“SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were THEIR Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?

“SITTING DUCKS” IN “UNSAFE THIRD COUNTRIES” — How The Supremes, The 9th Circuit, The 5th Circuit, & Other Complicit Federal Appellate Courts Aid & Abet The Trump Regime’s Human Rights Violations — Would The “Privileged Robed Ones” Take Due Process & The Rule Of Law More Seriously If It Were Their Kids & Grandkids Being Kidnapped & Held for Ransom For The “Crime” Of Seeking Protection Under U.S. Laws?

Robbie Whelan
Mexico City Correspondent
Wall Street Journal

\https://apple.news/A7aogQqflTgq9ZgbhJJzr1A

Robbie Whelan reports for the WSJ:

Latin America

Violence Plagues Migrants Under U.S. ‘Remain in Mexico’ Program

Migrants seeking shelter in the U.S. under Trump administration policy report rising numbers of kidnappings by criminal groups

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico—Every morning, Lorenzo Ortíz, a Baptist pastor who lives in Texas, drives a 12-seat passenger van packed with food and blankets across the border to pick up migrants who have been dropped off in Mexico and ferry them to shelters.

His mission is to keep the migrants safe from organized crime groups that prowl the streets of this violent Mexican border town. Since the Trump administration began implementing its Migrant Protection Protocols program at the start of 2019—widely known as Remain in Mexico—some 54,000 migrants, mostly from Central America, have been sent back to northern Mexico to wait while their asylum claims are processed. Mexico’s government is helping implement it.

But in cities like Nuevo Laredo, migrants are sitting ducks. Over the years, thousands have reported being threatened, extorted or kidnapped by criminal groups, who prey upon asylum seekers at bus stations and other public spaces.

“Over the last year, it’s gotten really bad,” Mr. Ortíz said.

A typical scheme involves kidnapping migrants and holding them until a relative in the U.S. wires money, typically thousands of dollars, in ransom money. Gangs have also attacked shelters and even some Mexican clergy members who help migrants.

There have been 636 reported cases of kidnapping, rape, torture and other violent crimes against migrants returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico, according to Human Rights First, which interviews victims in border cities and advocates for migrants’ due process rights. At least 138 of these incidents involved kidnappings of children.

Many more cases of extortion and violence go unreported for fear of retribution. As more migrants are returned to dangerous areas such as Nuevo Laredo under Remain in Mexico, the situation is expected to worsen, the nonprofit Human Rights First said in a recent report.

The Mexican government has played down the violence. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard recently acknowledged kidnapping incidents, but said that “it’s not a massive number.” Only 20 such cases have been investigated by the government, he added.

The Trump administration has credited the program with deterring migrants from attempting to cross into the U.S. Monthly apprehensions of migrants at the U.S. Southern border have plunged from more than 144,000 in May to 33,500 in November. The Remain in Mexico program was expanded in June.

On a recent visit to the border, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the program has been a “game-changer” for U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers because it has freed them from having to perform humanitarian duties.

But Mr. Ortíz’s daily commute back and forth over the border highlights what migrants’ advocates say is a key element of the program—it isolates migrants not only from the legal counsel they need to argue their asylum claims, but from resources like food, shelter and medical care that are abundant on the U.S. side, but near-nonexistent in Mexico.

“You have all this infrastructure to help feed and clothe and house people set up on this side, in Laredo and Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and then suddenly the administration changes the policy, and you have to send it all to Mexico, because now everyone is on the other side,” said Denise LaRock, a Catholic Sister who helps distribute donations to asylum seekers through the nonprofit Interfaith Welcome Coalition. Mexico has been unable to provide enough safe shelter and other resources to migrants.

In Matamoros, another large recipient of asylum seekers under the program across the border from Brownsville, Texas, a tent city of more than 3,000 people has sprung up. Migrants there have complained of overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and insufficient medical treatment. In November, a migrant from El Salvador was murdered in Tijuana, opposite San Diego, while waiting with his wife and two children for an asylum hearing under the Remain in Mexico program.

On a recent, briskly-cold Wednesday, Mr. Ortíz, dressed in a ski vest and a baseball cap with the logo of the U.S. Chaplain International Association, picked up six migrants, including two children aged 8 and 14, at the immigration office in Nuevo Laredo. All were from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, and were returning from legal appointments in the U.S. Hearings take place in makeshift courts set up in tents in Laredo, just across the bridge over the Rio Grande that separates the two cities.

At the front door of the office, six young men sat idly around a motorcycle, hats pulled low over their heads, watching the scene unfold, periodically walking up to the church van and peering in. Mr. Ortíz said these men were “hawks” or lookouts for criminal gangs.

“They know who I am, I know who they are,” he said. “You have to know everyone to do this work. The cartels respect the church. I’ve driven all around Nuevo Laredo in this van, full of migrants, and they never mess with me.”

At one point two of the lookouts asked the pastor for some food. He gave them two boxes of sandwich cookies. They clapped him on the shoulder, eating the treats as they walked back to their observation post.

Mr. Ortíz, a native of central Mexico, came to the U.S. at age 15 and eventually built a small contracting business in Texas. He became an ordained Baptist minister about a decade ago and three years ago began ministering to migrants full time. This year, he converted several rooms of his home in Laredo, Texas, into a dormitory for migrants and built men’s and women’s showers in his backyard.

After picking up the migrants, Mr. Ortíz ferried the group to an unmarked safe house with a chain-locked door on a busy street in the center of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

Inside, about 90 migrant families crowded into rows of cots set up in a handful of bedrooms and a concrete back patio. Among the Central Americans are also migrants from Peru, Congo, Haiti, Angola and Venezuela.

Reports of migrant kidnappings have increased since the Remain in Mexico program began, Mr. Ortíz said. In September, armed men stormed the safe house—one of two that the pastor brings migrants to—and detained the shelter’s staff for about an hour.

Since then, Mr. Ortíz said, the volunteer staff has stopped allowing migrants to leave the house unaccompanied, even to buy milk for young children at a nearby store.

Rosa Asencio, a schoolteacher fleeing criminal gangs in El Salvador and traveling with her two children ages 4 and 7, was returned to Nuevo Laredo under Remain in Mexico. She says she hasn’t been outside the shelter for nearly three weeks. “They can kidnap you anywhere,” she said.

María Mazariegos, an Honduran housekeeper, said she was kidnapped along with her 12-year-old daughter Alexandra from the bus station in Nuevo Laredo in September.

Gang members held her in a windowless cinder-block room that bore signs of torture for three days with one meal of tortillas and beans. She was released after her family members in the U.S. convinced her captors that they didn’t have the money to pay a ransom.

Then, two weeks later, while she was returning from a court appointment in the U.S., a shelter staff member confirmed, another group tried to kidnap her. An escort from the shelter was able to talk the kidnappers out of it.

She has court hearing under Remain in Mexico rules on Jan. 22, where a judge is expected to decide on her asylum case. If she is rejected, she plans to move to the Mexican city of Saltillo, where she has heard there are more jobs and less violence.

“Just about anywhere is better than here,” Ms. Mazariegos added.

Write to Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com

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

These two quotes really tell you all you need know about this grotesquely immoral and illegal “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” (sometimes totally disingenuously referred to as the “Migrant Protection Protocols”) and the sleazy U.S. Government officials responsible for it:

There have been 636 reported cases of kidnapping, rape, torture and other violent crimes against migrants returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico, according to Human Rights First, which interviews victims in border cities and advocates for migrants’ due process rights. At least 138 of these incidents involved kidnappings of children.

. . . .

On a recent visit to the border, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the program has been a “game-changer” for U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers because it has freed them from having to perform humanitarian duties.

Let’s not forget that the Immigration “Court” system that has life or death power over these asylum claims has been twisted and “gamed” against legitimate asylum seekers, particularly women and children with brown skins, by the White Nationalist politicos who unconstitutionally control it. All this while the Article III appellate courts look the other way and “swallow the whistle” on protecting the legal and constitutional rights of the most vulnerable among us.

Let’s see, essentially: “It’s great program because it allows us to evade our humanitarian duties under humanitarian laws and concentrate on faux law enforcement directed against individuals who are not legitimate targets of law enforcement.” Doesn’t say much for the legal and moral authority of the Article III, life-tenured judges who think this is acceptable for our country.

Obviously, this has less to do with the law, which is clearly against what the “regime” is doing, or legitimate law enforcement, which has little to do with the vast majority of legal asylum seekers, and lots to do with vulnerable, brown-skinned individuals desperately seeking justice being “out of sight, out of mind” to the exalted, tone-deaf Article III Judges who are failing to do their Constitutional duties. “Going along to get along” appears to be the new mantra of far too many of the Article III appellate judges.

Assuming that our republic survives and that “Good Government” eventually returns to both the Executive and the Legislative Branches, an examination of the catastrophic failure of the Article III Judiciary to effectively stand up for the Constitutional, legal, and individual human rights of asylum seekers obviously needs reexamination and attention.

The glaring lack of legal expertise in asylum, immigration, and human rights laws as well as basic Constitutional Due Process, and the total lack of human empathy among far, far too many Article III appellate jurists is as stunning as it is disturbing! The past is the past; but, we can and should learn from it. At some point, if we are to survive as a nation of laws and humane values, we need a radically different and more courageous Article III Judiciary that puts humanity and human rights first, not last!

The “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” will not go down in history as a “law enforcement success” as Wolf-man and the other Trump regime kakistocrats and their enablers and apologists claim; it eventually will take its place as one of the most disgraceful and cowardly abandonments of American values in our history. And, the role of the complicit Supreme Court Justices and Court of Appeals Judges who turned their backs on our asylum laws, our Constitution, and human decency will also be spotlighted!

As I was “indexing” this article, I “scrolled through” the name and thought of my old friend the late Arthur Helton, a courageous humanitarian, lawyer, teacher, role model, and occasional litigation opponent (during my days at the “Legacy INS”). Arthur, who literally gave his life for others and his steadfastly humane view of the law, was a believer in the “fundamental justice” of the American judicial system. I wonder what he would think if he were alive today to see the cowardly and complicit performance of so many Article III appellate judges, all the way up to and including the Supremes, in the face of the unlawful, unconstitutional, institutionalized evil, hate, and tyranny of our current White Nationalist regime.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-31-19

THE KEY TO “JUDICIAL” ADVANCEMENT IN BARR’S BIASED, NATIVIST POLITICAL REGIME: DENY ALL ASYLUM CASES — Regime Flaunts “Generous” Standard Established By Supremes In Cardoza-Fonseca, Mocks Due Process — A “Kakistocracy In Action!”

