009-10

George Wyeth, ‘73
Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Policy and Program Change Division.

2010-11

Rudolf Perina
Former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Moldova (1998-2001), head of the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade in the mid-1990s and U.S. Special Negotiator for Eurasian Conflicts, 2001-04. Spent 35 years as U.S. foreign service officer, retiring in 2006.

2011-12

Alexander Wilde, ‘62
Senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., former director of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an independent nongovernmental organization concerned with human rights and U.S. foreign policy.

2012-13

Russ Feingold
Former United States Senator from Wisconsin

2013-14

Alexander Wilde, ’62
Senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., former director of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an independent nongovernmental organization concerned with human rights and U.S. foreign policy.

2015-16

George Rupp
Former President of the International Rescue Committee, the largest refugee resettlement organization in the world. Before leading the IRC he was president of Columbia and Rice Universities and Dean of the Harvard Divinity School.

2016-17

Christopher Murray, ’75
Most recently served as political advisor to the Supreme Commander of NATO forces. Prior to that he was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Congo.

2017-18

William Baer, ’72 and Nancy Hendry
Baer recently stepped down as Associate Attorney General in the Obama Administration. Previously, he was Assistant Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division. Hendry is senior advisor to the International Association of Women Judges where her focus is on sexual harassment law. They are married and both graduated from Stanford Law School.

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LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY PICTORIAL:

  1. Professor Jason Brozek, Stephen Edward Scarff Professor of International Affairs and Associate Professor of Government
  2. Fox River from overlook next to Briggs Hall
  3. Main Hall
  4. Atrium connecting Youngchild and Steitz (named for Nobel Prize Winning Biochemist and Lawrence Graduate Thomas Steitz) Science Halls
  5. Main Hall
  6. Residence of Lawrence University President Mark Burstein
  7. “Luna” contemplating early admission on the back steps of Main Hall
  8. Locks area across Fox River from campus
  9. Cathy and Luna about to cross the bridge
  10. Historic Fox River Mills Apartments (where our daughter, Anna, lived during her “Supersenior Year” at Lawrence)
  11. Fox River rapids
  12. Lawrence Memorial Chapel
  13. Another view of the Fox River near campus

PWS

04-09-19

Related posts:

  1. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  2. PODCAST “REVEALS” DUE PROCESS DISASTER IN IMMIGRATION COURTS, PARTICULARLY FOR TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS — Deep Seated Problems Existed — This Administration Made Them Worse!
  3. 🤡CLOWN CAPITOL:  J.R. PRESIDES OVER GOP CLOWN SHOW HE HELPED CREATE — Empowering The Koch Bros, Suppressing Minority Votes, Enabling GOP Gerrymandering, Ignoring Invidious Racial & Religious Motives, Turning A Blind Eye To Lies & Pretexts, It All Contributed To The Arrogant Display Of GOP Dishonesty & Impunity Now On Public Display In The Senate! — Plus Bonus Friday Mini-Essay: “Profiles in Fecklessness”
  4. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”

GET READY NEW DUE PROCESS ARMY — Trump & Miller Planning All-Out White Nationalist Assault On Constitution, Rule Of Law, Asylum, Immigrants, & People Of Color!

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/08/trump-immigration-agency-head-1332660

 

Trump White House plots amped-up immigration crackdown

The purge of Homeland Security leaders will allow the president to shift direction on policy.

President Donald Trump’s dramatic purge of Homeland Security leaders is about more than personnel: It helps clear the way for him to take controversial new steps to curb illegal immigration, including an updated version of his furiously criticized family separation policy.

Leading the new charge is Trump’s top White House immigration aide Stephen Miller, who wants tent cities to house migrants on the border and is pressing to extend the amount of time U.S. immigration officials can detain migrant children beyond the current 20-day limit imposed by a federal judge. Miller wants to force migrant parents arrested at the border to choose between splitting apart from their children or remaining together indefinitely in detention while awaiting court proceedings, according to five people familiar with the plans.

Those hard-line policies could get new traction after a major staffing shakeup at the Homeland Security Department over the past several days. Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned Sunday and Secret Service Director Randolph Alles was ousted Monday. Those moves came after the White House on Friday unexpectedly withdrew its nominee for director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ronald Vitiello. Other officials could be on the chopping block in coming days, according to three other people familiar with the White House’s considerations.

The dramatic proposals and leadership purge are politically risky — family separation has sparked more political anger than almost any other issue in Trump’s presidency — and come as Trump has alarmed his fellow Republicans with abrupt threats to kill Obamacare and to shut down the border. But Trump is determined to make immigration central to his reelection push, betting that he can once again energize his core conservative voters on a promise to secure America’s borders.

Trump and Miller have become increasingly frustrated as the number of Central American migrants massing at the southwest border surges to levels not seen in a decade. Now Miller — who’s even started calling mid-level federal officials to demand they do more to stem the influx — will have a new opportunity to pursue his tougher approach amid the leadership vacuum at DHS.

Trump said Sunday that Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan would become acting DHS secretary. Other top DHS positions currently filled by acting officials will be the deputy secretary, ICE director, inspector general and administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Three of those jobs lack a nominee from the White House.

Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a plan to send certain non-Mexican asylum seekers back to Mexico while they await a resolution to their case. The order will not be effective until Friday evening, which allows the administration a chance for a quick appeal.

Still, Miller has a set of new policies he wants to try, according to the five people familiar with the plans, including a “binary choice” between separation or joint detention for families, an idea that first surfaced in the run-up to the midterm elections. Miller also wants to fast-track the regulation that would allow migrant children to be detained for longer than the 20-day limit. He’s eager to finalize the so-called public charge rule, which could block immigrants from obtaining a green card if they’ve received public benefits in the past or are deemed likely to do so in the future.

In addition, Miller has pressed for the federal government to set up tent cities along the border, so that cases can be swiftly resolved — and migrants with non-meritorious claims can be deported.

He’s also pushing for the purge at DHS to continue.

“If you lose Claire, and John, and Francis, I don’t know where that leaves us. But it’s not in a good place,” this person said.

At least some of the personnel moves are getting pushback from immigration restrictionist groups, who like Cissna’s approach.

Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a grassroots organization that seeks lower levels of immigration, said he’s confounded by reports that Cissna may be removed from his post at USCIS.

“He’s great. He’s worked in this issue for years, he’s extremely knowledgeable,” Beck said. “He’s exactly the type of person who needs to be in DHS in leadership.”

But Miller has pressed Cissna, unsuccessfully, to launch more experimentally and legally questionable policies, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Cissna’s defenders contend that he tried to adhere to the law while Miller pressed to overstep legal boundaries.

“If they push out the uber-competent guy that the left hates because he’s getting things done within the law and the right loves because he’s actually being faithful to the president’s campaign promises, they’re even bigger idiots than we already know,” one former DHS official said.

Eliana Johnson, Gabby Orr, Josh Gerstein and Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.

 

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TRUMP & HIS ENABLERS IGNORE THE REALITY THAT EVENTUALLY WILL DWARF HIS BOGUS BORDER CRISIS: “The UN estimates that by 2050, there will be 200 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to climate change alone. . . . If we want people to be able to stay in their homes, we have to tackle the issue of our changing global climate, and we have to do it fast.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/06/us-mexico-immigration-climate-change-migration?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Lauren Markham reports for The Guardian:

The northern triangle of Central America, the largest source of asylum seekers crossing the US border, is deeply affected by environmental degradation

‘Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.’
‘Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.’ Photograph: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images

Media outlets and politicians routinely refer to the “flood” of Central American migrants, the “wave” of asylum seekers, the “deluge” of children, despite the fact that unauthorized migration across the US borders is at record lows in recent years. Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing, but perhaps this tendency to lean on environmental language when describing migration is an unconscious acknowledgement of a deeper truth: much migration from Central America and, for that matter, around the world, is fueled by climate change.

Yes, today’s Central American migrants – most of them asylum seekers fearing for their lives – are fleeing gangs, deep economic instability (if not abject poverty), and either neglect or outright persecution at the hands of their government. But these things are all complicated and further compounded by the fact that the northern triangle of Central America – a region comprising Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and the largest sources of asylum seekers crossing our border in recent years – is deeply affected by environmental degradation and the impacts of a changing global climate.

migration
Pinterest
‘Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration.’ Photograph: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images

The average temperature in Central America has increased by 0.5C since 1950; it is projected to rise another 1-2 degrees before 2050. This has a dramatic impact on weather patterns, on rainfall, on soil quality, on crops’ susceptibility to disease, and thus on farmers and local economies. Meanwhile, incidences of storms, floods and droughts on are the rise in the region. In coming years, according to the US Agency for International Development, countries in the northern triangle will see decreased rainfall and prolonged drought, writ large. In Honduras, rainfall will be sparse in areas where it is needed, yet in other areas, floods will increase by 60%. In Guatemala, the arid regions will creep further and further into current agricultural areas, leaving farmers out to dry. And El Salvador is projected to lose 10-28% of its coastline before the end of the century. How will all those people survive, and where will they go?

This September, I travelled to El Salvador to report on the impacts of the US government’s family separation policy. I’d been to El Salvador many times before, but never to the Jiquilisco Bay, a stunning, shimmering and once abundant peninsula populated by mangroves and fishing communities and uncountable species of marine life. It is also one that, like many places in El Salvador, and like many places in the world, is also imperiled by climate change. Rising sea levels are destroying the mangrove forests, the marine life that relies on them, and thus the fishermen who rely on that marine life to feed themselves and eke out a meager economy.

I met a man there named Arnovis Guidos Portillo, a 26-year-old single dad. Many people in his family were fishermen, but they were able to catch fewer and fewer fish. The country’s drought and devastating rainfall meant that the area’s farming economy, too, was suffering. The land was stressed, the ocean was stressed, and so were the people. Arnovis got into a scuffle one day at a soccer game, which placed him on a hitlist with a local gang. He had been working as a day laborer here and there, but the drought meant there was less work, and it was hard to find work that didn’t require crossing into rival gang territory. If he did, he would be killed. So he took his daughter north to the United States, where border patrol agents separated them for two months, locking them up in different states and with zero contact.

desert
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‘People really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land.’ Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images

Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration. An unstable planet and ecosystem lends itself to an unstable society, to divisions, to economic insecurity, to human brutality. When someone’s home becomes less and less livable, they move elsewhere. Wouldn’t each and every one of us do the same?

This week, the New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer published a series of pieces about the impacts of climate change in the Guatemalan highlands, where farmers are struggling to grow crops that they have been farming there for centuries. “In most of the western highlands,” Blitzer wrote, “the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when.” A few years ago, I reported from Guatemala’s dry corridor, several hours away from where Blitzer was reporting, where persistent drought had decimated the region’s agriculture, and particularly the coffee crop, on which roughly 90% of local farmers relied. It was a wildly different landscape from the one Blitzer described, but it faced the same problem: if you live in an agricultural zone, come from a long line of farmers and can’t reliably harvest your crops any more, what else is there to do but leave?

It’s abundantly clear that climate change is a driver of migration to the US – we have the data, we have the facts, we have the human stories. Still, the Trump administration has done nothing to intervene in this root cause. In fact, the US government has systematically denied the existence of climate change, rolled back domestic regulations that would mitigate US carbon emissions and thumbed its nose at international attempts – such as the Paris accords – to curb global warming.

Now, in his latest futile, small-minded and cruel attempt to cut migration off at the neck (something we know is not possible – an unhealthy societal dynamic must be addressed at the root, just like with a struggling tree or crop), Donald Trump announced last week that he would cut all foreign aid to the northern triangle. It’s a punitive move, and one that – just like building a wall, separating families, locking people up indefinitely, and refusing asylum seekers entry across the border – is a petty intimidation tactic that will do nothing to actually curb forced migration.

In fact, cutting aid to Central America will do quite the opposite, for as much waste and imperfections as there are in international aid, aid in Central America has been vital for creating community safety programs, job skills development and government accountability standards. It has also helped with drought mitigation and supporting climate-resilient agricultural practices. In other words, foreign aid to Central America – a place unduly hit by climate change – is supporting the kind of climate change resiliency that will keep people from having to leave in the first place.

Because people really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land, particularly when that land proves itself again and again to be hostile to migrants’ very existence. People don’t want to be raped along the route north, or die in the desert, or have their child ripped away from them by the border patrol, or be locked up indefinitely without legal counsel, without adequate medical care, with no idea what will happen to them and when. Who would risk this if things were OK back home? People like Arnovis leave because they feel like they have to.