Bryan Johnson, Esquire
Immigraton Attorney
New York, NY

https://amjolaw.com/2019/12/24/immigration-judges-asylum-grants-denials-in-fy-2018-2019/

Immigration Judges Asylum Grants & Denials in FY 2018-2019

by Bryan Johnson on December 24, 2019

After over 7 months, EOIR finally provided the Immigration Judges’ asylum grants and denials for FY 2018 and FY 2019, respectively.

To see the same statistics from FY 2014 to FY 2017, see this previous post. (which took less than 1 month for responsive records)

Of note is the asylum grants and denials for the 6 Immigration Judges who AG William Barr hand-picked for the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2019:

2 of the 6 new BIA members–Hunsucker and Cassidy–denied all their asylum cases in FY 2019.

All 6 of the new BIA members had asylum grant rates of below 10% in FY 2019.

Judge Gorman and Goodwin’s asylum grant rates dropped precipitously in FY 2019–from 14% to 3% and 9% to 3 %, respectively.

Immigration :

FY 2018: 210 asylum denials. 3 asylum grants. Grant rate: 1.4%

FY 2019: 166 asylum denials. 9 asylum grants. Grant rate: 5%

Immigration Judge Earle Wilson:

FY 2018: 226 asylum denials. 9 asylum grants. 3.8% grant rate.

FY 2019: 110 denials. 3 asylum grants. 2.6 % grant rate.

Immigration Judge William Cassidy:

FY 2018: 24 asylum denials. 1 asylum grant. 4% grant rate.

Bryan Johnson, Esquire
Immigraton Attorney
New York, NY

FY 2019: 40 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

Immigration Judge Keith Hunsucker:

FY 2018: 19 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

FY 2019: 35 asylum denials. 0 asylum grants. 0% grant rate.

Immigration Judge Stephanie Gorman:

FY 2018: 174 asylum denials. 30 asylum grants. 14.7% grant rate.

FY 2019: 281 asylum denials. 11 asylum grants. 3.76% grant rate.

Immigration:

FY 2018: 302 asylum denials. 33 asylum grants. 9.85 % grant rate.

FY 2019: 177 asylum denials. 6 asylum grants. 3.27% grant rate.

For reference purposes, the average grant rate for FY 2018 and FY 2019 was 33% and 29%, respectively.

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

Go to the link for complete individual Immigration Judge asylum stats.

The idea that a “court” system is providing “fair and impartial” decisions to asylum seekers by advancing to important appellate positions biased, obviously unqualified, anti-asylum “jurists”with grant rates that are a small fraction of the already artificially and unethically suppressed “national average” is a total fraud — a grotesque national disgrace rivaled only by the gutless Article III judges who have allowed and encouraged this to happen on their watch!

Somewhat remarkably, after three years of concerted efforts to “zero out” asylum grants, including gimmicks like illegally and unethically rewriting asylum law to screw refugees, denying the statutory and Constitutional right to counsel, using coercive and punitive detention, abusive criminal prosecutions, and family separation to coerce asylum seekers into giving up viable claims, production quotas encouraging rote asylum denials, packing the Immigration Courts with appointees from enforcement backgrounds, and stacking the BIA with anti-asylum zealots, the overall asylum grant rate is still 29%.

That suggests that under a fair and impartial judicial system asylum seekers could and should succeed in the vast majority of cases. With no material improvements in worldwide refugee-creating conditions, and indeed a record number of refugees fleeing oppression, there is no bona fide explanation for how grant rates would go from 43% in FY 2016 to 29% in FY 2019 without any legislative changes. And, let’s be clear: the 43% in 2016 was already artificially suppressed from 56% in FY 2012. Even the 2012 rate was unrealistically low. A realistic grant rate under a properly generous application of asylum law probably would have been in the 70%-80% range.

The answer is obvious: Government fraud and misfeasance in asylum adjudication on a massive scale, motivated by a White Nationalist, racist, nativist political agenda that clearly violates both the asylum laws and our Constitution. And, this doesn’t even take into account the many asylum seekers artificially denied access to the system at all through the “Let ‘Em Die in Mexico Program,” and ludicrously illegal and fraudulent “Safe Third Country” agreements with patently unsafe and corrupt failed states.

Yet, while it’s all happening in plain view, indeed touted by Stephen Miller and other racist officials, the Article III Courts of Appeals and the Supremes have taken a dive. They are are allowing the “Second Coming of Jim Crow” to unfold before their eyes, every day, without taking the strong, courageous judicial actions necessary to preserve Due Process and fundamental fairness and to “just say no” to the overt racism driving anti-asylum policies.

Sure, the stock market is up and we’re essentially at full employment. But, that really has little or nothing to do with justice, morality, values, and the rule of law. Eventually, the inevitable economic cycles will turn again.

With social justice, integrity, the rule of law, and our republic in shambles, how will the Article IIIs and the other cowardly enablers justify their roles and dereliction of their duty to stand up for the rights of the most vulnerable among us? And, who will stand up for them and their rights when the anti-American forces driving Trumpism decide that these toady judges’ complicit role is no longer essential to the planned destruction of American democracy?

In INS v. Cardoza Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 452 (1987), Justice Blackmun, in his concurring opinion, cautioned:

“The efforts of these courts stand in stark contrast to — but, it is sad to say, alone cannot make up for — the years of seemingly purposeful blindness by the INS, which only now begins its task of developing the standard entrusted to its care.” INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 452 (1987).

Unfortunately, after years of progress under Administrations with more integrity and intellectual honesty, the interpretation and application of U.S. asylum law is now in, perhaps terminal, regression under this corrupt and intellectually dishonest White Nationalist regime and the kakistocracy it has constructed within the immigration bureaucracy, including the parody of justice and Due Process that takes place daily in the Immigration “Courts.”

Even more tragically, this time around the Supremes and the Article III Circuit Courts, far from being part of the solution and fearless defenders of the rule of law and the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers, have become a key part of the “purposeful blindness” feeding and driving the problem — in effect, “slaughtering the innocents.” By their complicity and fecklessness, they are ripping apart our system of justice and our established constitutional order. I’m sure that Justice Blackmun would be both horrified and outraged by the institutional cowardice and dereliction of duty by his black-robed, life tenured successors.

Due Process Forever; Corrupt, Complicit Federal Courts Never!

PWS

12-28-19

HOW TO RUIN A COURT SYSTEM: SOME OF THE “BEST & BRIGHTEST” IMMIGRATION JUDGES QUIT IN PROTEST OVER REGIME’S BIASED POLICIES AND “WEAPONIZATION” OF IMMIGRATION COURTS INTO DHS ENFORCEMENT TOOL BY DOJ POLITICOS!

CNN Digital Expansion 2019, Priscilla Alvarez
Politics Reporter, CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/27/politics/immigration-judges-resign/index.html

Priscilla Alverez reports for CNN:

Immigration judges quit in response to administration policies

By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

Updated 6:39 AM ET, Fri December 27, 2019

Washington (CNN)Lisa Dornell loved her job. For 24 years, she sat on the bench in Baltimore’s immigration court, hearing hundreds of cases of immigrants trying to stay in the United States.

“It was an honor. It was a privilege to be able to preside over so many different cases and be able to grant relief to people who needed relief,” Dornell told CNN in an interview.

But she walked away from that job in April — a decision that still invokes a wave of emotion when she recalls it. “The toxic environment made it both harder and easier to leave,” Dornell said.

Over the past year, in the heat of a border migration crisis, 45 judges have left, moved into new roles in the immigration court system — which is run by the Justice Department — or passed away, according to the department. That’s nearly double the number who departed their posts in fiscal years 2018 and 2017, when 24 and 21 judges left, respectively, according to data provided by the judges union.

The reasons why individual judges have moved on from their posts on the bench vary, but in interviews with judges who left in recent months, one theme ties them all together: frustration over a mounting number of policy changes that, they argue, chipped away at their authority.

Their departures come as the Justice Department faces a backlog that exceeds 1 million cases. The bogged-down system has led to immigration cases being pushed out years in the future, leaving many immigrants residing in the US unsure if they’ll be allowed to stay or be ordered removed.

Immigration judges accuse Justice Department of unfair labor practices

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nation’s immigration system, specifically taking issue with the practice of releasing immigrants while they await their court dates. To remedy that, the administration has sought to hire more immigration judges. Most recently, the immigration judge corps hit a record high, though the Justice Department still has to contend with judges leaving over policy disagreements.

In a statement to CNN, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review spokeswoman, Kathryn Mattingly, said the agency “continually plans for attrition, and both improvements to the hiring process and a policy of ‘no dark courtrooms’ help minimize the operational impact of (immigration judge) separations and retirements.”

The agency doesn’t track individual reasons for retirements or departures, Mattingly said.

Immigration judges — employees of the Justice Department — are charged with following the policies set by each administration.

“The nature of the job ebbed and flowed as administrations changed,” Dornell recalled. “It was always tolerable. We all work with a realization that it’s the prerogative of the administration to implement policies as they see fit.”

The Trump administration was no exception. Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, implemented a series of changes to the immigration court system that have continued under his successor, William Barr.

The Justice Department has imposed case quotas, given more power to the director charged with overseeing the courts, reversed rulings, curtailed judges’ ability to exercise discretion in some cases and moved to decertify the union of immigration judges.

Over time, those actions prompted immigration judges, some of whom were retirement eligible and had decades of experience, to leave the department despite initial plans to stay longer.

“I felt then and I feel now that this administration is doing everything in its power to completely destroy the immigration court system, the board of immigration appeal and the immigration system in general,” said Ilyce Shugall, who served as an immigration judge in San Francisco from 2017 until March of this year. “And I just couldn’t be a part of that.”

‘It started to wear on me’

Over his nearly two-year tenure as attorney general, Sessions transformed the courts by flexing his authority to overrule decisions, hire more immigration judges and set a case quota for judges.

One of Sessions’ addresses to the workforce, in particular, resonated with judges. In a June 2018 speech in Washington, Sessions denounced the system, which he believed was encouraging migrants to make baseless asylum claims, and reminded judges of their role in cracking down on those claims.

“You have an obligation to decide cases efficiently and to keep our federal laws functioning effectively, fairly and consistently,” Sessions said. Later that day, he issued a ruling that removed asylum protections for victims of domestic violence and gang violence.

“To be honest with you, in that meeting room, there were a number of judges that cheered and clapped when he announced it,” said former immigration judge Rebecca Jamil, referring to the ruling that would follow his address. “It was grotesque to me.”