Eventually Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials convinced Arnovis to sign deportation papers with the promise that, if he did, he would be reunited with his daughter and returned to El Salvador. But he was shooed on to a plane back home without her. It took a tremendous amount of advocacy, but, after months locked up in the US, she, too was returned home. They are now back together, which is a good thing, but the fundamental problem hasn’t changed: he can’t find work. His society is ill. So is the planet, and the land and sea all around him.

Today, there are 64 million forced migrants around the world, more than ever before. They are fleeing war, persecution, disaster and, yes, climate change. The UN estimates that by 2050, there will be 200 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to climate change alone.

Migration is a natural human phenomenon and, many argue, should be a fundamental right, but forced migration – being run out of home against one’s will and with threat to one’s life – is not natural at all. Today, whether we choose to see it or not, climate change is one of the largest drivers of migration, and will continue to be for years to come – unless we do something about it. If we want people to be able to stay in their homes, we have to tackle the issue of our changing global climate, and we have to do it fast.

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Quote of the Day: “Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.” 

One week ago, I was a guest participant in an Environmental Justice Seminar here at Lawrence University taught by Professor Jason Brozek of the Government Department. I was inspired by the students’ collective degree of knowledge, thoughtfulness, informed dialogue, and commitment to addressing this pressing problem. “Environmental Due Process” is certainly an important facet of the mission of the “New Due Process Army.”

PWS

04-08-19

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THE ART OF JUSTICE: Retired Judge Polly Webber Combines Passions For Justice, Art, Family With Inspiring Triptych!

https://napavalleyregister.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/evy-warshawski-the-arts-landscape-a-retired-judge-polly-webber/article_11ecd2c1-5be4-51aa-b295-955f910edc45.

The Arts Landscape

Evy Warshawski, The Arts Landscape: A retired judge Polly Webber creates a refugee narrative

  • Evy Warshawski
  • Updated

Immigration is a complicated issue.

Rarely a day goes by when we’re not hearing about it, reading about it, talking about it and shaking our heads at our leaders’ constantly shifting laws, policies and reforms. Like the unpredictability of Napa’s weather, the myriad issues surrounding immigration keep us constantly guessing about the outcomes.

Newish-to-Napa resident Polly A. Webber has been in the thick of immigration law for more than three decades.

Her resumé reads like a “Who’s Who” on the subject. She served 21 years as a trial level administrative judge in San Francisco, rendering oral and written decisions for more than 19,000 cases. She also served as national president of the American Bar Association-affiliated American Immigration Lawyers Association and held faculty positions at Santa Clara University School of Law and Lincoln Law School in San Jose. In private practice for 18 years, she has written articles for distinguished legal publications and earned a plethora of awards and accolades earned throughout her legal career.

During her last 10 years on the bench as well as in retirement, Webber has been creating fiber works, through rug hooking and yarn arts, describing her artistry as “a form of meditation” and a way “to get out of my head.”

“There is a pressing need for immigration reform in the United States,” Webber has written. “The Dreamers captured the hearts of a majority of Americans, and the taking of the children captured their outrage. It is time to bring this issue forward whatever way possible. This is my small contribution.”

Webber calls her folk art inspired, refugee-themed triptych of rugs “Refugee Dilemma.” Each wall hanging pays tribute to the thousands of people all over the world who flee and seek refuge from their places of origin.

The first in the series, “Fleeing from Persecution,” was completed in August, 2017. The image portrays Webber’s interpretation of the iconic, but now extinct, set of traffic signs used in San Diego – ostensibly meant to protect fleeing refugees. The plea “help us” appears in Spanish, Mayan, Haitian, Arabic, Pashto, Somali, Sudanese, Russian and English.

“I used marbled red and brown wool for the silhouettes,” Webber said, “to make them more human and universal. The white outline around the figures is a technique found in Russian art.”

“Caught in the Covfefe,” completed in December, 2018, portrays a border patrol officer taking a young girl from her undocumented mother, who pleads in Spanish, “Don’t take my daughter!” Webber describes the image: “An officer’s face is hooked in pure white, an institutional and domineering color, and he is given an almost robotic stance. The mother is frenzied, understandably, and the child is traumatized. The chicken wire fence around them with its barbed wire atop, and the borders around the rug are all done to project the feeling of being trapped. With the more open border at the top, there is hope.”

The most recently-completed rug in September, 2018, “Safe Haven,” illustrates two Central American women and their children in a place of relative safety. “For some,” Webber explains, “this is still aspirational, while others have succeeded. Their smiles are tired smiles, but full of hope. The pattern for this rug was developed from a rug my aunt, Emma Webber, hooked decades ago from a 1950s UNICEF card. Knowing how much my aunt would have appreciated this group of rugs, I wanted to honor her as well.”

Webber has hooked upwards of 25 rugs and often uses patterns made from photographs or draws images freehand. She’s “hooked” her brother’s home and a portrait of her parents with materials consisting of 100 percent wool cloth cut into strips about 1/4 inch thick.

“There are a number of wine country rug hooking groups in Santa Rosa, “ said Webber, “and we sit around and hook with other people. There are also camps that bring in specialized teachers and cutters, and it’s a true art form to go to these places.”

“I poured my heart and soul into these rugs,” Webber said, “and I still think assimilation and advocacy are important parts of the refugee narrative. There may be one or two more rugs coming!”

For information, contact Webber at popster49@gmail.com.

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Art has always been a powerful form of social justice expression. Thanks for inspiring us with your art and your passion for justice, Polly!

PWS

04-07-19

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  2. THE ART OF SOCIAL JUSTICE — HON. POLLY WEBBER’S TRIPTYCH “REFUGEE DILEMMA” HITS THE ROAD!
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MOLLY HENNESSEY-FISKE @ LA TIMES: As DHS Disintegrates Under Trump, Volunteers Pick Up The Pieces & Save Lives!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=c0589a9f-92f8-4e10-98e2-b19dd6e8d7ee

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

McALLEN, Texas — Federal immigration officials dropped the first group of several dozen asylum seekers — all Central American parents with children — at the downtown bus station early in the day.

They dropped more throughout the day, all of them Spanish speakers in need of food, medicine and guidance from volunteers.

Jose Manuel Velasquez, 24, cradled his squirming 3-year-old-daughter, Sofia, as volunteer Susan Law advised him how to reach Oklahoma City, where he hoped to join his cousin. He was one of thousands of asylum seekers trying to leave the border region this week to reach friends, family and immigration court hearings in other parts of the country.

Ahead of President Trump’s Friday visit to California,volunteers along the border helped hundreds of asylum seekers who had been released from U.S. custody. Cities are pitching in, but helping the migrants has mainly fallen to volunteers whose resources were already at a breaking point from responding to a slew of new immigration policies.

On Thursday in McAllen, the U.S. released 700 migrants to crowded nonprofit shelters and dropped others at the bus station. Some arrived at the station with confirmation numbers to claim tickets paid for by relatives. Many arrived confused.

Law, a volunteer with the group Angry Tias and Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley, said the constant arrivals this week made volunteers’ work “more overwhelming.”

The 73-year-old, a retired human resources director for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, sat with one parent after another Thursday. She explained each step of their bus trip, highlighting connections on a stack of maps.

She reviewed their paperwork, reminded them to keep their addresses updated and attend immigration court, and shared lists of free legal services at their destinations.

Many eastbound buses arriving in McAllen on Thursday were already packed with those released in El Paso and San Antonio. The wait time for migrants released to shelters to make it onto a bus has stretched to two days, according to Eli Fernandez, a volunteer at a nonprofit shelter.

Migrant advocates have suggested that recent mass releases at the border were intended to create chaos and give Trump something to point to when he argues that there is a national emergency.

Border Patrol officials have said their resources were strained by people crossing into the U.S. and asking for asylum. The officials have asked for millions more in funding to run temporary holding areas in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency team arrived in the valley this week, meant to support Border Patrol operations and nongovernmental groups, a FEMA spokeswoman said. But many volunteers said they hadn’t been contacted by the agency.

Trump policies blocking asylum seekers led volunteers to found Angry Tias and Abuelas about a year ago, after U.S. officials blocked asylum seekers at a border bridge south of McAllen. They brought food and supplies to the bridge and kept helping migrant families once Border Patrol started separating them. As immigrant parents were released, the volunteers shifted to the bus station to assist Catholic Charities, which runs a nearby shelter.

Most volunteers in Angry Tias and Abuelas are local, some are winter Texans, and others out-of-state visitors.

Luis Guerrero, a retired firefighter, remembers a 4-year-old Salvadoran girl explaining why she and her parents had to flee to the U.S.: Armed men had broken into their house and demanded money. “If you stay here,” Guerrero told the couple, “make sure your daughter gets therapy.”

Many of the migrants are from poor, rural areas and need the most basic help, volunteers said.

A young Honduran mother paid attention Thursday as Law traced the route she would follow to join her sister, a legal resident who migrated years ago and settled in Memphis, Tenn. Olga Lara had brought her 3-year-old, Alva, but left her 13-year-old daughter, Lilia, in Honduras with Lara’s mother.

Lara, 29, said she hoped to learn to read, as her sister had, in the U.S. She doesn’t know how to spell her name. She has never attended school, she said, because her family couldn’t afford it.

Law ensured the woman was traveling with another migrant who could read, write and look out for her. Law also warned Lara and other female migrants about the risk of trafficking, advising them to stay in main bus terminals and avoid anyone who might try to persuade them to leave.

Lara tucked her ticket into her bra and her paperwork into a bag next to Alva’s Elmo doll. She was wearing a donated puffy jacket and sneakers that were stripped of shoelaces while she was in Border Patrol detention. Law ran to grab her some of the laces she keeps stashed at the bus station. Lara threaded them through her shoes and thanked the volunteer.

On Thursday, good Samaritans from local churches dropped by with books, toys and hot breakfast tacos for the migrants. But there were not enough tacos to go around. A van from the nearby shelter was delayed when it ran out of gas. A few families boarded buses without eating.

Volunteer Roland Garcia, a former U.S. Marine, loaned his cellphone to a single Salvadoran mother of three, a domestic violence victim, so she could contact family in Houston and book her bus ticket.

“If we could just get more volunteers to help these people,” he said. “To them, everything is new. Some of them don’t even know how to work the Coke machine.”

Garcia, 60, who used to be a truck driver, started volunteering after he ducked into the bus station a few months ago to wait during a delivery and saw the crowds. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and felt the need to do something meaningful. He’s already recruited other volunteers.

His friend Rafael Mendoza said volunteers counter misinformation some asylum-seeking families receive from staff in Border Patrol facilities: “You’re wasting your time, you’re going to lose your case, you’re not welcome here.”

“Our own agents are telling them that,” said Mendoza, 59. “It’s very discouraging.”

The Catholic Charities shelter was packed Thursday, even after opening a second site when the Border Patrol started releasing large groups of families two weeks ago. The shelter’s halls were full of parents with small children who had not bathed in days while being held in chilly Border Patrol cells, where they said they caught colds.

Honduran Eulogio Erazo Varela said his 3-year-old daughter developed a fever while they were held for almost a week, first in a Border Patrol cell — what migrants call a hielera, or icebox — then behind a chain-link fence in a converted warehouse.

He was relieved to meet volunteers at the bus station Thursday. He said they treated him kindly as he prepared to catch a bus to Memphis — unlike Border Patrol agents, he said, who didn’t provide much treatment or help.

Many of the volunteers, including Law, had caught the migrants’ colds. But they were determined to keep helping. Law has driven a few migrants whose families could afford tickets to the airport, and hoped to recruit more volunteer escorts to help them navigate air travel in coming weeks.

Law recalled a migrant mother she met Wednesday, confused by her bus itinerary until the volunteer walked her through it in Spanish. Afterward, the woman said she would have been lost without Law’s help.

“That’s what keeps me going,” Law said.

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Ironically, government by the worst among us (“kakistocracy”) is bringing out the best in many others. Along with the efforts of the “New Due Process Army,” it’s certainly reason to hope for a better future for America and for mankind!