Jamil, who had been based in the San Francisco immigration court, had a docket that included migrants who had fled their home countries, claiming they were victims of domestic violence. Sessions’ decision took direct aim at those cases.

Another judge in attendance at Sessions’ speech, Denise Slavin, recalled jaws dropping. Slavin had become a judge in 1995, serving in Florida before finishing her tenure in Baltimore in April of this year.

Sessions’ address and follow-up ruling was among a series of policy changes that began to wear on judges.

“When you’ve been around that many administrations, you learn to adapt. You see a lot of different things. Nothing like this,” said James Fujimoto, a former Chicago immigration judge who started on the bench in 1990 and also retired in April.

In particular, the administration began rolling out changes that dictated the way judges were expected to proceed with cases, thereby tightening control of the immigration courts. For example, the Justice Department said it would evaluate immigration judges on how many cases they close and how fast they hear cases.

Earlier this year, the Justice Department also issued a new rule that gives more power to the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. It allows the Justice Department-appointed director — currently James McHenry — to step in and issue a ruling if appeals are not completed within a certain time frame.

“It started to wear at me,” said Jennie Giambastiani, a former Chicago immigration judge who joined the bench in 2002 and left this year. “The great number of cases coming in and the way it was expected we handle them.”

Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told CNN that for the majority of people leaving their roles it’s a result of the “hostility and insulting working conditions.”

Tabaddor noted that there’s been a pattern of new judges either leaving to return to their old jobs or taking other jobs within the government.

“This is not what they signed up for,” Tabaddor said, referring to policies designed to dictate how judges should handle their dockets.

Judges who have since left the department expressed similar concern over those policies. Dornell called the situation “intolerable.”

Shugall recalled the challenges she had faced in trying to move forward with cases in a way she thought was appropriate. “I felt like as more and more policies were coming down, it was making it harder and harder to effectively hear cases in the way that I felt was appropriate and in compliance with the statute regulations and Constitution,” Shugall said.

At an event earlier this year, McHenry rejected criticism that judges are vulnerable to pressures from the attorney general.

“Most judges that we’re familiar with, and I don’t think that immigration judges are any exception, when they’re on the bench, they know what their role is as a judge,” he said. “We’ve had no allegations of anyone reaching down to specific judges telling them, ‘You have to rule this way; you have to rule that way.’ ”

Justice Department hires new judges

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced 28 new immigration judges, bringing the number of such judges to more than 465, a record high. The majority come from government backgrounds.

It’s not unusual for administrations to hire people who’ve worked in government, but under the Trump administration, Booz Allen Hamilton, at the direction of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, issued a report recommending that the agency diversify the experience of immigration judges.

The Justice Department’s hiring practices have been criticized by House Democrats, who say whistleblowers have previously raised concerns about political discrimination in the hiring of immigration judges. The department has denied that political ideology has been a factor.

The direction of the nation’s immigration courts is also a source of concern among immigrant advocate groups. This month, groups filed a wide-ranging lawsuit, alleging that the Trump administration has manipulated the immigration court system to serve an “anti immigrant agenda.”

It remains to be seen what changes, if any, are in store for the court system, but some of those who have already left their posts as judges carry guilt for departing, concerned about who may fill their jobs.

“The biggest thing I contended with is who is going to replace me,” Jamil said. “I knew I was a fair judge.”

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

I’m proud to say that all of the quoted former Immigration Judges are members of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges, committed to preserving and advancing Due Process and judicial independence.

Apparently, EOIR headquarters and DOJ bureaucrats now refer to Immigration Judge decisions as “policy decisions,” thereby dropping any pretense that they are fair and impartial quasi-judicial adjudications under the law.

As for the ludicrous claim that this is anything approaching a legitimate independent judiciary, as one of my Round Table colleagues succinctly put it: “The political arm of DOJ’s assertion that IJs are treated independently is so much BS.”

Yup! Congratulations and many thanks to Judge Dornell and the others who spoke out in this article!

So, Immigration Judges, who lack the life tenure and protections of independence given to Article III Judges, put their careers and livelihoods on the line for Due Process and the rule of law, and, frankly, to save vulnerable lives that deserve saving. Meanwhile, the majority of Supreme Court Justices and far too many Article III Courts of Appeals Judges just bury their judicial heads in the sand and pretend like the outrages against Due Process, fundamental fairness, and the rule of law aren’t really happening in Immigration Court and that human lives aren’t being ruined or lost by their derelictions of duty. Has to make you wonder about their ethics, courage, and commitment to their oaths of office, as well as what the purpose of life tenure is if all it produces is complicity in the face of tyranny that threatens to destroy our Constitution and bring down our republic.

The Article IIIs are providing some rather sad examples and bad role models for today’s aspiring lawyers.

PWS

12-27-19

A VERY TRUMPY CHRISTMAS: PERVERTING ASYLUM REGS; USING VULNERABLE KIDS AS BAIT; ORBITING REFUGEES TO DEADLY ASYLUM-FREE ZONES; SCREWING WITH LEGAL IMMIGRANTS; DEATH CAMPS; STAR CHAMBERS; MORE PROSECUTORS AS JUDGES; & OTHER “GIFTS” FROM THE REGIME & ITS ARTICLE III JUDICIAL ENABLERS — Get The “Holiday Horror Update” On All Of America’s Human Rights Abuses & Gratuitous Cruelty From The Gibson Report 12-23-19

Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

TOP UPDATES

Trump Administration Proposes Adding Minor Crimes to List of Offenses that Bar Asylum

NYT: The new rule, issued by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, would expand the list of crimes that bar migrants from asylum to include misdemeanor offenses, including driving under the influence, possession of fake identification and drug possession, including having more than 30 grams of of marijuana… The administration would also deny asylum to migrants caught crossing the border after receiving a deportation order and those who illegally received public benefits.

Under secret Stephen Miller plan, ICE to use data on migrant children to expand deportation efforts

WaPo: The White House sought this month to embed immigration enforcement agents within the U.S. refugee agency that cares for unaccompanied migrant children, part of a long-standing effort to use information from their parents and relatives to target them for deportation, according to six current and former administration officials.

Guatemala Is Set to Finalize Deal With U.S. to Accept Mexican Asylum Seekers

WSJ: Guatemala is set to finalize within days a deal to expand its asylum agreement with the U.S. to begin accepting Mexican migrants sent from the southern U.S. border, U.S. and Guatemalan officials familiar with the talks said.

The employment green card backlog tops 800,000, most of them Indian. A solution is elusive.

WaPo: An estimated 800,000 immigrants who are working legally in the United States are waiting for a green card, an unprecedented backlog in employment-based immigration that has fueled a bitter policy debate but has been largely overshadowed by President Trump’s border wall fight and the administration’s focus on migrant crossings from Mexico.

The radical immigration changes under Trump that went unnoticed

Quartz: Social media tracking, Increased denaturalization efforts, Expansion of “public charge” definition, Domestic violence no longer grounds for asylum, Limits to Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Secret policies.

International Students Worry As A Popular Work Program Is Questioned

WGBH: Concerns are growing as the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia considers a legal motion filed by a private group to cancel the federal program.

Deaths in custody. Sexual violence. Hunger strikes. What we uncovered inside ICE facilities across the US

USA Today: A USA TODAY Network investigation revealed sex assaults, routine use of physical force, poor medical care and deaths at facilities overseen by ICE.

Contrasting Experiences: MPP vs. Non-MPP Immigration Court Cases

TRAC: MPP Results in Slightly Longer Wait Times for First Hearing…Asylum Seekers in the US are 7 Times More Likely to Have an Attorney…Most Asylum Seekers Attend Their Hearings Unless Forced to Remain in Mexico.

Former Immigration Judges Send Letter Expressing Concern Over Lack of Public Access to MPP Hearings

On 12/10/19, former immigration judges sent a letter to EOIR requesting that it investigate violations of due process rights during MPP hearings and ensure that the public has appropriate access to all immigration courts. AILA Doc. No. 19121700

Executive Office for Immigration Review to Swear in 28 Immigration Judges, Bringing Judge Corps to Highest Level in History

Includes:

Susan F. Aikman, Immigration Judge, Batavia Immigration Court

Jennifer Chung, Immigration Judge, New York, Federal Plaza Immigration Court

Diane L. Dodd, Immigration Judge, New York, Federal Plaza Immigration Court

David A. Norkin, Immigration Judge, New York, Varick Immigration Court (yes, former court administrator)

John J. Siemietkowski, Immigration Judge, New York, Federal Plaza Immigration Court

Rantideva Singh, Immigration Judge, New York, Federal Plaza Immigration Court

New Permanent ACIJ at New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court

EOIR: Effective January 20, ACIJ Carrie Johnson will be the permanent ACIJ for the New York – Federal Plaza Immigration Court. ACIJ Johnson is currently the ACIJ for the Newark and Elizabeth Immigration Courts and will remain in those positions. ACIJ Sheila McNulty will continue to serve as the Acting ACIJ for the New York – Broadway, New York – Varick, Fishkill, and Ulster Immigration Courts.

New York sees surge in new driver’s licenses thanks to undocumented immigrants

NY Post: New York State saw a 133 percent surge in new learner permits issued Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as undocumented immigrants were able to apply for licenses for the first time. See also As Historic ‘Green Light’ Law Goes Into Effect, Immigrants Warned of Driver’s License Scams and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signs bill allowing undocumented immigrants to get licenses.

How ICE Uses Social Media To Surveil And Arrest Immigrants

Intercept: In this case, ICE used Thomson Reuters’s controversial CLEAR database, part of a growing industry of commercial data brokers that contract with government agencies, essentially circumventing barriers that might prevent the government from collecting certain types of information. See also California DOJ Cuts Off ICE Deportation Officers from State Law Enforcement Database.

U.S. citizenship path for thousands of Liberians tucked in spending bill

Reuters: The pathway to citizenship – even for a relatively small cohort of immigrants – is a victory for pro-migrant activists and lawmakers who pushed for citizenship for Liberians covered by temporary deportation relief programs.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Immigrants’ Appeal of Removal Order Subject to Equitable Tolling

Bloomberg: The 30-day limitations period for an immigrant to appeal an order requiring him to be removed from the U.S. isn’t jurisdictional, and thus may be equitably tolled, the Second Circuit said Dec. 19.