PWS

04-07-19

 

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JULIAN CASTRO: A Democrat With A Sane & Sound Immigration Plan!

https://www.julianforthefuture.com/news-events/people-first-immigration-policy/

 

People First Immigration Policy

By Julián Castro on April 2, 2019

People First Immigration Policy

Immigration Policy Summary

1. Reforming our Immigration System

  • Establish an inclusive roadmap to citizenship for undocumented individuals and families who do not have a current pathway to legal status, but who live, work, and raise families in communities throughout the United States.
  • Provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and those under Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure, through the Dream and Promise Act of 2019, and defend DACA and TPS protections during the legislative process.
  • Revamp the visa system and strengthen family reunification through the Reuniting Families Act, reducing the number of people who are waiting to reunite with their families but are stuck in the bureaucratic backlog.
  • Terminate the three and ten year bars, which require undocumented individuals—who otherwise qualify for legal status—to leave the United States and their families behind for years before becoming citizens.
  • Rescind Trump’s discriminatory Muslim and Refugee Ban, other harmful immigration-related executive orders, racial profiling of minority communities, and expanded use of denaturalization as a frequently used course of action through the USCIS Denaturalization Task Force.
  • Increase refugee admissions, reversing cuts under Trump, and restoring our nation to its historic position as a moral leader providing a safe haven for those fleeing persecution, violence, disaster, and despair. Adapt these programs to account for new global challenges like climate change.
  • End cooperation agreements under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and other such agreements between federal immigration enforcement agencies and state and local entities that erode trust between communities and local police.
  • Allow all deported veterans who honorably served in the armed forces of the United States to return to the United States and end the practice of deporting such veterans.
  • Strengthen labor protections for skilled and unskilled guest workers and end exploitative practices which hurt residents and guest workers, provide work authorization to spouses of participating individuals, and ensured skilled and unskilled guest workers have a fair opportunity to become residents and citizens through the Agricultural Worker Program Act.
  • Protect victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking, ensuring these individuals are not subject to detention, deportation, or legal reprisal following their reporting these incidents.

2. Creating a Humane Border Policy

  • Repeal Section 1325 of Immigration and Nationality Act, which applies a criminal, rather than civil, violation to people apprehended when entering the United States. This provision has allowed for separation of children and families at our border, the large scale detention of tens of thousands of families, and has deterred migrants from turning themselves in to an immigration official within our borders. The widespread detention of these individuals and families at our border has overburdened our justice system, been ineffective at deterring migration, and has cost our government billions of dollars.
    • Effectively end the use of detention in conducting immigration enforcement, except in serious cases.Utilize cost-effective and more humane alternatives to detention, which draw on the successes of prior efforts like the Family Case Management Program. Ensure all individuals have access to a bond hearing and that vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women, and members of the LGBTQ community are not placed in civil detention.
    • Eliminate the for-profit immigration detention and prison industry, which monetizes the detention of migrants and children.
    • End immigration enforcement raids at or near sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals, churches, and courthouses.
  • Reconstitute the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) by splitting the agency in half and re-assigning enforcement functions within the Enforcement and Removal Operations to other agencies, including the Department of Justice. There must be a thorough investigation of ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Justice’s role in family separation policies instituted by the Trump administration.
  • Reprioritize Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to focus its efforts on border-related activities including drug and human trafficking, rather than law enforcement activities in the interior of the United States. Extend Department of Justice civil rights jurisdiction to CBP, and adopt best practices employed in law enforcement, including body-worn cameras and strong accountability policies.
  • End wasteful, ineffective and invasive border wall construction and consult with border communities about repairing environmental and other damage already done.
    Properly equip our ports of entry, investing in infrastructure, staff, and technology to process claims and prevent human and drug trafficking.
  • End asylum “metering” and the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy, ensuring all asylum seekers are able to present their claims to U.S.officials.
  • Create a well-resourced and independent immigration court system under Article 1 of the Constitution, outside the Department of Justice, to increase the hiring and retention of independent judges to adjudicate immigration claims faster.
  • Increase access to legal assistance for individuals and families presenting asylum claims, ensuring individuals understand their rights and are able to make an informed and accurate request for asylum. Guarantee counsel for all children in the immigration enforcement system.
  • Protect victims of domestic and gang violence, by reversing guidance by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that prohibited asylum claims on the basis of credible fear stemming from domestic or gang violence.

3. Establishing a 21st Century ‘Marshall Plan’ for Central America

  • Prioritize high-level diplomacy with our neighbors in Latin America, a region where challenges in governance and economic development have consequences to migration to the United States, U.S. economic growth, and regional instability.
  • Ensure higher standards of governance, transparency, rule-of-law, and anti-corruption practice as the heart of U.S. engagement with Central America, rejecting the idea that regional stability requires overlooking authoritarian actions.
  • Enlist all actors in Central America to be part of the solution by restoring U.S. credibility on corruption and transparency and encouraging private sector, civil society, and local governments to work together – rather than at cross purposes – to build sustainable, equitable societies.
  • Bolster economic development, superior labor rights, and environmentally sustainable jobs, allowing individuals to build a life in their communities rather than make a dangerous journey leaving their homes.
  • Ensure regional partners are part of the solution by working with countries in the Western Hemisphere to channel resources to address development challenges in Central America, including through a newly constituted multilateral development fund focused on sustainable and inclusive economic growth in Central America.
  • Target illicit networks and transnational criminal organizations through law enforcement actions and sanctions mechanisms to eliminate their ability to raise revenue from illegal activities like human and drug trafficking and public corruption.
  • Re-establish the Central American Minors program, which allows individuals in the United States to petition for their minor children residing in Central America to apply for resettlement in the U.S. while their applications are pending.
  • Increase funding for bottom-up development and violence prevention programs, including the Inter-American Foundation, to spur initiatives that prevent violence at the local level, support public health and nutrition, and partner with the private sector to create jobs.

 

********************************************
Wow!
Finally a thoughtful, empirically-based, plan that stops wasting money, harming people, and limiting America’s future:  Moving us forward rather than “doubling down” on all of the worst failures and most dismal mistakes of the past.
Castro’s plan echoes many of the ideas I have been promoting on immigrationcourtside.com and reflects the “battle plan” of the “New Due Process Army.”  Most important, it establishes an independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court, the key to making any reforms effective and bringing back the essential emphasis on fulfilling our Constitutional requirement to “guarantee fairness and Due Process for all.”
While stopping short of recommending “universal representation,” something I would favor, Castro does:
  • Recognize the importance of increasing, rather than intentionally limiting access to counsel;
  • Promote “know your rights” presentations that help individuals understand the system, its requirements, their responsibilities, and to make informed decisions about how to proceed; and
  • Universal representation for children in Immigration Court (thus, finally ending one of the most grotesque “Due Process Farces” in modern U.S. legal history).
So far, Castro remains “below the radar” in the overcrowded race to be the 2020 Democratic standard-bearer. But, even if his presidential campaign fails to “catch fire” his thoughtful, humane, practical, and forward-looking immigration agenda deserves attention and emulation.
Many thanks to Nolan Rappaport for passing this along.
PWS
04-03-19

Related posts:

  1. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  2. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  3. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

THE GIBSON REPORT – 04-01-19 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

THE GIBSON REPORT – 04-01-19 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

 

TOP UPDATES

 

NYS Budget Passes

Documented NY:

  • 2020 Census outreach: Lawmakers in Albany agreed to a $175.5 billion budget deal on Sunday. It includes $20 million for census outreach — only half the amount advocates requested.
  • Liberty Defense Project: There were concerns late last week that the program, which provides legal counsel and other services for immigrants, would be cut. However, Alphonso David, the governor’s counsel, told reporters it would continue. The program received $10 million last year.
  • Misdemeanors: Among other criminal justice reforms, the budget will reduce the maximum sentence for Class A (the most serious) misdemeanors down to 364 days, which means they will no longer automatically trigger deportation proceedings.
  • NYS DREAM Act: After the DREAM Act passed the legislature earlier this year, it was implemented and fully funded in this budget. It provides undocumented students with access to state financial aid.

See also Immigration attorneys fighting deportation cases to get additional $1.6 million in emergency funding.

 

Border Patrol orders quick release of migrant families

AP: The number of migrant families and children entering the U.S. from Mexico is so high that Border Patrol is immediately releasing them instead of transferring them to the agency responsible for their release, forcing local governments to help coordinate their housing, meals and travel. See also Border Patrol facilities on southern border are nearly 3,000 people over capacity.

 

Trump plans to cut U.S. aid to 3 Central American countries in fight over U.S.-bound migrants

WaPo: The State Department said in a statement Saturday that it would be “ending . . . foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle” — a region encompassing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The move would affect nearly $500 million in 2018 funds and millions more left over from the prior fiscal year. See also Fox News host apologizes for ‘3 Mexican Countries’ chyron: ‘It never should have happened’.

 

Trump Doubles Down on Threat to Close Border

USNews: White house advisers are reaffirming that President Donald Trump will close all or parts of the U.S. border with Mexico this week if Mexico’s government doesn’t move aggressively to stop undocumented migrants from crossing into the United States. See also House fails to override Trump veto on southern border emergency.

 

DHS to ask Congress for sweeping authority to deport unaccompanied migrant children

NBC: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s proposal will also include more money for detention beds and the ability to hold families in detention longer than currently permitted.

 

ICE arrests drop as the agency shifts toward the surge of migrants at the southern border

CNN: US immigration arrests are down compared with last year, as illegal migrant crossings spike at the southern border and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has had to shift resources to the deal with the influx.

 

Immigrants Are Regularly Kept Locked up for Months After Deportation Orders

AIC: More than 1,000 immigrants were still locked up more than 6 months after they received their final removal orders.

 

The Pentagon Is Transferring $1 Billion to Trump’s Border Wall at the Expense of Military Readiness

AIC: Projects like the border wall should not come at the expense of military readiness. They only weaken our security and distract from the real humanitarian concerns at the border.

 

The Latest Immigration Crackdown May Be Fake Social Security Numbers

NPR: The agency is reviving the controversial practice of sending “no match” letters to businesses across the country, notifying them when an employee’s Social Security number doesn’t match up with official records.

 

The Immigration Court: Issues and Solutions

Chase: While many of the arguments for Article I status involved hypothetical threats in the 1990s, over the past two years, many of the fears that gave rise to such proposal have become reality.

 

ICE detains more pregnant women. Immigration advocates say it puts moms and babies at risk

Commercial Appeal: Puerto Diaz was one of more than 2,500 pregnant women detained by the agency in the past three years, according to ICE. That number has steadily risen since immigration policy changes were implemented by President Donald Trump in 2017.

 

Police: Con Artist Victimized Immigrants

Patch: Cops allege he extracted more than $300,000 from 40 families with false promises to get them legal immigration status.

 

“It’s Hell There”: This Is What It’s Like For Immigrants Being Held In A Pen Underneath An El Paso Bridge

BuzzFeed: US immigration officials are holding hundreds of people in a temporary outdoor detention camp under a Texas bridge, where migrants are surrounded by fencing and sleeping on dirt.

 

In Ciudad Juárez, Cuban migrants seek asylum in the U.S.

NBC: During the 2016 fiscal year, judges made decisions in 59 asylum cases filed by Cubans. In 2017, that number jumped to 245, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, database. Last year, 455 Cuban asylum cases were decided — with about six in 10 resulting in denials.

 

ICE Trained Over 1,500 State And Local Police On How To Help Detain Immigrants

Newsweek: Addressing a crowded room at the 2019 Border Security Expo in San Antonio, Texas, ICE Acting Director Ronald Vitiello said ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) team, which oversees the arrests and deportations of immigrants, has so far signed agreements with 78 law enforcement agencies in 20 states to “train and empower” state and local officers “to enforce federal immigration laws.”

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

BIA Reopens and Terminates Proceedings Sua Sponte in Light of Second Circuit Decision

Unpublished BIA decision reopens and terminates proceedings sua sponte upon finding respondent with controlled substance convictions no longer deportable under intervening decision in Harbin v. Sessions, 860 F.3d 58 (2nd Cir. 2017). Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Abreu, 5/21/18). AILA Doc. No. 19032696

BIA Reopens Proceedings for U Visa Applicant to Seek Waiver of Inadmissibility

Unpublished BIA decision reopens proceedings for U visa applicant to seek waiver of inadmissibility in light of intervening decision in Baez-Sanchez v. Sessions, 872 F.3d 854 (7th Cir. 2017). Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Moreno-Zaldivar, 5/15/18) AILA Doc. No. 19032595

 

BIA Orders Further Consideration of Continuance for Detained Respondent Seeking U Visa

Unpublished BIA decision remands for further consideration of request for continuance pending adjudication of U visa application, stating that backlog and respondent being detained are not valid reasons to deny continuance. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Alvarado-Turcio, 5/22/18) AILA Doc. No. 19032796

 

BIA Grants Adjustment Application for Respondent with Multiple Arrests for Domestic Violence

Unpublished BIA decision reverses discretionary denial of adjustment for applicant with two arrests for domestic violence because neither resulted in conviction and he otherwise possessed significant equities. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Ramirez-Ortega, 5/21/18) AILA Doc. No. 19032795

 

BIA Summarily Dismisses DHS Appeal for Failure to File Brief

Unpublished BIA decision summarily dismisses DHS appeal because notice to appeal didn’t meaningfully apprise BIA of grounds for appeal and DHS didn’t submit a separate brief in support of appeal despite indicating it would. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Moreira-Quintanilla, 5/17/18) AILA Doc. No. 19032596

 

BIA Upholds Finding that Respondent Acquired Citizenship

Unpublished BIA decision upholds finding that respondent acquired citizenship under INA §309(a) because father acknowledged paternity before she turned 18 by listing her as his daughter in affidavit of support. (Matter of Feliz-Valles, 5/17/18) AILA Doc. No. 19032695

 

CA1 Upholds Denial of Asylum to Kenyan Petitioner Who Alleged Changed Country Conditions

The court held that the BIA did not abuse its discretion in finding that country conditions in Kenya—climbing land prices, anti-LGBT discrimination, and al-Shabaab violence—were continuing, not changed, since the petitioner’s removal proceedings in 2013. (Wanjiku v. Barr, 3/15/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032902

 

CA4 Says BIA Applied Wrong Standard of Review in Evaluating Physical Custody Requirement Under the CCA

The court granted the petition for review and remanded, holding that whether a foreign-born child was in the “physical custody” of his or her U.S. citizen parent for purposes of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA) is a mixed question of fact and law. (Duncan v. Barr, 3/19/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032904

 

CA4 Reverses Denial of CAT Relief to Salvadoran Who Received Death Threats from Gang

The court granted the petition for review, holding that the BIA had entirely failed to address the petitioner’s testimony that Salvadoran officials had turned a “blind eye” to death threats made by members of the 18th Street gang to petitioner and her son. (Cabrera Vasquez v. Barr, 3/20/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032903

 

CA7 Upholds Denial of CAT Relief Where Salvadoran’s Allegations of Future Torture Were Deemed Too Speculative

The court upheld the denial of relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), finding that petitioner had failed to prove that he would be specifically targeted by gangs or the military in El Salvador or that the government would acquiesce in any torture. (Herrera-Garcia v. Barr, 3/18/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032905

 

CA8 Says “Salvadoran Female Heads of Households” Is Not a Cognizable Particular Social Group

The court held that the BIA did not err in ruling that petitioner had failed to prove past persecution on account of her membership in the social group of “Salvadoran female heads of household,” finding that the group lacked social distinction and particularity. (De Guevara v. Barr, 3/21/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032906

 

CA8 Upholds Denial of Asylum to Petitioner Who Feared Persecution in Guatemala Due to His Mam Ethnicity

The court held that the petitioner, who feared persecution on account of his Mam ethnicity from the Zetas criminal organization and others if returned to Guatemala, failed to establish an objective nexus between fear of future persecution and a protected ground. (Martin v. Barr, 3/5/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032570

 

CA9 Reverses Asylum Denial Where BIA Misapplied Firm Resettlement Rule

The court granted in part the petition for review of the BIA’s denial of the Cameroonian petitioner’s asylum claims and remanded, holding that the BIA committed three errors in its application of the firm resettlement rule. (Arrey v. Barr, 2/26/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032571

 

CA9 Says BIA May Consider Sentencing Enhancements When a Petitioner Has Been Convicted of a Per Se Particularly Serious Crime

The court denied the petition for review, holding that the BIA appropriately considered sentencing enhancements when it determined that the petitioner was convicted of a per se particularly serious crime and was therefore ineligible for withholding of removal. (Mairena v. Barr, 3/7/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032573

 

CA9 Orders En Banc Rehearing of Martinez-Cedillo v. Barr

The court ordered that Martinez-Cedillo v. Barr, in which a three-judge panel found that the BIA’s interpretation of a crime of child abuse, neglect, or abandonment was entitled to Chevron deference, be reheard en banc. (Martinez-Cedillo v. Barr, 3/18/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032931

 

CA9 Upholds Denial of Asylum to Mexican Police Officer Who Received Death Threats from Hitmen

The court held that the evidence did not compel the conclusion that the petitioner, a Mexican police officer who had received two death threats from hitmen of the Sinaloa drug cartel, had suffered past harm rising to the level of persecution. (Duran-Rodriguez v. Barr, 3/20/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032930

 

CA11 Finds Noncitizen Who Indicated He Was a U.S. Citizen on Driver’s License Application Is Inadmissible

The court held that it lacked jurisdiction to review the factual finding that the petitioner, a noncitizen, did not intend to make a false representation of citizenship when he checked the box indicating he was a U.S. citizen on his driver’s license application. (Patel v. Att’y Gen., 3/6/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032574

 

USCIS Posts Update on Extension of DED for Liberia

USCIS posted an alert that it will publish a notice in the Federal Register with information on the six-month automatic extension, through 9/27/19, of EADs currently held by eligible Liberians and instructions on how they can obtain EADs for the reminder of the DED wind-down period. AILA Doc. No. 19032932

 

ICE Releases Death Detainee Report

Congressional requirements described in the 2018 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill require ICE to make public all reports regarding an in-custody death within 90 days. ICE has provided those reports, beginning in FY2018. AILA Doc. No. 18121905

 

CBP Commissioner Issues Comments About Increase in Border Crossings at Southwest Border

CBP Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan hosted a press release to discuss the impact of the increase in border crossings that continue to occur along the southwest border. Nationwide, CBP had more than 12,000 migrants in custody this week. AILA Doc. No. 19032835

 

RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

ImmProf

 

Monday, April 1, 2019

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Friday, March 29, 2019

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Monday, March 25, 2019

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

Thanks, Elizabeth!

PWS

04-02-19

 

Related posts:

  1. THE GIBSON REPORT – 02-10-20 – Compiled by Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group: Deporting to Death; “Orbiting” Immigrants to Laos; “Judges” Failing To Meet Deportation Quotas;  ICE Shoots Man in the Face; Using Force In the Gulag; Federal Judge Outs Regime’s Scofflaw Detainers As Regime Inflicts Arbitrary Punishment on New Yorkers for Resisting Overreach; BIA Tanks Again; EOIR Ups “Aimless Docket Reshuffling;” & Other Tales of Abuse From White Nationalist Nation!
  2. THE GIBSON REPORT FOR 12-18-17 – RECOGNIZING: The Absolutely Amazing ELIZABETH GIBSON Of The NY Legal Assistance Group and ALL She Does For Fairness, Justice, & Due Process! — MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE LIVES OF OUR MOST VULNERABLE!
  3. THE GIBSON REPORT — 02-05-18 — COMPILED BY ELIZABETH GIBSON ESQ, NY LEGAL ASSISTANCE PROJECT
  4. 🇺🇸THE GIBSON REPORT — 11-02-20 — Prepared By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Trump/Miller Bogus Public Charge Rule Enjoined Again; CBP Turns Back More Than 13,000 Unaccompanied Kids Using COVID-19 As Cover For Child Abuse; John Oliver With The Incredibly Ugly 🤮 Truth About The Trump-Miller Racist Assault On Asylum & Humanity ☠️⚰️— Other News From America Teetering On The Brink After 4-Years Of Trump Regime Misrule, Cruelty, Corruption, & Undermining Of Democracy!🏴‍☠️

HEEDING OUR HISTORY: Despite Contemporary Fears & Resentment, America’s Huge Wave Of Non-Western European Immigration From 1850-1920 Fueled Unprecedented Prosperity With Minimal Long-Term Social Disruption

https://apple.news/A4lCLFhuEOqmItxq2NixrXQ

Carly Cassella for ScienceAlert:

Over a hundred years ago, from 1850 to 1920, the United States of America experienced a wave of mass migration like never before – the highest levels in its history.

While the topic of immigration remains a divisive issue to this day, we now have some interesting evidence to add to the mix. A new study has found that US counties with more historical immigration enjoy better economies.

“While previous waves [of immigrants] were primarily from western Europe, the new wave included large numbers of immigrants from southern, northern, and eastern Europe who spoke different languages and had different religious practices.”

Today, if it weren’t for that huge wave, some parts of the US would look far less fortunate.

Not only has immigration increased individual incomes in these counties, the study found it has also reduced unemployment and poverty while improving education and populating urban areas.

What’s more, the sudden influx of eastern, northern and southern Europeans did not somehow unbalance the social fabric of the country.

The researchers found no evidence that historical immigration affects social capital, voter turnout, or crime rates.

“What is fascinating is that despite the exceptionalism of this period in US history, there are several important parallels that one could draw between then and now,” says development economics research Sandra Sequeira from The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Examining data from a panel of US counties from 1850 to 1920, the researchers estimated the percentage of people with foreign descent born every decade.

Because immigrants usually travelled by rail to their destinations, the researchers focused their attention along the country’s train network. Their findings reveal that soon after the arrival of immigrants, these regions experienced an industrial boom and long-term prosperity.

Nearly a hundred years later, these counties are still enjoying enormous economic benefits. Using this historical data, the researchers suggest that on average, when the number of immigrants in a county went up by just 4.9 percent, it increased the average income by 13 percent today.

Of course, it also completely rearranged American society. Between 1880 and 1914, over 20 million Europeans migrated to the US, at a time when the country only had 75 million residents.

Still, it’s an example of how change, even when it’s disruptive, can have beneficial effects in the long term. While it’s true that this wave of immigration did spur a short-term ant-immigration backlash – both politically and socially – in the long run, the economic benefits appear to far outweigh the social costs, which tend to fade with time.

Sure, the mass wave of immigration that occurred nearly a century ago was under different circumstances, but even still, the authors think it might be relevant now.

“There is much to be learned from taking a longer perspective on the immigration debate,” says Sequeira.

This study has been published in the Review of Economic Studies.

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

How quickly we forget our own history and what made America grow and prosper. That’s particularly true when we are “led” by a kakistocracy that glories in disrespecting knowledge, truth, and our history as a nation of immigrants.

03-28-19

Related posts:

  1. THE SPLC ANALYZES TRUMP’S CONTORTED AND CONTRIVED MESSAGE OF HATE, INTOLERANCE, & DIVISION!
  2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  3. POLITICS: DANIEL DENVIR @ LITERARY HUB: The Case Against Immigration Centrism – Liberals Inevitably Get Co-Opted Into “Nativism Lite” & The Result Is Donald Trump & His Overtly White Nationalist GOP!
  4. PAUL WALDMAN @ WASHPOST: Why True Bipartisan Immigration Reform In Our National Interest Will Require “Regime Change:” “[I]t’s highly unlikely that we’ll achieve such reform, even reform most Republicans could live with, without both houses of Congress and the White House in Democratic hands. But that will happen sooner or later. Then we’ll see if we can get closer to a solution that everyone can live with over the long run.”

THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-25-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-25-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

TOP UPDATES

 

SCOTUS Upholds Government Authority to Detain and Deport Immigrants for Past Crimes

AILA: The Supreme Court held that the mandatory detention statute, which plainly provides for detention without any hearing “when” an immigrant “is released” from a prior criminal custody, applies even when the arrest occurs years after their release. (Nielsen v. Preap, 3/19/19) AILA Doc. No. 19031930. See also Justices Leave Room To Challenge Immigrant Detention Law.

 

Immigration Courts Getting Lost in Translation

Marshall Proj: The head of the immigration-court system emailed judges Dec. 11, telling them to use phone interpreters for languages except Spanish, according to leaders of the National Association of Immigration Judges. See also Anyone Speak K’iche’ or Mam? Immigration Courts Overwhelmed by Indigenous Languages.

 

Fewer Undocumented Immigrant Crime Victims Are Stepping Forward

WNYC: In 2017, 2,664 people applied for U visa certification from New York City agencies and authorities, including the family courts and district attorneys. But last year, that number fell to 2,282 — a drop of 14 percent. See also Congress Debates Reauthorization of Expired Violence Against Women Act.

 

Human Rights First Clients Ordered to Remain in Mexico Following Immigration Court Hearings

HRF: [Thursday] two Human Rights First clients were inexplicably returned to Mexico after their initial immigration court hearings under the Trump Administration’s disastrous and unnecessary “Remain in Mexico” plan. The clients, Ariel and Alec*, are among the first asylum seekers to receive interviews regarding their fear of return to Mexico under the new plan. They were returned to Mexico without explanation or notice to their Human Rights First attorney, despite each expressing fears of returning to Mexico.