USCIS Releases Policy Alert on the Effect of Travel Abroad by TPS Beneficiaries with Final Orders of Removal

USCIS updated its policy manual to clarify the effect of travel abroad by TPS beneficiaries with final removal orders. Per USCIS, TPS beneficiaries who depart and return to the U.S. based on authorization to travel remain in the exact same immigration status and circumstances as when they left. AILA Doc. No. 19122036

Rakoff Refuses to Dismiss Lawsuit to Halt Immigration Arrests at State Courthouses

NYLJ: U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York said the lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez raised valid claims that the practice could have deleterious effects on the criminal justice system.

Cert granted in Pereida v. Barr

SCOTUSblog: The justices will decide whether a noncitizen who is convicted of a state crime can apply for relief from deportation – such as asylum or cancellation of removal – when the state-court record is ambiguous about whether his conviction corresponds to an offense listed in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Lawsuit says Trump’s green-card rules show preference for ‘the wealthy and the white’

WaPo: Organizations critical of President Trump’s immigration policies filed a broad lawsuit Thursday challenging new restrictions for green-card seekers who may need government help to pay for food and health care…It seeks to block the State Department from moving forward with its public-charge rules, and specifically singles out Trump’s October decree — titled “Presidential Proclamation on the Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who Will Financially Burden the United States Healthcare System” — requiring green-card applicants to have “approved” medical coverage or sufficient resources to pay for their medical costs out of pocket.

Lawsuit Says Immigration Courts Are Now Deportation Machines

AP: The lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Washington, D.C., and Innovation Law Lab of Portland, Oregon, said that instead of being fair and impartial, judges in immigration courts answer to Attorney General Robert Barr and are pushed to deny applications for asylum.

DOJ and DHS Propose Rule to Bar Asylum Eligibility for Individuals Convicted of Certain Criminal Offenses

DOJ and DHS issued a joint notice of proposed rulemaking to provide seven additional mandatory bars to eligibility for asylum for individuals who commit certain criminal offenses in the U.S. The proposed rule would also remove provisions regarding reconsideration of discretionary denials of asylum. AILA Doc. No. 19121835

Featured Issue: Denaturalization Efforts by USCIS

The Trump administration announced the opening of an office to focus on identifying immigrants who are suspected of cheating to get their green cards or citizenship and will seek to denaturalize these individuals. Watch this page for updates and resources from AILA. AILA Doc. No. 18072705

USCIS Provides Q&As from Special Immigrant Juvenile Policy Clarifications Engagement

USCIS provided Q&As from its December 10, 2019, engagement on the recent Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) adopted AAO decisions and the corresponding policy manual update. AILA Doc. No. 19122002

The U.S. Resumes Returning Mexican Nationals to the Interior of Mexico

ICE and the Mexican Ministry of the Interior announced the continuation of the Interior Repatriation Initiative. The first 2019 repatriation flight of approximately 150 Mexican nationals departed Tucson International Airport on December 19, 2019. AILA Doc. No. 19122000

ACTIONS

USCIS and EOIR Joint Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Bars to Asylum Eligibility Comments are due 1/21/20.

USCIS Proposed Rule with Adjustments to Fee Schedule and Other Changes Comments are due 12/30/19 (EXTENDED).

DHS Proposed Rule on Employment Authorization for Asylum Applicants Comments are due 1/13/20.

Think Immigration: Individuals Seeking Protection in El Paso Detention Centers Continue to Face the Impossible. Help Us Push Back.

RESOURCES

TRAC’s updated MPP web query tool

AO: Asylum Lesson Plans

AILA Submits Amicus Brief on Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) Proceedings

Featured Issue: Public Charge Changes at USCIS, DOJ, and DOS

New Education Report Uncovers Pressing Need for Quality Programs and Funding to Support the Integration and Success of New York’s Young Children and Their Immigrant Families

EVENTS

1/15/120 NY Counts 2020 State Convening

1/16/20 Resilience 2.0: Next Steps Lawyers Can Take to Make Bouncing Back Part of the Culture

2/6/20 Basic Immigration Law 2020: Business, Family, Naturalization and Related Areas

2/7/20 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Forms of Immigration Relief 2020

2/28/20 5th Annual New York Asylum and Immigration Law Conference

7/23/20 Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2020

ImmProf

Monday, December 23, 2019

A Kidnapped Kidnappeed After They Were Denied the Ability to Claim Asylum, Trapped in Mexico

Sunday, December 22, 2019

What’s next in the privatization of immigration? Privatized visa processing

25 Jewish members of Congress call on Trump to fire Stephen Miller over leaked emails

Surprise, Surprise: Few Asylum-Seekers Winning Cases Under ‘Remain In Mexico’ Program

Boundless: Immigration Policies with the Biggest Impacts in 2019

America’s Voice — Immigration: Decade in Review

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Executive Office for Immigration Review to Swear in 28 Immigration Judges, Bringing Judge Corps to Highest Level in History

Fourth Circuit willing to review challenge to Census Bureau’s inadequate preparations

Friday, December 20, 2019

Legal challenge to State Department public charge rules

Deep Political Divide on Race and Immigration

Democrats Blast Trump’s Immigration Policies at Debate

The Most Disturbing and Most Inspiring Immigration Stories of 2019

Thursday, December 19, 2019

The Story Behind Neil Gaiman’s What You Need To Be Warm

What You Need to be Warm by Neil Gaiman

Lawsuit says immigration courts are deportation machines

The radical immigration changes under Trump that went unnoticed

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

India’s Supreme Court to Hear Challenges to Nation’s Citizenship Amendment Act

The Beat Goes On! Joint Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Restrict Certain “Criminal Aliens'” Eligibility for Asylum

BREAKING NEWS: Supreme Court Grants Review in Criminal Removal Case

The President’s Anti-Impeachment Letter to Speaker Pelosi

USCIS Expands Guidance Related to Naturalization Requirement of Good Moral Character

Immigration Article of the Day: Deporting Chevron: Why the Attorney General’s Immigration Decisions Should not Receive Chevron Deference by Richard Frankel

International Migrants Day 18 December

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Must Watch TV: 60 Minutes Interview with El Salvador’s President

From the Bookshelves: A Federal Right to Education: Fundamental Questions for Our Democracy by Kimberly Jenkins Robinson (editor)

How Birthright Citizenship Could Threaten the “Samoan Way”

Call for Proposals: Crimmigration, Capital, and Consequences 5th Biennial CINETS Conference

Monday, December 16, 2019

What Will Conservative Win in UK Mean for Immigration?

New Jersey Bill to Expand Driver’s Licenses Passes Legislature

Canadian border rights withering, too

The Bishop and the Imam: A Conversation on Immigration

National Partnership for New Americans Seeking ED

Top 10 Immigration Stories of 2019

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

Note that DOJ/EOIR rally outdid themselves on Immigration Judge appointments with 27 “Government insiders,” most from DHS or other enforcement backgrounds, and only one “outside” appointment from private practice. As one of my Round Table colleagues quipped: “I guess they must have run out of ICE Assistant Chief Counsel.”

Time to be happy and thankful if you’re not a migrant seeking justice and mercy in Trump’s America.

Behind every tyrannical regime are complicit judges who fail to stand up for justice for the most vulnerable and deserving of protection!

Thanks again, Elizabeth for all you do for the New Due Process Army and the cause of American justice!

PWS

12-24-19

WE KNOW THAT SESSIONS, WHITAKER, & BARR HAVE TURNED THE DOJ INTO A LEGAL, MORAL, PROFESSIONAL, & ETHICAL CESSPOOL — Some Federal Judges Are Beginning To Take Notice: “To say the least, it is disappointing that [DOJ] counsel, after consulting with other counsel including ‘prosecutors and appellate attorneys’ in this District’s United States Attorney’s office, submitted a legal memorandum to the Court that failed to acknowledge contrary case law that did not support its position.”

Hon. Elizabeth A. Wolford
U.S. District Judge
WDNY

Dan Kowalski over @ LexisNexis Immigration Community reports:

FW: due process victory: Hassoun v. Searls

“[T]he Court finds that 8 C.F.R. § 241.14(d) is not a permissible reading of § 1231(a)(6), and that it is accordingly a legal nullity that cannot authorize the ongoing, potentially indefinite detention of Petitioner. … The Court further finds that an evidentiary hearing is necessary before it can determine the lawfulness of Petitioner’s continued detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226a.”

Note also the roasting, on page 11, of DOJ lawyers for failure to do basic 1L legal research: “To say the least, it is disappointing that Respondent’s counsel, after consulting with other counsel including “prosecutors and appellate attorneys” in this District’s United States Attorney’s office, submitted a legal memorandum to the Court that failed to acknowledge contrary case law that did not support its position.”

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/hassoun_op.pdf

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

I hear and appreciate U.S District Judge (WDNY) Elizabeth A. Wolford’s outrage and frustration.

But, for hard working members of the New Due Process Army this is “just another day at the office” in dealing with the Trump Regime’s unethical, scofflaw, fact free White Nationalist nativist agenda: lies and pretexts presented to the Supremes to hide an intentional census undercount directed at reducing Hispanic voting and political power; false narratives about migrants and crime; a bogus largely self-created “border emergency;” fraudulent “national security” justifications; EOIR “administrative changes” intended to undermine the right to representation and eliminate due process; twisted unethical “precedents” entered by the chief prosecutor that always come out against the individuals; misogynist racist misinterpretations of asylum law intended to kill, maim, and torture vulnerable women of color; child abuse cloaked in disingenuous “law enforcement” rationales; bogus “civil detention” to punish lawful asylum seekers; a grotesquely dishonest “Migrant Protection Protocol” intended to subject migrants to deadly conditions in Mexico; “Safe” Third Countries that are among the most dangerous in the world without functioning asylum systems; irrational “public charge” regulations intended to reduce legal immigration without legislation; EOIR’s distorted statistics intentionally manipulated to minimize asylum grants and cover up the anti-asylum bias improperly infused into the system; vicious unsupported attacks on the private bar by the Attorney General and other regime politicos. The list goes on forever.

Unfortunately, this scofflaw and unethical behavior will continue until Federal Judges back up their words with actions: declarations of unconstitutionality; sanctions against the Government for frivolous litigation; removing political control over EOIR; referring Barr and other DOJ attorneys who are abusing the justice system to bar authorities for possible discipline.

“This ain’t your Momma’s or Papa’s DOJ!” (Or for that matter one that those of us who served in the recent past would recognize.) Its antecedents and “role models” are America’s vile, deadly, discredited Jim Crow era and 20th & 21st Century fascist regimes.

Time for Article III Judges to get out of their ivory towers, stop tiptoeing around Government corruption, dishonesty and misconduct, and start looking at things from the human perspective of the individuals and their courageous attorneys caught up in this legal, moral, and ethical quagmire and fighting not only for their own lives but for the future of our nation! There is and will be “only one right side of history” in this existential struggle!

Due Process Forever; The Corrupt White Nationalist Immigration Agenda Never!

PWS

12-21-19

BIA GETS IT WRONG AGAIN: 2D CIR. SLAMS EOIR’S ERRONEOUS APPROACH TO “EQUITABLE TOLLING” — As the BIA Continues To Get The Fundamentals Wrong, Unethical Barr & Co. Push Already Stressed & Dysfunctional Immigration “Courts” For More & Faster Mistakes & More Unlawful Removals!

http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/2c04f16b-a109-44a1-8677-06d7451356bd/3/doc/18-204_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/2c04f16b-a109-44a1-8677-06d7451356bd/3/hilite/

EMELI KWASI ATTIPOE v. BARR, 2d. Cir., 12-19-19, published

PANEL: POOLER, LOHIER, and CARNEY, Circuit Judges.

OPINION BY: Judge Rosemary Pooler

KEY QUOTE:

Here, as in Iavorski, nothing in the text of Section 545(d)(2) itself, or in its
4 legislative history, indicates that Congress intended the appeal filing deadline to
5 be jurisdictional. To the contrary, the House Conference Report states that
6 “[u]nless the Attorney General finds reasonable evidence to the contrary, the
7 regulations must state that administrative appeals be made within 30 days, except
8 that the appellate body may, upon motion, extend such period up to 90 days, if good cause
9 is shown by the movant.” H.R. Rep. No. 101‐955 at 133 (emphasis added). The
10 legislative history thus indicates that Congress was amenable to the idea of
11 extending the time to file an appeal past the deadline upon a showing of good
12 And the BIA may, sua sponte, decide to accept late filings under the self‐
13 certification process. It could not accept any late filings—exceptional
14 circumstances or not—if the filing deadline truly was jurisdictional.
15 We therefore extend Iavorksi’s interpretation of Section 545(d)(1) to its
16 sister subsection, Section 545(d)(2), and hold that the BIA must consider the
17 principles of equitable tolling when an untimely appeal is filed and the petitioner
18 raises the issue, as Attipoe did here. We remand to the BIA to consider whether 15
1 equitable tolling allows consideration of Attipoe’s late‐filed appeal. The BIA is
2 free to develop the factors it will apply in considering equitable tolling, although
3 we note that it need not start from scratch. In Holland, the Supreme Court set out
4 standards for courts to apply in determining whether equitable tolling is
5 appropriate: (1) a showing that a petitioner “has been pursuing his rights
6 diligently, and (2) that some extraordinary circumstance stood in his way.” 560
7 S. at 649 (internal quotation marks omitted). And in the context of a late
8 motion to reopen, we have held that petitioners seeking equitable tolling must
9 demonstrate (1) that their constitutional rights to due process were violated by
10 the conduct of counsel; and (2) that they exercised due diligence during the
11 putative tolling period. Iavorski, 232 F.3d at 135; see also Rashid v. Mukasey, 533
12 3d 127, 132 (2d Cir. 2008) (requiring that a petitioner prove diligence during
13 “both the period of time before the ineffective assistance of counsel was or
14 should have been discovered and the period from that point until the motion to
15 reopen is filed”); Cekic v. I.N.S., 435 F.3d 167, 170 (2d Cir. 2006) (requiring that
16 petitioner “affirmatively demonstrate that he exercised reasonable due diligence
17 during the time period sought to be tolled”). After it determines what the

16

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

standards for equitable tolling under Section 1003.38 are, the BIA should determine whether Attipoe satisfies those standards.

CONCLUSION

For the reasons given above, the petition is granted, the BIA’s decision is vacated, and this matter remanded to the BIA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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

An honest, competent Attorney General would make fixing the glaring legal, quality control, and Due Process problems with the BIA’s performance “job one.”

Instead, White Nationalist political hacks Sessions, Whitaker, and Barr have maliciously pushed the BIA and the Immigration Courts to rush more defective unprofessional work product out the door faster, thereby guaranteeing unconstitutional miscarriages of justice and numerous wrongful removals.

Improper, mindless, designed to fail “haste makes waste” gimmicks by the regime actually make the astounding 1.3 million case Immigration Court backlog much much worse, rather than addressing it in a rational and professional manner consistent with Due Process of law.

That’s especially true in a system where many individuals are improperly and unconstitutionally forced to appear without assistance of counsel and many others suffer from “underperformance” of counsel in a totally stressed and unfair system where the problems are overwhelmingly caused by our Government‘s “maliciously incompetent” performance, but the consequences fall almost exclusively and most heavily on the individual victims of U.S. Government malfeasance.

The idea the the BIA deserves “deference” as a fair, impartial, “expert” tribunal is beyond absurd. It’s a flat out abdication of legal duty by the Article III Courts of Appeals. When will they finally put a stop to this mockery of justice and remove the biased, unethical, and malicious DOJ prosecutor from improper and unconstitutional control over the Immigration “Courts?” How many illegal removals on their watch are too many for the complicit and privileged “life-tenured ones?”

What if it were them or their families suffering and being abused in this ongoing national disgrace that passes for a “court system?”

PWS

12-20-19

KILLERS ON THE BENCH: The 9th Circuit Mindlessly “Greenlighted” The Trump Regime’s Illegal & Unconstitutional “Let ‘Em Die In Mexico Program” – Now, Their Victims Are Doing Just That – The Deadly Costs Of Complicit Courts!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=861153e4-7431-4885-988f-89818194bf2f

Wendy Fry reports for the San Diego Union Tribune:

By Wendy Fry

TIJUANA — A 35-year-old man from El Salvador returned to Mexico under a controversial Trump administration program was brutally killed in Tijuana while waiting for an outcome to his U.S. asylum case, according to his family’s attorney.

During a seven-month period, the man and his family repeatedly told U.S. officials — including a San Diego immigration court judge, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection — that they were not safe in Tijuana, the lawyer said.

Customs and Border Protection returned the man and his family to Tijuana anyway, records show. In November, he was killed in Zona Norte, one of Tijuana’s more dangerous regions near the border.

“I don’t know how there’s an argument that Mexico is a safe country,” said Richard Sterger, the family’s immigration attorney. “My clients begged not to be sent back there.”

The family fled El Salvador and presented themselves at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in May asking to be allowed into the United States to assert their legal right to seek asylum, Sterger said.

The family was placed into the Migrant Protection Protocols program, also known as MPP or “Remain in Mexico.” The man’s wife and their two children are not being identified because they fear for their lives after reporting and speaking about his slaying.

Sterger said he could not discuss details of their asylum claim, such as why they fled El Salvador, because it is part of their ongoing immigration case.

Between May and September, the family members waited in Tijuana for their first court appearance, he said.

During their Sept. 11 immigration court hearing, they pleaded with a San Diego immigration judge to not be sent back to Mexico because they feared for their safety. At the time, the family did not have legal representation, Sterger said.

“I told the judge that I was afraid for my children because we were in a horrible, horrible place, and we didn’t feel safe here,” the widow told the Spanish-language news station Telemundo 20.

The judge referred the case to ICE, a process called “red sheeting,” and the family was interviewed about its fears of returning to Tijuana without a legal representative, the attorney said.

A spokeswoman for ICE said a “red sheet” is placed at the top of a person’s immigration court case file to alert Customs and Border Protection officials that an interview needs to be done about whether or not a family can continue safely waiting in Mexico.

She said she could not comment specifically on the man’s case because of privacy and identification policies.

Under international law, countries are forbidden to return asylum seekers to any nation where they are likely to face danger of persecution because of their “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” The legal principle is known as “non-refoulement.”

Migrant rights advocates have been warning the public that the U.S. government is violating the “non-refoulement” principle with the MPP program, which is facing numerous challenges and lawsuits in federal court.

Sterger said his clients’ case is a perfect example.

After telling U.S. officials they were afraid to be in Tijuana, the members of the family were sent back anyway without explanation.

A Baja California death certificate says the husband and father died Nov. 20 of stab wounds to his neck. It also says he had cuts and stab wounds all over his torso that a Baja California investigator confirmed could indicate torture.

Started under the Trump administration, MPP requires that migrants trying to legally enter the United States remain in Mexico during the immigration court process.

That process usually takes several months, sometimes up to a year, and involves multiple court hearings, which requires migrants to present themselves at El Chaparral border crossing near the San Ysidro Port of Entry to travel to immigration court in San Diego.

Officials with the Baja California prosecutors’ office said that during the process of repeatedly presenting themselves at the border, U.S. asylum seekers can easily be spotted and targeted by criminal groups as potential victims.

In Tijuana, the threat of violence for migrants is so severe that Baja California state police have been going around to various migrant shelters giving presentations on how to avoid becoming a victim since the MPP program began.

Under the program, rolled out in January in Tijuana and then expanded across the U.S.-Mexico border, tens of thousands of U.S. asylum seekers have been returned to Mexico.

Immigration advocacy groups, attorneys and human rights organizations have been urgently warning the U.S. government that border cities are not safe places for asylum seekers to be forced to wait while their cases are processed.

The nonprofit group Human Rights First identified 636 publicly reported cases of “rape, torture, kidnapping and other violent assaults against asylum seekers and migrants forced to return to Mexico by the Trump administration.”

Of that, at least 138 cases involved children being kidnapped or nearly kidnapped in Mexico, according to a report by the group.

“The MPP fear screening process is a sham with interviews that have become increasingly cursory and adversarial resulting in the return of vulnerable and victimized asylum seekers to new dangers,” the report highlighted.

Sterger agreed.

“We are literally putting people’s lives at risk,” he said.

The attorney said that after the father and husband of the family was brutally slain, the mother ran to the border with her children, both younger than 10. She told border officers what happened and begged to be let into the United States.

Fry writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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

The Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan travesty just keeps on killing, abusing, torturing, and dehumanizing every day. Encouraged by the 9th Circuit’s cowardly dereliction of duty and the Supremes evident lack of concern for the safety, lives, and human dignity of asylum seekers, the regime has taken it to a new level with fraudulent and illegal “Safe Third Country” agreements with the super dangerous Northern Triangle states, none of which has any semblance of a credible asylum adjudication system.

I guess the further way we can kill ’em, the more complacent the Article IIIs are going to be. “No blood on their spiffy black robes!” And, after all, it’s not them or their families being abused. and killed by the regime, so “What, me worry?”

Also, something to keep in mind the next time “Big Mac With Lies” appears on the “speaking circuit” to tout his many “accomplishments” at DHS.