 

Undocumented Immigrant Denied Jury Trial Despite High Court Decision

NYLJ: The defendant in the case had asked the judge in the middle of his bench trial for a jury trial after a decision from the state’s highest court said undocumented immigrants should be offered a jury trial if they’re at risk of being deported following a conviction.

 

An Update on TPS: A Promising New Bill, More Lawsuits, and an Uncertain Future

AIC: the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019 (H.R. 6) would allow over 2 million TPS holders and Dreamers combined to adjust their status to permanent residents.

 

Newly Arriving Families Not Main Reason for Immigration Court’s Growing Backlog

TRAC: Since September, about one out of every four newly initiated filings recorded by the Immigration Court have been designated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as “family unit” cases. See Figure 1. While there have been a total of 174,628 new court filings recorded over the past six months, only 41,488 of these were designated by DHS as part of family units.

 

Citizens on Hold: A Look at ICE’s Flawed Detainer System in Miami-Dade County

ACLUFL: Persistent errors in ICE’s detainer system may have resulted in illegal holds being placed on dozens, and possibly hundreds, of U.S. citizens in Miami, according to a report published today by the ACLU of Florida. The report, “Citizens on Hold: A Look at ICE’s Flawed Detainer System in Miami-Dade County,” finds that, since 2017, ICE has targeted over 400 people who were listed as U.S. citizens in County records.

 

ICE Has Detained a 72-Year-Old Grandfather With Alzheimer’s for Nine Months

DailyBeast: Noé de la Cruz, a grandfather of three, has been in immigrant detention since June 2018—and his family worries that his Alzheimer’s is going untreated.

 

Trump admin tracked individual migrant girls’ pregnancies

MSNBC: Details of a newly obtained spreadsheet kept by the Trump administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, led by anti-abortion activist Scott Lloyd, tracking the pregnancies of unaccompanied minor girls. Brigitte Amiri, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project senior staff attorney, joins to discuss details of the case.

 

Migrant boy’s ‘discouraging trauma’ leads judge to block his transfer to fifth home

WaPo: The case, and others like it, is an example of an urgent question facing the U.S. government: What should be done with the children arriving at the southern border?

 

Airline Assured Flight Attendant She’d Be Safe to Fly to Mexico. When She Returned, ICE Detained

TPG: She has a Social Security number and pays taxes, and was halfway through the process of getting her official citizenship. Leaving the country, she feared, could jeopardize her DACA status. But Mesa Airlines insisted she was legally all right to fly to Mexico and back. “She should be okay because it’s part of DACA as long as it is not expiring,” a supervisor at Mesa wrote in an email reviewed by The Points Guy.

 

George Mason gets $1.1 million Koch gift for research on immigration, labor

CTPost: The money, a five-year grant from the Charles Koch Foundation, will underwrite work at the Center for the Study of Social Change, Institutions and Policy at George Mason, a public university in Northern Virginia…George Mason, which earlier this month announced a $50 million gift to its law school, has recently sought to address concerns about philanthropy at the institution, and whether some funding came with constraints on academic freedom.

 

Rio Grande Valley Landowners Plan To Fight Border Wall Expansion

NPR: More than 570 landowners in two counties, Hidalgo and Starr, have received right-of-entry letters from the government asking to survey their land for possible border wall construction.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

Justices uphold broad interpretation of immigration detention provision

SCOTUSblog: In Nielsen v. Preap, four justices joined Justice Samuel Alito yesterday to adopt an expansive interpretation of a mandatory-immigration-detention statute.

 

Supreme Court Grants Cert in Identity Fraud/Immigration Case

ImmProf: The issues presented in the case: (1) Whether the Immigration Reform and Control Act expressly pre-empts the states from using any information entered on or appended to a federal Form I-9…; and (2) if IRCA bars the states from using all such information for any purpose, whether Congress has the constitutional power to so broadly pre-empt the states from exercising their traditional police powers to prosecute state law crimes.

 

Expansion/Clarification on “direct victim” in U visa cases

EDNY: USCIS may be correct that, in the majority of situations, a non-targeted individual who is not present at the crime scene does not suffer direct and proximate harm as a result of the crime. But the regulation does not create a requirement of physical presence to be met in every case. Rather, it envisions a case-by-case analysis to determine whether, in this case, for this crime, the harm suffered by the applicant is a direct and proximate harm of the qualifying criminal activity.

 

Federal Court Upholds Wage Rates for Migrant Farmworkers

ImmProf: A federal court late Monday denied a request by growers to throw out wage rates for temporary foreign workers that are set by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to protect American farmworkers.

 

Law school’s Immigration Clinic files suit in support of activist

TheU: According to the lawsuit, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Rojas on Feb. 27 when he appeared for a routine immigration appointment. His abrupt detention came at the heels of the Sundance Film Festival premiere of a documentary film, “The Infiltrators,” which features Rojas’s activism and criticism of ICE detention policies.

 

BIA Reopens Proceedings Sua Sponte for Longtime TPS Holder to Adjust Status

Unpublished BIA decision reopens proceedings sua sponte for respondent who was granted TPS in 1999 and became the beneficiary of an approved visa petition in 2017. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Romero, 5/15/18) AILA Doc. No. 19032296

 

BIA Holds Utah Lewdness Offense Not Sexual Abuse of a Minor

Unpublished BIA decision holds that lewdness involving a child under Utah Code Ann. 76-9-702.5 is not sexual abuse of a minor because it does not require an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Nieves, 5/3/18) AILA Doc. No. 19031830

 

BIA Vacates Finding that LPR Status Was Abandoned

Unpublished BIA decision vacates finding that pro se respondent abandoned his LPR status because he did not understand the significance of his admissions when he conceded the charge. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Wol Wol, 5/7/18) AILA Doc. No. 19031831

 

BIA Reopens Proceedings Sua Sponte in Light of Tenth Circuit Decision Involving Retroactivity of Matter of Briones

Unpublished BIA decision reopens proceedings sua sponte in light of Tenth Circuit decision holding that Matter of Briones, 24 I&N Dec. 355 (BIA 2007), doesn’t retroactively apply to applicants who relied on contrary circuit law. Special thanks to IRAC. (Matter of Perea, 5/14/2018) AILA Doc. No. 19032295

 

CA1 Rejects Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Claim Where Petitioner Filed Motion to Reopen Seven Years After BIA Denied His Appeal

The court upheld the BIA’s decision denying the petitioner’s motion to reopen and declining to equitably toll the 90-day filing deadline, finding that even if the petitioner had received ineffective assistance of counsel, he failed to exercise due diligence. (Tay-Chan v. Barr, 3/13/19) AILA Doc. No. 19031971

 

CA2 Says Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering Is an Aggravated Felony

The court denied the petition for review, holding that conspiracy to commit money laundering pursuant to 18 USC §1956(h) constitutes an aggravated felony under INA §101(a)(43)(D). (Barikyan v. Barr, 3/4/19) AILA Doc. No. 19031972

 

CA3 Finds Constructive Physical Presence Doctrine Cannot Transmit Citizenship

Affirming the district court, the court held that even if the petitioner’s father was a U.S. citizen, he did not transmit citizenship under a constructive physical presence theory to his Czechoslovakian-born son pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. (Madar v. USCIS, 3/7/19) AILA Doc. No. 19031973

 

CA5 Finds BIA’s Retroactive Application of Matter of Diaz-LizarragaViolates Due Process

The court granted the petition for review, finding that the BIA erred in applying the definition of crimes involving moral turpitude (CIMTs) announced in 2016 in Matter of Diaz-Lizarraga to the petitioner’s 2007 conviction for attempted theft. (Monteon-Camargo v. Barr, 3/14/19) AILA Doc. No. 19031974

 

CA6 Upholds Denial of Continuance Where Petitioner Had Six Weeks’ Notice of Need to Obtain New Counsel

Where the petitioner was notified six weeks prior to his final removal hearing that he needed to pay his attorney or find new counsel, the court upheld the denial of his request for a continuance on the day of his removal hearing to find a new attorney. (Mendoza-Garcia v. Barr, 3/13/19) AILA Doc. No. 19031975

 

CA6 Upholds Denial of Motion to Reopen In Absentia Removal Order Where Petitioner Claimed Nonreceipt of NTA

The court affirmed the denial of the motion to reopen petitioner’s in absentia removal order, concluding that the BIA did not abuse its discretion in determining that the petitioner failed to overcome the presumption of delivery of the Notice to Appear (NTA). (Santos-Santos v. Barr, 2/28/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032036

 

CA7 Denies CAT Relief to Bisexual Petitioner Whose Father Was a Member of an Opposition Political Party in Guinea

The court found that petitioner had failed to establish that he more likely than not would be tortured if removed to Guinea due to his sexual orientation and father’s past political affiliation, and thus upheld the denial of Convention Against Torture (CAT) relief. (Barry v. Barr, 2/22/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032037

 

CA8 Says Petitioner’s Convictions in Missouri for Passing a Bad Check Are CIMTs

Applying the modified categorical approach, the court denied the petition for review, concluding that the petitioner’s four Missouri convictions for passing a bad check qualified as crimes involving moral turpitude (CIMTs). (Dolic v. Barr, 2/20/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032038

 

CA8 Finds Conviction Vacated for Rehabilitative Reasons Was Still a Conviction for Immigration Purposes

The court denied the petition for review, finding that the subsequent vacatur for rehabilitative reasons of the petitioner’s Iowa criminal conviction did not change the fact that the petitioner had a conviction for immigration purposes under INA §101(a)(48)(A). (Zazueta v. Barr, 2/22/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032039

 

CA8 Finds Inconclusive Record Renders Petitioner with Criminal Attempt Conviction Ineligible for Cancellation of Removal

The court upheld the BIA, finding that because the record was inconclusive as to whether the petitioner’s conviction for attempted criminal impersonation in Nebraska was a crime involving moral turpitude, the petitioner was not eligible for cancellation of removal. (Pereida v. Barr, 3/1/19) AILA Doc. No. 19032040

EOIR Swears in 31 New Immigration Judges

EOIR announced the investiture of 31 new immigration judges. Then-acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker appointed the judges to their new positions. Notice includes biographical information. AILA Doc. No. 19032233

Policy for Public Use of Electronic Devices in EOIR Space

EOIR: Attorneys or representatives of record and attorneys from the Department of Homeland Security representing the government in proceedings before EOIR will be permitted to use electronic devices in EOIR courtrooms for the limited purpose of conducting immediately relevant court and business related activities (e.g. scheduling). Electronic devices must be turned off in the courtroom when not in use for authorized purposes, and must be sent to silent/vibrate mode when being used for authorized purposes in the courtroom. Again, these devices may not be used to make audio or video recordings, or capture still images/photographs of any kind, in any EOIR space, to include the courtrooms.

Varick Updates (see MCH schedule attached)

Beginning this Monday, March 18, immigration judges Conroy and Kolbe will begin hearing cases detained cases at the Varick Street Immigration Court. IJ Conroy’s and IJ Kolbe’s dockets at 26 Federal Plaza will be transferred to other judges. Additional judges will be assigned to Varick Street to handle non-detained cases in early spring. An announcement on these assignments will be made in the coming weeks.

 

RESOURCES

 

EVENTS

 

ImmProf

 

Monday, March 25, 2019

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Friday, March 22, 2019

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Monday, March 18, 2019

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

I draw special attention to Elizabeth’s Item # 2 “Immigration Courts Getting Lost in Translation.” It’s yet another chapter in the sad saga of how Due Process and best practices are being “dissed” in today’s mismanaged Immigration Court System.