I’m, glad Wendy reports on these continuing “crimes against humanity.” But, it must be tough being on the “Watchdog & Accountability Team” in a system where complicit and complacent Federal Judges are unwilling to hold the regime accountable for their outrageously illegal and unconstitutional (not to mention unconscionable) behavior.

PWS

12-13-19

NEW FROM CMS: Accessible Citizenship Is A Huge Win – Win For The U.S. & The Citizens — Trump Regime Works Overtime To Create A Lose – Lose!

Donald M. Kerwin
Executive Director
Center for Migration Studies

Robert Warren
Senior Visiting Fellow
Center For Migration Studies

View this email in your browser

The Center for Migration Studies Releases New Report on the Benefits of Citizenship and the Barriers to Naturalization

The well-being and contributions of immigrants increase as they advance toward citizenship, but new impediments to permanent residence and naturalization deny access to citizenship.

New York, NY — The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) today released a report finding that the well-being of immigrants and their contributions to the United States increase as they advance to more permanent and secure immigration statuses, culminating in naturalization. The report finds that naturalized citizens match or exceed the native-born by key metrics, including: college degrees (35% vs. 29%); percent employed (96% vs. 95%); and average personal income ($45,600 vs. $40,600).

The report – authored by CMS Executive Director Donald Kerwin and CMS Senior Visiting Fellow Robert Warren – argues that the administration’s “America first” ideology obscures a far-reaching set of policies that significantly impede the ability of immigrants to “move forward” on the path to naturalization, to their own detriment and the detriment of their families and communities.

“The report finds that policy makers should encourage naturalization rather than making it unnecessarily difficult,” said Warren. “Another important finding is that the US legal immigration system currently produces the same percentage of high skilled workers as the native-born population.”

The report documents the Trump administration’s policies that seek to prevent undocumented persons from gaining status, divest documented persons of status, cut legal admissions and immigration by decree, create new barriers to permanent residence and naturalization, and make citizenship a less valuable and less secure status.

It finds that at least 5.2 million current US citizens – 4.5 million children and 730,000 adults – who are living with at least one undocumented parent, obtained US citizenship by birth. It concludes that current immigration enforcement priorities effectively deny the full rights and benefits of citizenship to the US citizen children of undocumented parents, and it warns that eliminating birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented parents would create a permanent underclass of US-born denizens.

“US citizenship represents the principle marker of full membership and equality under the law in our constitutional democracy,” said Kerwin. “Yet this administration has adopted policies to make naturalization far less accessible and to make citizenship a less secure and valuable status for some disfavored citizens.”

The report is now available at: https://cmsny.org/publications/citizenship-kerwin-warren/

MEDIA CONTACT

Emma Winters

(212) 337-3080 x. 7012

ewinters@cmsny.org

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

Making losers out of everyone is a specialty of the Trump Regime’s “myth-based” White Nationalist agenda. “Malicious incompetence” in action!

PWS

12-13-19

ROUND TABLE OF FORMER IMMIGRATION JUDGES SPEAKS OUT AGAINST EOIR’S LIMITS ON PUBLIC ACCESS TO IMMIGRATION COURTS

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

McHenry letter_letterhead

VIA EMAIL AND FIRST CLASS MAIL

James McHenry, Director
Christopher Santoro, Acting Chief Immigration Judge Executive Office for Immigration Review
5107 Leesburg Pike, 18th Floor
Falls Church, VA 22041

Dear Director McHenry and Chief Immigration Judge Santoro,

Public access to the immigration courts is vital to the constitutional protections of the respond- ents who appear in court. Pursuant to 8 C.F.R. § 1003.27 the immigration courts are open to the public. Limited exceptions to public access exist under the regulations, for example, to protect witnesses or parties or the public interest (§ 1003.27(b)), in VAWA cases (§ 1003.27(c)), and when there is a protective order (§ 1003.27(d)). Asylum hearings are confidential and are not open to the public unless the asylum applicant consents (8 C.F.R. § 1208.6).

Migrant Protection Protocol “MPP” hearings are routinely conducted in violation of 8 C.F.R. § 1003.27. Observers have been denied access to remote hearing locations where respondents are appearing in “tent courts.” In addition, it was recently announced that some MPP hearings would be heard via video teleconference by immigration judges in the Fort Worth Adjudication Center. For such hearings, public access is entirely restricted, as observers are not allowed in the tent courts or the adjudication centers. As Judge Ashley Tabaddor stated in an interview with CNN, “MPP is rife with issues but by assigning the adjudication centers to the tent courts takes us to a new low where public access to the court are now eliminated.” She further stated, “[t]his is not the way we as judges or courts should function.”

We agree with Judge Tabaddor. On December 5, 2019, a member of our group of former immi- gration judges, Ilyce Shugall, was denied access to the immigration court while attempting to observe an MPP individual calendar hearing. Human Rights First requested permission for the observers to sit in Laredo with the respondents in the tent courts. The request was denied. Ac- cordingly, the observers, including Former Immigration Judge Shugall, who traveled across the country, were required to sit in San Antonio to observe respondents appearing from Laredo via

December 10, 2019

VTC. Although the individual hearing was an asylum merits hearing, the respondent consented to Former Judge Shugall observing the hearing.

Early in the hearing, Immigration Judge Cynthia Lafuente-Gaona confirmed that the respondent consented to Former Judge Shugall observing, as she was with a delegation from Human Rights First. Subsequently, Judge Lafuente-Gaona asked Former Judge Shugall to step out of the court- room because she was taking notes on her computer and looking at her cell phone. The assistant chief counsel for ICE was taking notes on his computer, but was never asked to cease his note taking. Former Judge Shugall advised she would put both her phone and computer away and take notes on a note pad. Judge Lafuente-Gaona told Former Judge Shugall she “should know better” because she was a former judge. Former Judge Shugall explained that attorneys and ob- servers used computers and phones in her courtroom when she was on the bench and had used her computer and phone in court all week, including in Judge Lafuente-Gaona’s courtroom the prior day. Former Judge Shugall remained in the courtroom and continued her note taking on a note pad. Some time later, a legal fellow from Human Rights First entered the courtroom. Judge Lafuente-Gaona again confirmed with the respondent that he consented to the additional observ- er. While doing so, she told the respondent that the observers were “writing about what he was saying,” which was entirely untrue. Judge Lafuente-Gaona then told the observers that their note taking on note pads was distracting and asked both to leave. After a break, the observers con- firmed with Judge Lafuente-Gaona that she was requiring they remain outside of the courtroom for the remainder of the hearing. She had two male guards escort the two female attorneys out of the courtroom. That same day the legal fellow from Human Rights First was prevented from ob- serving another pro se merits hearing.

Immigration judges preside over individual and master calendar hearings that are rife with dis- tractions. During master calendar hearings, people are constantly entering and leaving the court- room, taking notes, talking, and moving papers. On many dockets, children are crying, crawling on the floors, throwing toys and food, and playing with microphones. In addition, in immigra- tion courtrooms across the country, parties routinely take notes on computers and use cell phones in court. Observers taking notes during a pro se asylum hearing is not inherently distracting. That the judge became distracted because a former immigration judge and an attorney from a human rights organization made her nervous does not justify closing the courtroom.

While the above examples are specific to MPP hearings, issues related to public access to the immigration courts is not exclusively limited to MPP. For example, according to a Daily Beast article, earlier this month a reporter was forced to leave an immigration courtroom in New York.

Very few respondents subject to MPP are represented. There are significant concerns with ac- cess to counsel and due process in MPP proceedings. Allowing observers in court, pursuant to the regulations, is crucial. A judge’s failure to follow the regulations and the constitution should be of great concern to EOIR. It is certainly of paramount concern to this group of former immi- gration judges.

As former immigration judges, we understand that a judge has the right to control the conduct of those attending a hearing, but exercise of that control cannot compromise the parties’ due pro-

cess rights. We request that EOIR investigate this issue and ensure that the public has appropri- ate access to all immigration courts.

Very truly yours, /s/

The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

Steven Abrams

Terry Bain

Sarah Burr

Teofilo Chapa

Jeffrey Chase

George Chew

Matthew D’Angelo

Bruce J. Einhorn

Cecelia Espenoza

Noel Ferris

James Fujimoto

Jennie Giambastiani

John Gossart

Paul Grussendorf

Miriam Hayward

Rebecca Bowen Jamil

William Joyce

Carol King

Margaret McManus

Charles Pazar

Laura Ramirez

John Richardson

Lory Rosenberg

Susan Roy

Paul Schmidt

Ilyce Shugall

Denise Slavin

Andrea Sloan

William Van Wyke

Polly Webber

Bob Weisel

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

NOTE: A few of the above signatures were not received in time for the “hard copy” mailed to EOIR. They later were added to the publicly distributed version.

Public access is critical to Due Process and Fundamental Fairness in Immigration Court. In the Arlington Immigration Court, we were constantly “under observation” by reporters, Congressional staff, NGOs, students, Senior Executives from DOJ and DHS, Asylum Officers, OIL Attorneys, EOIR Headquarters and BIA staff, ORR staff, and other members of the public. We welcomed it. All of us viewed it as a “teaching opportunity” and a chance to demonstrate “Due Process in action” and to communicate our judicial philosophies and expertise in the law to others. It was an important “public education” opportunity.

Indeed, when I taught “Refugee Law & Policy” as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown Law “Court Observation” was a required assignment. The same was true of many of my teaching colleagues at the many law schools in DC and Virginia.

Far from “disruptive” or “distracting,” I found that public observation actually improved everyone’s performance, including my own. Everyone in the courtroom got into “teaching mode,” willing and eager to demonstrate the importance of their roles in the justice system. Counsel on both sides would often remain for a few minutes after the case to discuss their respective roles and how they came to choose immigration law as a career (of course, being careful not to discuss particular case facts).

Indeed, one of the most meaningful items of “feedback” I got from an observer (paraphrased) was: “I expected something much more openly adversarial and hostile. I was surprised by the degree of cooperation, mutual respect, and teamwork by everyone in the courtroom including counsel, the witnesses, the interpreter, and the judge to complete the case in the time allotted and to inform the judge’s decision. Everyone seemed to be working toward a common goal of resolution, even though they had different roles and views on the right outcome.”

Of course that was then. I’ve been told that most Immigration Courts these days are much more “openly hostile territory” particularly for respondents and their counsel. All the more reason why we need more, rather than less, in person court observation.

Many thanks to our friend and Round Table colleague Judge Ilyce Shugall for bringing this festering problem “out in the open.”