PWS

03-25-19

 

Related posts:

  1. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⚖️🗽🇺🇸FORMER DEPUTY AG DON AYER, JUDGE MIMI TSANKOV AMONG “HEADLINERS” AT TIMELY UPCOMING NY CITY BAR ASSN. EVENT: “Rule of Law Forum – Preserving the Rule of Law in an Age of Disruption” — Register Now, Right Here!
  2. THE GIBSON REPORT — 04-09-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Project — Why Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan Should End Up In Jail If He Follows Trump’s Unlawful & Unconstitutional Plans!
  3. 🇺🇸THE GIBSON REPORT — 11-02-20 — Prepared By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Trump/Miller Bogus Public Charge Rule Enjoined Again; CBP Turns Back More Than 13,000 Unaccompanied Kids Using COVID-19 As Cover For Child Abuse; John Oliver With The Incredibly Ugly 🤮 Truth About The Trump-Miller Racist Assault On Asylum & Humanity ☠️⚰️— Other News From America Teetering On The Brink After 4-Years Of Trump Regime Misrule, Cruelty, Corruption, & Undermining Of Democracy!🏴‍☠️
  4. THE GIBSON REPORT — 05-13-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

Amín E. Fernández @ NY Law School: A FIRST-HAND ACCOUNT FROM THE BORDER — “As I would inform families of the future that awaited them, I felt embarrassed of my country. I felt anger at the fact that we are telling folks who are fleeing cartel, gang and military violence to grab a number and wait in line for four to five weeks. That I had to help mothers and fathers write their information on their babies in case they were separated. It broke my heart to have to tell a mother that her pain and suffering just couldn’t be pigeon holed into ‘race, religion, nationality, political opinion or a particular social group.'”

Amín E. Fernández

            Prior to this year, I had never been on a college spring break trip. I had never experienced the stereotypical American “Cancun trip” full of debauchery, innocentfun and the fantasy MTV sold me in the early 2000s. Part of this was due to financial considerations, the other part was that I always had some kind of commitment whenever this season came upon me. This year, I finally got to go on a spring break trip with some of my law school peers. But the Mexico I saw was far from a carefree oasis for the inebriated and the carefree.

            This past March, I along with my Asylum clinic professor and four New York Law School classmates volunteered in Tijuana for a week at an organization called Al Otro Lado, Spanish for “On the Other Side.” Al Otro Lado (“or AOL”) is a not for profit organization run almost exclusively by volunteers. AOL provides free legal and medical services to migrants both in Tijuana and San Diego and is currently in the process of suing the U.S. government for its recently adopted border policies. AOL is composed of volunteers from all walks of life. Some are attorneys, others doctors or nurse practitioners. Most, though, are concerned U.S. citizens who wanted to see for themselves the humanitarian crisis occurring in our country. They come from all walks of life, ages, races and socioeconomic backgrounds. But for that week, our collective problems and biases were set aside due to the more pressing concerns facing the people we were seeking to assist.

            During my week volunteering with AOL in Tijuana, my classmates and I utilized our studies in immigration and asylum law to educate asylum seekers as to the process that awaits them. I met with over a dozen migrants, one-on-one, and heard their stories of plight and fear. I didn’t tell them what to say, instead I explained to them that asylum is a narrowly applied form of relief. That in order to be granted asylum in the U.S. that they had to essentially prove 1. They have suffered a harm or credible fear of harm. 2. This fear or harm is based on an immutable trait (such as race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership to a particular social group) 3. They cannot relocate to another area of their country because their government either cannot or refuses to help them. 4. They tried to go to the police or couldn’t due to inefficacy or corruption. Many of the folks I spoke with had no idea what asylum was or what exactly were its requirements. At times, I would find out that the family I was speaking to was crossing that same day meaning that I had 5 minutes to explain to them what a “credible fear interview” was.

            My favorite part of my week though, was when I got to conduct the Charla slang for “a talk.” The Charla is a know your rights workshop where AOL explains the asylum procedure, the illegal “list” number system currently being conducted by the U.S. and Mexican government, and what possibilities await them after their credible fear interviews. Currently, if you arrive in Tijuana and want to plead for asylum in the U.S. you can’t just go and present yourself to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. The Mexican government has security keeping you from being able to speak to U.S. CBP. Mexican officials, though, do not want to take on this responsibility either, so the idea somehow came about of having the migrants themselves keep a list or a queue amongst themselves. The way it works is that every morning at El Chaparral, one of the ports of entry between Tijuana and San Diego, a table with a composition notebook is set up. In that notebook is a list usually somewhere in the several thousands. For each number, up to ten people can be listed and in order to sign up and receive a number you have to show some form of identification. Once you have a number, the average wait time is about 4-5 weeks. Sometimes families and people disappear as their persecutors come to Tijuana and seek them out. Every morning at El ChaparralI would see families lined up either to receive a number or to hopefully hear their number be called. Best of all, right next to the migrants who would be managing “the list” would be Grupo Betas, a Mexican “humanitarian” agency who aids in the siphoning of migrants to the U.S.

            If and when your number is called, you’re shuttled off to U.S. CBP officials who will likely put you inLa Hieleras or “The Iceboxes.” Migrants named them as such because they are purposely cold rooms where migrants are kept for days or weeks until their credible fear interviews. Here, families can be separated either due to gender or for no reason given at all. Migrants who had been to La Hieleras would tell me that they were given those aluminum-like, thermal blankets marathon runners often get. They state how they are stripped down to their layer of clothing closest to the skin and crammed into a jail like cell with no windows and lights perpetually on. After La Hieleras, a U.S. immigration official will conduct a credible fear interview. The purpose of this interview is for the U.S. to see if this permission has a credible asylum claim.  If you fail this interview your chances of being granted asylum become slim to none. If you pass three possibilities await you. First, you might be released to someone in the U.S. who can sponsor you, so long as that person has legal status and can afford to pay for your transport. The second, and newest, is that you might be rereleased and told to wait for your court date in Tijuana. And the last is indefinite detention somewhere within the U.S.

            As I would inform families of the future that awaited them, I felt embarrassed of my country. I felt anger at the fact that we are telling folks who are fleeing cartel, gang and military violence to grab a number and wait in line for four to five weeks. That I had to help mothers and fathers write their information on their babies in case they were separated. It broke my heart to have to tell a mother that her pain and suffering just couldn’t be pigeon holed into “race, religion, nationality, political opinion or a particular social group.” Thank you, try again. I feel like after this trip I have more questions than answers. That the work volunteer work I was doing was more triage than anything else. That even if I graduate law school and become an attorney at most I would be putting a band aid on a gunshot wound and never really addressing the disease.

            It’s easy to feel defeated. It’s much more difficult to work towards a solution. I’m not an expert on any of these subjects. But I know that xenophobia and racism have no place in international police or immigration practices. I know that the folks I encountered during my time at the border were families fleeing not criminals scheming. I know that I may not have all the solutions but we should begin by instilling empathy, humanity and altruism into how we speak of asylum seekers and immigrants in general. That not much separates me, an American citizen, from the people I met in Tijuana. I may not have the answers to the turmoil I saw at the border but I’m determined to giving the rest of my life to figuring it out.

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

Thanks, Amín!

He is one of the students of NY Law School Clinical Professor Claire Thomas who went to the border to “fight for the New Due Process Army” following the Asylum and Immigration Law Conference at New York Law School.  Putting knowledge into practice! Saving lives!

Two really important points to remember from Amín’s moving account. First, because of BIA and AG interpretations intentionally skewed against asylum seekers from Latin America, many of whom should fit squarely within the “refugee” definition if properly interpreted, many refugees from the Northern Triangle intentionally are “left out in the cold.” That, plus lack of representation and intentionally poor treatment by DHS meant to discourage or coerce individuals results in unrealistically “depressed” asylum grant rates. Many who have been to the border report that a majority of those arriving should fit within asylum law if fairly and properly interpreted.

Second, many of those who don’t fit the asylum definition are both highly credible and have a very legitimate fear of deadly harm upon return. They merely fail to fit one of the “legal pigeon holes” known as “nexus” in bureaucratic terms. The BIA and this Administration have gone to great lengths to pervert the normal laws of causation and the legal concept of “mixed motive” to use “nexus” as an often highly contrived means to deny asylum to those genuinely in danger.  A better and more humane Administration might devise some type of prosecutorial discretion or temporary humanitarian relief as an alternative to knowingly and intentionally sending endangered individuals and their families back into “danger zones.”

What clearly is bogus is the disingenuous narrative from Kirstjen Nielsen and other Administration officials that these are “frivolous” applications. What is frivolous is our Government’s cavalier and often illegal and inhumane treatment of forced migrants who seek nothing more than a fair chance to save their lives and those of their loved ones.

Whether they “fit” our arcane and intentionally overly restrictive interpretations, they are not criminals and they are not threats to our security. They deserve fair and humane treatment in accordance with our laws on protection and Due Process under our Constitution. What they are finding is something quite different: a rich and powerful (even if diminishing before our eyes) country that mocks its own laws and bullies, dehumanizes, and mistreats those in need.

PWS

03-23-19

 

 

Related posts:

  1. NY TIMES: Trump Mocks & Dehumanizes Vulnerable Refugees & His Administration Claims It’s OK To Return Them to Honduras; BUT The Facts Say The Opposite: Honduras Is An Armed Conflict Zone Where Gangs Exercise Quasi-Governmental Control & Those Who Resist Are Severely Punished, Often Maimed, Tortured Or Killed!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”
  4. HOW “AMERICA’S KILLER COURTS” PROMOTE “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” — HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: TRUMP & HIS WHITE NATIONALIST SYCOPHANTS & TOADIES TOUT LAWLESS POLICIES THAT VIOLATE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS & HELP KILL, RAPE, TORTURE THOSE RETURNED TO EL SALVADOR — Supremes & Article III Judiciary Complicit In Gross Human Rights Violations! 

JUSTICE PREVAILS AGAIN IN IMMIGRATION COURTS EVEN IN THE “POST-A-B-“ ERA — Outstanding Analysis By Judge Eileen Trujillo Of The U.S. Immigration Court In Denver, CO, Recognizes “Women In Mexico” As PSG, Finds Nexus, Grants Asylum, Distinguishes A-B-

JUSTICE PREVAILS AGAIN IN  IMMIGRATION COURTS EVEN IN THE “POST-A-B-“ ERA — Outstanding Analysis By Judge Eileen Trujillo Of The U.S. Immigration Court In Denver, CO, Recognizes “Women In Mexico” As PSG, Finds Nexus, Grants Asylum, Distinguishes A-B-

Congrats to NDPA warrior (and former EOIR JLC) Camila Palmer of Elkind Alterman Harston, PC in Denver who represented the respondents! Great representation makes a difference; it saves lives!

Conversely, the DOJ EOIR policies that inhibit representation, discourage full and fair hearings, and hinder sound scholarship by U.S. Immigration Judges, thereby making it more challenging for judges to produce carefully researched and written decisions (rather than haphazard contemporaneous oral decisions which often lack professional legal analysis) are a direct attack on Due Process by Government organizations that are supposed to be committed to upholding and insuring it.

Go to this link for a redacted copy of Judge Trujillo’s decision: 

Asylum grant PSG Mexican women

U.S. Immigration Judges are not trained in how to recognize and grant asylum cases (or anything else, favor that matter — judicial training was a recent “casualty” of budget mismanagement by DOJ & EOIR). The BIA, always reluctant to publish “positive precedents” on asylum, is keeping a low profile after its emasculation by former AG Sessions. So these cases actually become “de facto precedents” for advocates to use in assisting Immigration Judges and DHS Assistant Chief Counsel in “doing the right thing” in critically examining and completing cases efficiently in the face of the “hostile environment” for Due Process and cooperation in court that has been created by EOIR and DOJ. 

It’s a huge “plus” that Judge Trujillo was familiar with and used Judge Sullivan’s outstanding opinion in Grace v. Whitaker which “abrogated” (in Judge Trujillo’s words) or “dismantled and discredited” (my words) Sessions’s biased and legally incorrect decision in Matter of A-B-. Shockingly, during the recent FBA Asylum Conference in New York, Judge Jeffrey Chase and I learned from participants that some U.S. Immigration Judges weren’t even aware of Grace v. Whitaker until counsel informed them! Talk about a system in failure! But, the “bright side” is once aware of the decision, Immigration Judges almost everywhere reportedly were appreciative of the information and eager to hear arguments about how its reasoning applied to the cases before them.

It’s important to remember that in the perverse world of today’s EOIR, fairness, scholarship, teamwork, respect, and correct decision-making — in other words, Due Process of law — have been replaced by expediency, focus on “numbers,” churning out orders of removal, and assisting DHS with its “gonzo” and ever-changing enforcement efforts. What real court operates as an adjunct of the prosecutor’s office? Well, that’s what happens in most of the third word countries and authoritarian states that send us refugees. But, in the United States, courts are supposed to operate independently of the prosecutor.

That’s why EOIR, in its present form of a “captive” highly politicized immigration enforcement organization “must go” and be replaced by an independent Article I Court. Until then, everybody who relies on this system, including ironically not only individuals, but DHS enforcement, Article III Courts, and the Immigration Judges and BIA Judges themselves, will continue to suffer from the dysfunction created by “malicious incompetence” and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling.”

Thanks again and congrats to Camila for adding to the growing body of correct asylum jurisprudence available on the internet for all to use. Just think what could be accomplished if we had a Government devoted to “using best practices to guarantee fairness and Due Process for all!”

PWS

03-21-20

Related posts:

  1. THE HUMAN AGONY OF ASYLUM: SPEND 4 MIN. WITH MS. A-B- & HUMAN/WOMEN’S RIGHTS EXPERT PROFESSOR KAREN MUSALO — Beaten, Raped, & Threatened With Death By Her Husband, Hounded Throughout Her Country, Abandoned By El Salvadoran Authorities, She Sought Refuge In The U.S., Winning Her Case At The BIA — Then She Was Targeted For A Vicious Unprovoked Attack By Notorious Scofflaw Immigration Judge Stuart Couch & White Nationalist Xenophobe Jeff Sessions — She’s Still Fighting For Her Life!
  2. GROSS NATIONAL DISGRACE: “A Fucking Disaster That Is Designed to Fail”: How Trump Wrecked America’s Immigration Courts — Fernanda Echavarri Reports For Mother Jones On How Our Failed Justice System Daily Abuses The Most Vulnerable While Feckless Legislators &   Smugly Complicit Article III Judges Look On & Ignore The Human Carnage They Are Enabling — “ Two days after US immigration officials sent her to Tijuana, she was raped.”
  3. JOURNAL ON MIGRATION & HUMAN SOCIETY (“JMHS”) PUBLISHES MY TRIBUTE TO JUAN OSUNA (1963-2017): “An Overview and Critique of US Immigration and Asylum Policies in the Trump Era”
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

THE GIBSON REPORT 03-11-19 – Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

TOP UPDATES

 

Leaked Documents Show Government Tracking Journalists, Immigration Advocates

NBC: The documents obtained by NBC 7 Investigates show the U.S. Government has a secret database of journalists and immigration advocates where agents collected information on them and in some cases, placed alerts on their passports. Those alerts kept at least three photojournalists and an attorney from entering Mexico to work.

 

Report: ICE Tracking NYC Protests Through ‘Anti-Trump’ Spreadsheet

Gothamist: The tracking was revealed in an email sent by HSI, obtained by the magazine via a public records request, which contained a four-page “Anti-Trump Protest Spreadsheet 07/31/2018,” detailing the time, location, organizers and descriptions of 17 such events happening over a 17-day period last summer.

 

Trump to demand $8.6 billion in new wall funding, setting up fresh battle with Congress

WaPo: President Trump on Monday will request at least $8.6 billion more in funding to build additional sections of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, setting up a fresh battle with Congress less than one month after he declared a national emergency.

 

Hundreds of immigrant recruits risk ‘death sentence’ after Army bungles data, lawmaker says

WaPo: Army officials inadvertently disclosed sensitive information about hundreds of immigrant recruits from nations such as China and Russia, in a breach that could aid hostile governments in persecuting them or their families, a lawmaker and former U.S. officials said.

 

Migrant Families Arrive In Busloads As Border Crossings Hit 10-Year High

NPR: The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 66,000 migrants at the Southern border in February, the highest total for a single month in almost a decade.

 

Migrants in Limbo as Court Backlog Balloons and Costs Skyrocket

Bloomberg: Spending at U.S. immigration courts has almost doubled to $119 million in fiscal 2018 from $61 million in fiscal 2015, an analysis of contracts shows. ManTech International Corp. and Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. are among those getting contracts, according to the Bloomberg Government study. But despite the spending and lawmakers’ efforts to bolster the immigration courts, the backlog has also doubled.

 

Why U.S. Visa Numbers Are Down

NPR: In 2018, temporary visas were down 7 percent, and immigrant visas for people coming for permanent residence – those were down 5 percent.

 

ICE Has a Podcast

ICE: During this episode of Careers at ICE, hear from Special Agent Allison Carter Anderson and Special Agent Cory Downs, who will discuss what it’s like to be a Special Agent with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI.

 

US Immigration Is Stuck in the Stone Age—and It’s Putting Lives In Danger

Nation: Lost files, poor communication, faulty technology, and seemingly endless delays: federal audits show that Mikhail and Bayley’s experiences weren’t unusual for the agency, which spends $300 million per year on paper and has disastrously mismanaged a 13-year effort to go digital—often leaving immigrants to deal with the consequences.

 

24 deported parents who returned to border hoping to be reunited with their children have been detained

ABC: Twenty-four migrant parents who returned to the United States on Saturday after they said they were separated and deported without their children are now being detained by the U.S. government, according to Erika Pinheiro, a lawyer for the families and the litigation and policy director of Al Otro Lado.

 

‘They used the kids to get to parents like me’: How ICE’s human smuggling initiative targeted parents and children

CIR: CE officials said the operation, called the Human Smuggling Disruption Initiative, targeted people who paid for coyotes to bring children across the border. However, a review of the operation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting casts doubt on that official narrative. A search of more than 1,400 smuggling-related cases filed in federal court in the seven months during and after the operation turned up only one case that was clearly connected to the program.

 

Senators push Trump on emergency legal status for 74,000 Venezuelans

WaExaminer: President Trump’s team has been mulling the possibility of granting Temporary Protected Status, a legal protection from deportation that can be granted to people who confront “extraordinary and temporary conditions” in their home country, for weeks. They haven’t come to a decision yet, but congressional support for the proposal is building as lawmakers look to alleviate the humanitarian crisis under way as Maduro defies international calls to relinquish power.

 

Banks bow to pressure to stop profiting from Trump’s immigration policy, but Big Tech remains defiant

WaPo: Last week, JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, became the latest major corporation to distance itself from Trump’s immigration policies, concluding that its investments in private detention centers conflicted with its broader business strategy.

 

Five takeaways from Wednesday’s hearings on immigration and family separation

CNN: Homeland Security’s acting inspector general said the office is investigating how the agency is processing asylum seekers and whether undocumented parents were deported without their children. And Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan was forced to rehash the botched rollout of that policy to skeptical lawmakers.

 

Census Bureau Seeks Citizenship Data From DHS Ahead of 2020 Census

TIME: As the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether the Trump administration can ask people if they are citizens on the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau is quietly seeking comprehensive information about the legal status of millions of immigrants.

 

Immigration Groups Want Data On HIV Asylum Seekers

Gothamist: It’s been nearly a decade since the United States began allowing people with HIV from abroad to enter the country as immigrants. But the U.S. has never provided data on the number of HIV-positive refugees or asylum seekers admitted since the immigration law changed in 2010, despite efforts from groups including the Center for American Progress and Immigration Equality.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

In ruling with ‘sweeping implications,’ 9th Circuit rules asylum-seeker is entitled to habeas review

ABA: Immigrants seeking asylum may seek habeas review of the procedures leading to expedited removal orders, a federal appeals court has ruled. The March 7 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco has “sweeping implications,” according to a press release by the American Civil Liberties Union.

 

New York Lawsuit Challenges Replacement of Immigration Court Hearings with Video Technology

Lawfare: In the latest salvo in a long debate over the use of video teleconferencing (VTC) technology in immigration courts, several legal aid organizations filed a class-action lawsuit on Feb. 12 in New York challenging the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) practice of denying in-person hearings to immigrants.

 

Another Federal Judge Bars Trump Administration’s Census Citizenship Question

Recorder: A federal judge in San Francisco has issued a decision finding that the Trump administration’s decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census was “arbitrary and capricious.”

 

Humanitarian and Security Crisis at Southern Border Reaches ‘Breaking Point’

DHS: The U.S. Border Patrol is currently encountering illegal immigration at the highest rates since 2007, according to new data. In fact, in February more than double the level of migrants crossed the border without authorization compared to the same period last year, approaching the largest numbers seen in any February in the last 12 years, The New York Times reported.

 

S.___: Fair Day in Court for Kids Act of 2019

On 3/6/19, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI), along with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), announced the Fair Day in Courts for Kids Act of 2019, which would provide legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children during removal proceedings. AILA Doc. No. 19030637

 

S.___: Immigration Court Improvement Act of 2019

On 3/6/19, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI), along with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), announced the Immigration Court Improvement Act of 2019, would help insulate immigration judges from political interference or manipulation. AILA Doc. No. 19030638

 

DHS Announces Extension of TPS Designation for South Sudan

DHS Secretary Nielsen announced the extension of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for South Sudan for 18 months, through November 2, 2020. Further details, including information on the re-registration process and EADs, will appear in a Federal Register notice. AILA Doc. No. 19030831

 

DOS Announces U.S. Embassy in Bogota Begins Processing Venezuelan Immigrant Visas

DOS announced that due to suspension of routine visa services, nonimmigrant visa applications may be submitted at an Embassy or Consulate outside of Venezuela. The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia has been designated as the primary site to process immigrant visas for residents of Venezuela. AILA Doc. No. 19022834

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

ImmProf

 

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Friday, March 8, 2019

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Monday, March 4, 2019

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

Thanks so much to Elizabeth for organizing the “New Due Process Army Reunion Dinner” at Le Botaniste following the FBA Asylum and Immigration Law Conference at New York Law School last Friday, March 8. It was wonderful seeing many former Georgetown Law students, Arlington Immigration Court interns, Judicial Law Clerks, and the many practitioners, retired judges, professors, FBA officials, and NAIJ members who stopped by to “celebrate due process” and envision what a brighter future for America could look like with an independent Immigration Court.

PWS

02-11-19

Related posts:

  1. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⚖️🗽🇺🇸FORMER DEPUTY AG DON AYER, JUDGE MIMI TSANKOV AMONG “HEADLINERS” AT TIMELY UPCOMING NY CITY BAR ASSN. EVENT: “Rule of Law Forum – Preserving the Rule of Law in an Age of Disruption” — Register Now, Right Here!
  2. THE GIBSON REPORT — 11-16-20 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Tales Of The Destructive Death Throes Of A Defeated Regime & Other News From The Twilight Zone!
  3. ⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-22-21 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Georgetown Law Journal Makes History, Of The Best Kind! — My Invitation To Current Georgetown Law Students To Get Involved!
  4. 🧑🏽‍⚖️⚖️🗽🇺🇸WHO’S JUDGE IS IT ANYWAY? — The Crisis Of Independence In Our Immigration Courts! — Coming April 7, 2021! — Sponsored By The HNBA! — Don’t Miss It!

THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-04-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-04-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

TOP UPDATES

 

Rand Paul Says He’ll Vote Against Trump’s Border Emergency, Likely Forcing A Veto

NPR: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky says he’ll vote in favor of a resolution to terminate President Trump’s national emergency declaration with regards to the U.S.-Mexico border. Paul’s support means the resolution will likely pass the Senate with bipartisan support and could force the president to issue his first veto.

 

‘Remain in Mexico’ gets an expansion

Politico: A Homeland Security official alerted POLITICO’s Ted Hesson [on 2/28/19] that the Trump administration will today expand its “remain in Mexico” policy — which requires asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while awaiting resolution of their cases — to ports of entry in El Paso, San Diego, and Calexico, Calif. Olga Sánchez Cordero, Mexico’s interior minister, said Thursday that approximately 150 asylum seekers have thus far been returned to Mexico under the program. That’s a fraction of the tens of thousands who arrive at the border each month.

 

29 parents separated from their children and deported last year cross U.S. border to request asylum

WaPo: The group of parents quietly traveled north over the past month, assisted by a team of immigration lawyers who hatched a high-stakes plan to reunify families divided by the Trump administration’s family separation policy last year. The 29 parents were among those deported without their children, who remain in the United States in shelters, in foster homes or with relatives.

 

28 women may have miscarried in ICE custody over the past 2 years

AZ Rep: The delivery of a stillborn baby at an immigration detention center in Texas comes after the Trump administration ended an Obama-era policy against holding pregnant women in detention centers.

 

HHS docs show thousands of alleged incidents of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors in custody

CNN: The Department of Health and Human Services received more than 4,500 complaints of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors from 2014-2018, according to internal agency documents released Tuesday by Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch.

 

Data from the Center for Migration Studies Shows Sharp Multiyear Decline in Undocumented Immigration

CMS: [T]he Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) reports that the US undocumented population has declined by one million since 2010; illegal entries have plummeted to historic lows; and, in recent years, only one third of newly undocumented residents entered this population by crossing the US-Mexico border.