PWS

12-12-19

PROFILES IN JUDICIAL COWARDICE: AS FEDERAL COURTS FAIL, DUE PROCESS DIES, & THE REGIME SIMPLY THUMBS ITS NOSE AT THE LAW BY RETURNING ASYLUM SEEKING FAMILIES TO “DEATH ZONES!” — “Experts, advocates, the United Nations and Guatemalan officials say the country doesn’t have the capacity to handle any sizable influx, much less process potential protection claims. Guatemala’s own struggles with corruption, violence and poverty helped push more than 270,000 Guatemalans to the U.S. border in fiscal 2019.”

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-12-10/u-s-starts-pushing-asylum-seeking-families-back-to-guatemala-for-first-time

Molly O’Toole reports for the LA Times:

In a first, U.S. starts pushing Central American families seeking asylum to Guatemala

A woman leaves the market in Guatemala City with a bundle of bamboo culms. (Luis Soto / Associated Press)

By MOLLY O’TOOLE STAFF WRITER

DEC. 10, 2019 6:58 PM

WASHINGTON — U.S. officials have started to send families seeking asylum to Guatemala, even if they are not from the Central American country and had sought protection in the United States, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

In July, the Trump administration announced a new rule to effectively end asylum at the southern U.S. border by requiring asylum seekers to claim protection elsewhere. Under that rule — which currently faces legal challenges — virtually any migrant who passes through another country before reaching the U.S. border and does not seek asylum there will be deemed ineligible for protection in the United States.

A few days later, the administration reached an agreement with Guatemala to take asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. border who were not Guatemalan. Although Guatemala’s highest court initially said the country’s president couldn’t unilaterally enter into such an agreement, since late November, U.S. officials have forcibly returned individuals to Guatemala under the deal.

At first, U.S. officials said they would return only single adults. But starting Tuesday, they began applying the policy to non-Guatemalan parents and children, according to communications obtained by The Times and several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials.

One family of three from Honduras, as well as a separate Honduran parent and child, were served with notices on Tuesday that they’d soon be deported to Guatemala.

The Trump administration has reached similar agreements with Guatemala’s Northern Triangle neighbors, El Salvador and Honduras, in each case obligating those countries to take other Central Americans who reach the U.S. border. Those agreements, however, have yet to be implemented.

The administration describes the agreements as an “effort to share the distribution of hundreds of thousands of asylum claims.”

The deals — also referred to as “safe third country” agreements — “are formed between the United States and foreign countries where aliens removed to those countries would have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection,” according to the federal notice.

Guatemala has virtually no asylum system of its own, but the Trump administration and Guatemalan government both said the returns would roll out slowly and selectively.

The expansion of the policy to families could mean many more asylum seekers being forcibly removed to Guatemala.

Experts, advocates, the United Nations and Guatemalan officials say the country doesn’t have the capacity to handle any sizable influx, much less process potential protection claims. Guatemala’s own struggles with corruption, violence and poverty helped push more than 270,000 Guatemalans to the U.S. border in fiscal 2019.

Citizenship and Immigration Services and Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

POLITICSWORLD & NATION

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Molly O’Toole is an immigration and security reporter based in the Los Angeles Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Foreign Policy covering the 2016 election and Trump administration, and a politics reporter at the Atlantic’s Defense One. She has covered migration and security from Mexico, Central America, West Africa, the Middle East, the Gulf, and South Asia. She is a graduate of Cornell University and NYU, but will always be a Californian.

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

To be an Article III Federal Appellate Judge or Supreme Court Justice these days seems to be little more than a license to take a “what me worry approach” to Due Process, immigration, asylum, racism, and the human tragedy unfolding around us every day. As long as it isn’t their kids and families being harassed, abused, allowed to die in prison, or unlawfully sent to potential “death camps” in some of the most dangerous regions of the world, who cares?

Abuse of others, particularly the less fortunate and most vulnerable: “Out of sight, out of mind.” As long as the paychecks keep coming and the security is good in the ivory tower, the legal gobbledygook and spineless task evasion will keep flowing until our nation finally goes out of business under Trump’s anti-Constitutional authoritarian onslaught.

Will it affect those lifetime judicial pensions? Just don’t let the screams of the abused, tortured, and dying keep you up at night judges! But do authoritarian dictatorships really need “judges,” even subservient ones?

PWS

12-11-19

EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST: KID KILLERS ON THE LOOSE: “Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-is-to-blame-for-a-teen-migrants-death/2019/12/09/569ae0e8-1ac6-11ea-8d58-5ac3600967a1_story.html

Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him.

That is the only conclusion to be drawn from a shocking report by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica about Hernandez’s death in May at a U.S. Border Patrol station in Texas. I assume the agents and health-care workers who should have given Hernandez lifesaving attention are decent human beings, not monsters. But they work within an intentionally monstrous system that assigned no value to a young Guatemalan boy’s life.

President Trump’s racist and xenophobic immigration policies are not grounds for impeachment; rather, they are an urgent reason to defeat him in the coming election. But at least six migrant children, including Hernandez, have died in federal custody on Trump’s watch. Somebody should be held accountable. Somebody should go to jail.

Hernandez died of influenza and neglect.

He had crossed the Rio Grande without documents with a group of migrants who were almost immediately apprehended by the Border Patrol. In keeping with administration policy, he was separated from his adult sister and processed at a notoriously overcrowded holding facility in McAllen, Tex., where a nurse practitioner found he had a temperature of 103. She diagnosed him with the flu and said he should be taken to a hospital if his condition worsened.

Instead, worried he might infect others at the McAllen center, officials moved him to a Border Patrol station in nearby Weslaco and locked him in a cell. That was on the afternoon of May 19. By the following morning, Hernandez was dead.

Border Patrol logs show that agents checked on Hernandez several times that night. But ProPublica obtained cellblock video showing that “the only way . . . officials could have missed Carlos’ crisis is that they weren’t looking.”

The video “shows Carlos writhing for at least 25 minutes on the floor and a concrete bench,” ProPublica reported. “It shows him staggering to the toilet and collapsing on the floor, where he remained in the same position for the next four and a half hours.”

Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, claimed that Hernandez’s lifeless body was discovered by agents doing a morning check. But the video shows, according to ProPublica, that it was Hernandez’s cellmate who sent up the alarm.

“On the video, the cellmate can be seen waking up and groggily walking to the toilet, where Carlos was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. He [the roommate] gestures for help at the cell door. Only then do agents enter the cell and discover that Carlos had died during the night.”

Let that sink in for a moment. A 16-year-old boy has obviously fallen ill and has a soaring fever. Instead of seeking medical care for him, agents of the United States government — acting in your name and mine — leave him to die on the cold concrete floor of a detention cell.

Hernandez’s death implies more than the apparent negligence of a few overworked Border Patrol agents. It indicts a whole system designed by the Trump administration to deter would-be migrants and asylum seekers by punishing those who do make the journey.

In Hernandez’s case, the fatal punishment was meted out illegally. He had been in custody for six days when he died, but the Border Patrol is only supposed to hold children for 72 hours, at most, before transferring them to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Trump administration instituted a shockingly inhumane policy of separating migrant parents from their children, who in many cases were sent hundreds of miles away. Thousands of children were warehoused in cages, like animals. Toddlers and infants were absurdly expected to represent themselves at immigration hearings whose nature they could not begin to understand.

It is true that officials have had to deal with a flood of migrants who overwhelmed border facilities and personnel. But the Trump administration responded to the surge not with compassion but with purposeful callousness. It is horrific that six migrant children are known to have died in Customs and Border Protection custody since September 2018. It is even worse when you realize there were no such deaths, not a single one, during the eight years of the Obama administration.

According to ProPublica’s report, Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez was a bright and engaging boy who captained his school’s soccer team in the village of San Jose del Rodeo. The Border Patrol assigned him the alien identification number A203665141. His body was shipped home for burial.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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

So why are racist White Nationalist policies that kill kids and then cover up “OK?” Why are Kelly, Nielsen, “Big Mac With Lies,” “Gonzo Apocalypto,” and others responsible for human rights violations running around making big bucks off their misconduct, giving speeches as if they were “normal” former senior executives, and even running for public office rather than facing charges for their misconduct? Others like Chief Toady Billy Barr and “Cooch Cooch” remain in office while spreading their authoritarian lies and attacking our democratic institutions.

And what about complicit Federal Appellate Judges and Supreme Court Justices who have let Due Process, fundamental fairness, and human decency die while looking the other way?

Human rights criminals like Trump & Miller need plenty of “go along to get along” accomplices to carry out their abuse.

Thanks, Eugene, for speaking out when so many others in privileged positions of supposed responsibility have been so cowardly and complicit in the face of tyranny that intends to destroy our democracy and that has already undermined our humanity.

Where’s the outrage!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-11-19

WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? — 9th CIRCUIT JUDGES ASSIST REGIME’S AGENTS IN COMMITTING “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” MERE YARDS FROM THE BORDER! — NDPA Leader Jodi Goodwin, Esquire, Speaks Out: “I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me. I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.”

Jodi Goodwin, Esquire
Immigration Attorney
Harlingen, TX

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/remain-in-mexico-policy-immigrant-kids_n_5deeb143e4b00563b8560c69

Angelina Chapin reports for HuffPost:

A few times a week, attorney Jodi Goodwin walks across the bridge from Brownsville, Texas, to a refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico, to meet with asylum-seekers. Her clients are among the more than 2,500 immigrants crammed into tents while they wait for U.S. immigration hearings ― often stuck for months in dirty and dangerous conditions.

The forced return to Mexico of migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. is one of President Donald Trump’s most inhumane immigration policies, yet it hasn’t received nearly the attention that his family separation and prolonged detention practices have.

Since January, under Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” initiative ― also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) ― the U.S. government has sent at least 54,000 immigrants to wait for their court dates in Mexican border towns. Instead of staying with relatives in the U.S., families are sleeping in tents for up to eight months, in unprotected areas where infections spread within crowded quarters and cartel kidnappings are commonplace. Family separation ended a year ago. But Trump’s mistreatment of asylum-seekers continues in a different form.

Some parents are so desperate that they’ve resorted to sending their children across the bridge alone, since unaccompanied kids who arrive at the border cannot be turned away under MPP. Since October, at least 135 children have crossed back into the U.S. by themselves after being sent to wait in Mexico with their parents, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In Mexico, many of these migrants don’t have access to lawyers and are forced to plead their cases in makeshift tent courts set up along the U.S. border where overwhelmed judges conduct hearings via video teleconference. The courts have limited public access ― lawyers and translators say that they have been barred from attending hearings. Migrants’ advocates argue that the tent courts violate due process, and immigrant rights organizations have filed a federal lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the use of videoconferencing.