 

Southern Poverty Law Center Launches ‘Immigrant Songs’ Campaign: Listen

Billboard: The Southern Poverty Law Center has launched a campaign to provide legal information and to “protect and advance immigrant rights” through song. “El Corrido de David y Goliat,” by Flor de Toloache, is the first single released as part of the SPLC’s Immigrant Songs campaign.

 

It’s so dangerous to police MS-13 in El Salvador that officers are fleeing the country

WaPo: There is no list in either El Salvador or the United States of Salvadoran police officers who have fled the country. But The Washington Post has identified 15 officers in the process of being resettled as refugees by the United Nations and six officers who have either recently received asylum or have scheduled asylum hearings in U.S. immigration courts. In WhatsApp groups, police officers have begun discussing the possibility of a migrant caravan composed entirely of Salvadoran police — a caravana policial, the officers call it.

 

Physicians for Human Rights Sends Letter Detailing the Health Risks for Infants in Detention

On February 28, 2019, Physicians for Human Rights sent a letter to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen regarding the inherent health risks for infants in detention. AILA Doc. No. 19022837

 

Immigration Courts’ Growing Reliance on Videoconference Hearings Is Being Challenged

AIC: In some parts of the country, it has long been the practice for detained immigrants to appear for their immigration court hearings via video teleconference (“VTC”), rather than in-person. This is especially the case for immigrants being held in remote detention centers, hours from the nearest immigration court. However, under the Trump administration, immigration courts are increasingly relying on VTC.

 

Brooklyn DA supports plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants

NYPost: There is already state legislation pending, and the Fiscal Policy Institute estimates 265,000 immigrants would be eligible to apply if the measure passes.

 

Americans’ immigration emergency: Their spouses could be deported or exiled if they seek green cards

PRI: Enough families have already been hurt by the law, with its mandatory “bars,” or exile, that can last 10 years, 20 years, even a lifetime, depending on the spouse’s immigration history, as the Center for Public Integrity has reported in multiple stories. But with Trump insisting there’s a “national emergency” on the southern border—despite record low crossings—these US citizens want to let their fellow Americans know that they’re suffering an emergency every day.

 

U.S. denied tens of thousands more visas in 2018 due to travel ban: data

Reuters: The U.S. State Department refused more than 37,000 visa applications in 2018 due to the Trump administration’s travel ban, up from less than 1,000 the previous year when the ban had not fully taken effect, according to agency data released on Tuesday.

 

40 Years After The Vietnam War, Some Refugees Face Deportation Under Trump

NPR: More than four decades after the Vietnam War brought waves of expatriates to the United States, the Trump administration wants to deport thousands of Vietnamese immigrants, including many refugees, because of years-old criminal convictions. U.S. officials have been working behind the scenes to convince the Vietnamese government to repatriate more than 7,000 Vietnamese immigrants with criminal convictions. They have all been ordered removed from the U.S. by a judge.

 

Human Smugglers Are Thriving Under Trump

Atlantic: Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies have made America’s historically weak anti-smuggling efforts even weaker. Over the past two years, as smuggling networks have thrived, the Department of Homeland Security has shifted money and manpower away from more complex investigations to support the administration’s all-out push to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants here illegally.

 

Emails Show US Border Officials Didn’t Receive “Zero Tolerance” Guidance Until After The Policy Was Enacted

BuzzFeed: US border officials didn’t receive guidance from the Trump administration on how to implement its “zero tolerance” policy that led to separations of migrant families until after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen signed a memo enacting it, according to emails obtained by Democracy Forward through a Freedom of Information Act request.

 

When Trump declared national emergency, most detained immigrants were not criminals

WaPo: According to new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement figures obtained by The Washington Post, the nation’s immigration jails were not filled with such criminals. As of Feb. 9, days before the president’s declaration, nearly 63 percent of the detainees in ICE jails had not been convicted of any crime.

 

He Exposed Abuse At A Florida Immigrant Detention Center. Now He’s In Prison

WLRN: Weeks after a documentary exposing injustices at a South Florida for-profit immigration detention center debuted at a national film festival, Claudio Rojas— the film’s inside source— was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miramar during his annual visa check-in, records show.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

Trump Administration Forced To Extend TPS Protections To More Than 250,000 Immigrants Due To Court Injunction

Newsweek: The Department of Homeland Security announced on Thursday that to comply with a court injunction it would extend the Temporary Protected Status it sought to terminate for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan.

 

Exasperated Federal Judge Pokes Holes In Trump Administration’s Refusal To Protect Young Immigrants

Gothamist: A federal judge in Manhattan heard arguments Monday on a class action case that could determine whether undocumented immigrants in New York between the ages of 18 and 21 can stay in the country legally if they’ve been abused or abandoned by a parent.

 

ICE Detention Center Says It’s Not Responsible for Staff’s Sexual Abuse of Detainees

ACLU: Although the employee pled guilty to criminal institutional sexual assault under Pennsylvania law, the defendants contend that they should not be liable for any constitutional violations. Their argument rests in part on their assessment that the sexual abuse was “consensual” and that they should be held to a different standard because the Berks Family Residential Center is an immigration detention facility rather than a jail or prison.

 

The Government Is Hiding Information About How It Deports People – This Lawsuit Seeks to Expose That

AIC: The lawsuit demands the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the Department of Justice release to the public information on how immigration court stays of removal are decided.

 

Judge grants citizenship to twin son of gay couple

AP: A federal judge in California ruled Thursday that a twin son of a gay married couple has been an American citizen since birth, handing a defeat to the U.S. government, which had only granted the status to his brother. The State Department was wrong to deny citizenship to 2-year-old Ethan Dvash-Banks because U.S. law does not require a child to show a biological relationship with their parents if their parents were married at the time of their birth, District Judge John F. Walter found.

 

At Least Nine Babies Are Being Detained by U.S. Immigration Authorities, a Complaint Says

Buzzfeed News reports that according to a complaint filed by AILA, the American Immigration Council, and CLINIC, at least nine infants under the age of 1, and some as young as 6 months, have been detained by ICE at a Texas detention center where they lack adequate medical care. AILA Doc. No. 19030136

 

ICE Releases Guidance on Migrant Protection Protocols

ICE released a memo providing guidance to impacted Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) field offices on implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols. AILA Doc. No. 19022870

 

Presidential Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States

President Trump issued a presidential proclamation on 2/15/19 declaring a national emergency along the southern border. (84 FR 4949, 2/20/19) AILA Doc. No. 19021539

 

USCIS Releases Q&As from Teleconference Discussing USCIS Intercountry Adoption Policy Guidance

USCIS provided background and effective dates, as well as Q&As, from the 1/22/19 teleconference on determining suitability of prospective adoptive parents for intercountry adoption policy guidance that USCIS issued on 11/9/18. AILA Doc. No. 19011400

 

USCIS Provides Q&As from Teleconference on N-648 Changes

USCIS provided the Q&As from the 2/12/19 teleconference discussing USCIS policy guidance on Form N-648, Medical Certification for Disability Exceptions. The Q&As covered the effective date, N-648 requirements, policy highlights, and more. AILA Doc. No. 19012835

 

USCIS to Publish Revised Form I-539 and New Form I-539A

USCIS announced that on 3/11/19, it will publish a revised Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status, and a new Form I-539A to replace the Supplement A in previous versions of Form I-539. Starting on 3/11/19, USCIS will only accept I-539s with a 2/4/19 edition date. AILA Doc. No. 19021137

 

USCIS Processing Delays Soared While Application Rates Fell

AILA Policy Counsel Jason Boyd highlights newly released USCIS data and shows how the new information “has cast an even harsher glare on the agency’s well-documented failure to process its caseload in a timely fashion.” AILA Doc. No. 19030137

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

 

ImmProf

 

Monday, March 4, 2019

Sunday, March 3, 2019

Saturday, March 2, 2019

Friday, March 1, 2019

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Monday, February 25, 2019

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

Thanks, Elizabeth!

 

PWS

03-05-19

Related posts:

  1. THE GIBSON REPORT — 04-09-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Project — Why Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan Should End Up In Jail If He Follows Trump’s Unlawful & Unconstitutional Plans!
  2. ⚖️THE GIBSON REPORT — 03-15-21 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group — Keep Up To Date On The Biden Administration’s Immigration Plans & Actions!
  3. BIA SEEKS TO REPEAL CAT BY MISINTERPRETATION; MUSALO’S FACT FINDING MISSION TO EL SALVADOR SHOWS MALICIOUS ABSURDITY OF REGIME’S BOGUS “SAFE THIRD COUNTRY” ASSAULT ON HUMAN RIGHTS; 9th & 11th CIRCUITS CONTINUE TO TANK ON THE RULE OF LAW; & OTHER LEGAL NEWS ABOUT THE WHITE NATIONALIST REGIME & THE RESISTANCE — The Gibson Report — 12-10-19 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group
  4. THE GIBSON REPORT — 02-21-21 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

FRIDAY, MARCH 8 WILL BE A BIG DAY WITH TWO GREAT IMMIGRATION EVENTS TAKING PLACE IN WASHINGTON, D.C. & NY CITY! — Sign Up Now!

page1image7534336IN WASHINGTON D.C. —

ABA Hispanic Commission CLE: Future Legal Issues Facing the Hispanic Community

American Bar Association, 1 PM EST

4-Part Seminar – Future Legal Issues Facing the Hispanic Community

An in-depth look at the future of Hispanic rights, Immigration, Healthcare, and Children’s Rights; advice regarding career strategies and navigating the workplace.

Here are the links to the agenda and registration information:

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/sexual_orientation/feb152019-program-agenda-final-cle-hc.pdf

https://www.americanbar.org/events-cle/mtg/inperson/358716264/

GW Law Professor and Clinic Director Alberto Benitez will be on the program and says:

“I’ll be on a ABA panel Friday, March 8.  You are invited.  The entire program is free for law students.”
*******************************************

IN NY CITY:

Description

The 2019 New York Asylum & Immigration Law Conference will take place on Friday, March 8th, 2019, at New York Law School. Designed to engage new attorneys as well as more experienced lawyers, academics, and students, the conference features panels ranging from introductory presentations on asylum law to more specialized and advanced sessions. Three tracks allow participants to engage in diverse topics including constructing narrative, detention, discussion of mandatory bars to asylum, and advanced issues such as new developments in particular social group formation. Earn up to 7.5 CLE credits, including Ethics as well as Diversity, Inclusion & Elimination of Bias credits.

This year, our conference is on International Women’s Day. Our plenary session and other events will commemorate and celebrate acts of courage and determination by women who have played extraordinary roles – as artists, as activists, and as advocates.

This conference is organized by the Federal Bar Association Immigration Law Section and New York Law School’s Asylum Clinic.

Registration closes on Wednesday, March 6th. No walk-in registrations, please.

View Conference Agenda

NYLS Tuition Assistance Policy and Refund Policy

Questions? Contact Professor Claire R. Thomas at claire.thomas@nyls.edu

Here’s a link to the Conference website:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2019-new-york-asylum-and-immigration-law-conference-tickets-56122936213

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

PWS

03-02-19

Related posts:

  1. PACIFIC STANDARD: The Call For An Independent Article I U.S. Immigration Court Gets Louder! — Systemic Failure Of Due Process “At The Retail Level” Threatens Our Entire Justice System! — “Just one day observing in immigration court would highlight how inherently unfair the system can really be for someone fighting for their case.”
  2. INCONVENIENT TRUTH: HALEY SWEETLAND EDWARDS @ TIME TELLS WHAT TRUMP, MILLER, COTTON, SESSIONS, & THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST GANG DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW: Human Migration Is A Powerful Force As Old As Human History; It’s A Plus For Receiving Nations; It Won’t Be Stopped By Walls, Jails, Racist Laws, Or Any Other Restrictionist Nonsense; But, It Can Be Intelligently Controlled, Channeled, Harnessed, & Used For The Benefit Of The U.S. & The Good Of The Migrants! — “But to maximize that future good, governments must act rationally to establish humane policies and adequately fund an immigration system equipped to handle an influx of newcomers.”
  3. GW CLINIC REPORT: Justice Finally Triumphs — 7-Year Battle On Behalf Of Abused Refugee Woman Succeeds!
  4. ⚖️🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️🗽COURT REFORM: GW IMMIGRATION CLINIC STUDENTS WEIGH IN ON ARTICLE I — Emphasize Critical Due Process Need To Entirely Remove AG From Decision-Making Process!