Goodwin, who has 42 clients, said there is a serious shortage of lawyers willing to represent immigrants staying in another country where crime is rife. She spoke with HuffPost about why the Remain in Mexico policy is even more traumatic than separating thousands of families and why it hasn’t sparked public outrage.

AMERICAN IMMIGRATION LAWYERS ASSOCIATION

Jodi Goodwin (center) at the refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico.

HuffPost: Immigrant parents forced to wait in Mexico are making the heart-wrenching choice to send their kids to the U.S. alone. What are the conditions like at the camp in Matamoros?

Jodi Goodwin: It smells like urine and feces. There’s not enough sanitation. There’s 10 port-a-potties for thousands of people. Up until recently, there was no potable water available at all. People were bathing in the Rio Grande river, getting sick and, in some cases, drowning. People were seriously dehydrated.

The camp sounds completely unfitting for any human being, let alone children.

It’s a horrific situation to put families in. It’s great to live in a tent for the weekend when you’re going to the lake. It’s not great to live in a tent for months at a time where you don’t have basic necessities.

Are kids getting sick?

The kids are sick every day. I’ve seen all kinds of respiratory illnesses and digestive illnesses. I’ve seen chronic illnesses like epilepsy. I saw a baby that appeared to have sepsis who was forced to wait on the bridge for more than three hours before being taken to a hospital.

And what about the kidnappings? Have you heard of families being taken by cartel members who then try and extort an immigrant’s U.S. relatives for money?

About half of the people I’ve spoken to in Mexico have been kidnapped. The cartel knows if they can grab an immigrant, they’re likely to be able to work out a ransom. If they don’t, then they just kill them.

Any specific examples?

I dealt with one case where a mom from El Salvador and her 4-year-old son were kidnapped within an hour of being sent back to Mexico under MPP. They were taken for eight days before her brother in the U.S. paid the kidnappers $7,000.

The lady was terrified. She was sleep-deprived, food-deprived and water-deprived. She said that the people who had kidnapped her were extremely violent and hit her kid. They were drinking alcohol and raping people at a stash house where several other people were being held.

LOREN ELLIOTT / REUTERS

Migrants, most of them asylum-seekers sent back to Mexico from the U.S. under the “Remain in Mexico” program, occupy a makeshift encampment in Matamoros, Mexico, on Oc. 28, 2019.

The last time we spoke, you were on the frontlines of family separation, visiting detention centers where mothers were hysterically crying after being ripped apart from their children. How does the trauma of MPP compare, particularly for parents who are sending their kids across the border alone?

It’s way worse. I can’t with any confidence say that they will ever see their children again.

Why not?

I knew there were legal ways to get out of family separation. We were able to talk with our clients and didn’t have to go off to another country. And for those parents who got through their interviews or their court hearings, we were able to get them back with their kids.

With MPP, the assault is not only on human rights but also on due process within the court systems, which has completely hijacked the ability to be able to fix things. The parents can’t even get into the country to try to reunify with their kids.

Nearly 3,000 children were separated from their parents under Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. Do you think a similar number of families will be ripped apart because of Remain in Mexico?

It could be more. Over 55,000 people have been sent back to Mexico. I’ve talked to so many parents who have sent their kids across. It’s a heart-wrenching decision process that they go through. How do you give up your baby?

It reminds me of Jewish parents who were captives in Nazi Germany and had to convince their kids to get on a different train or go in a different line to save their own lives.

Have you witnessed these separations firsthand?

In November I saw a little boy and his 4-year-old sister sent across the bridge with an older child, who was about 14 years old. The teenager carried the baby boy, who still had a pacifier in his mouth, and the girl was holding onto the older kid’s belt loop.

I was standing on the bridge between Matamoros and the U.S. and I turned around to look down at the bank of the Rio Grande river. Every single parent who has sent their kid to cross tells me the same thing: As soon as they say goodbye and hug their kids, they run to the bank to watch them. [Her voice breaks] I knew there was somebody probably standing on that bank hoping those kids made it across.

Do you still think about those kids?

Oh yeah. The green binky that the little baby was sucking on is knitted in my mind.

VERONICA CARDENAS / REUTERS

The Mexican National Guard patrols an encampment where asylum-seekers live as their tents are relocated from the plaza to near the banks of the Rio Grande in Matamoros on Dec. 7, 2019.

You’ve been working hundreds of hours a month to try and help people stranded in Matamoros. This work must take a toll on you personally.

I’ve been practicing law for 25 years and the last four to five months of practicing law has broken me.

I don’t want to fucking do this anymore. [Her voice breaks again] It sucks. How do you explain to people that you know they thought they were coming to a place where there’s freedom and safety and where the laws are just, but that’s not the situation? I’m very mad.

Family separation resulted in massive outcry from the public, which eventually pressured the government to end the zero-tolerance policy. Why is MPP not getting the same attention?

There is no public outrage because it’s not happening on our soil. It’s happening literally 10 feet from the turnstile to come to the U.S. But because it’s out of sight and out of mind, there is no outrage. What ended family separation was public outrage. It had nothing to do with lawsuits. It had everything to do with shame, shame, shame.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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

I’m with you, Jodi! Thanks for your dedication to justice for the most vulnerable!

What’s wrong with this scenario: life-tenured Federal Judges who won’t stand up for the rule of law, Due Process, and Equal Protection in the face of an arrogantly and overtly lawless White Nationalist Regime; DOJ and other U.S. Government lawyers who defend immoral and disingenuous positions in Federal Court, often, as in the Census Case and the DACA Case using pretextual rationales and knowingly false information; dehumanization, with overwhelming racial and religious overtones, of those who deserve our protection and rely on our sense of fairness; undercutting, mistreating and humiliating the brave lawyers like Jodi who are standing up for justice in the face of tyranny; GOP legislators who are lawyers defending Trump’s mockery of the Constitution, human decency, and the rule of law and knowingly and defiantly spreading Putin’s false narratives.

Obviously, there has been a severe failure in our legal and ethical education programs and our criteria for Federal Judicial selections, particularly at the higher levels, and particularly with respect to the critical characteristic of courage. Too many “go alongs to get alongs!” I can only hope that our republic survives long enough to reform and correct these existential defects that now threaten to bring us all down.

Where’s the accountability? Where’s the outrage? Where’s our humanity?

We should also remember that many asylum seekers from Africa, who face extreme danger in Mexico, are also being targeted (“shithole countries?”) and abused as part of the Regime’s judicially-enabled, racially driven, anti-asylum, anti-rule-of-law antics at the Southern Border. https://apple.news/AyYSWSXNfSdOm63skxWaUTQ

Also, morally corrupt Trump Regime officials continued to tout “Crimes Against Humanity” as an acceptable approach to border enforcement and “reducing apprehensions!” Will machine gun turrets be next on their list? Will Article III Judges give that their “A-OK?”

We’re actually paying Article III Federal Judges who are knowingly and intentionally furthering “Crimes Against Humanity.” Totally outrageous!

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

12-10-19

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

TOP UPDATES

NY to begin issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants<https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/immigrants-driver-s-licenses-new-york-1.39283599>

Newsday: The Green Light Law also allows new kinds of records to be used by immigrants to apply for licenses. These include an unexpired passport from another country, an unexpired identification number from a consulate, and a foreign driver’s license that is valid or expired for less than 24 months. If an applicant doesn’t have a Social Security number, they need to sign an affidavit that they hadn’t been issued one. Even the federal government would need a court order to obtain these records. The law requires that most of the records to eventually be destroyed, and supporters expect that would happen before court orders could be issued. The documentation is specifically identified as not being a public record under the law.

Justices Lean Toward Broader Review of Deportation Orders<https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/justices-lean-toward-immigrants-over-deportation-review>

Bloomberg: Justices from both the conservative and liberal wings of the court aggressively questioned the government’s attorney in a case examining what immigration decisions are reviewable in federal court.

More immigration judges to be assigned to cases at tent facilities<https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/06/politics/immigration-court-judges-remain-in-mexico/index.html>

CNN: As of mid-September, there were 19 judges from three separate immigration courts in Texas hearing cases. But the latest expansion includes the use of immigration judges assigned to a center in Fort Worth, Texas, that is closed to the public, leaving little opportunity for people to observe hearings.

Inside the So-Called “Safe Third”—and Trump’s Latest Attack on Asylum-Seekers<https://msmagazine.com/2019/12/04/inside-the-so-called-safe-third-and-the-trump-administrations-latest-attack-on-asylum-seekers/>

Ms.: [Karen Musalo (CGRS)] recently returned from a human rights fact-finding trip with colleagues to El Salvador, and our findings illustrate the absurdity of a U.S. / El Salvador safe third country agreement.

Year In Review: The Most Significant Immigration Stories Of 2019<https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/12/09/the-most-disturbing-immigration-stories-of-2019/#74b86cac1302>

Forbes: The year 2019 produced many significant and, in some cases, tragic stories about immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The list is not comprehensive but focuses on those stories considered most important to remember.

North Dakota county may become US’s 1st to bar new refugees<https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/north-dakota-county-uss-1st-bar-refugees-67579252>

ABC: If they vote to bar refugees, as expected, Burleigh County — home to about 95,000 people and the capital city of Bismarck — could become the first local government to do so since President Donald Trump issued an executive order making it possible.

Trump Has Built a Wall of Bureaucracy to Keep Out the Very Immigrants He Says He Wants<https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/trump-h1b-visa-immigration-restrictions/>

MJ: Even as President Donald Trump has complained about rules that prevent American companies “from retaining highly skilled and… totally brilliant people” from abroad, his administration has made sweeping changes to the H-1B program, denying visas to skilled immigrants, some who have been working in the United States for years. USCIS has been denying H-1B petitions at a record rate: 24 percent of first-time H-1B applications were denied through the third quarter of 2019 fiscal year, compared with 6 percent in 2015.

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

Matter of O-S-A-F-<https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1224026/download>

(1) Torturous conduct committed by a public official who is acting “in an official capacity,” that is, “under color of law” is covered by the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted and opened for signature Dec. 10, 1984, G.A. Res. 39/46, 39 U.N. GAOR Supp. No. 51, at 197, U.N. Doc. A/RES/39/708 (1984) (entered into force June 26, 1987; for the United States Apr. 18, 1988), but such conduct by an official who is not acting in an official capacity, also known as a “rogue official,” is not covered by the Convention.

(2) The key consideration in determining if a public official was acting under color of law is whether he was able to engage in torturous conduct because of his government position or if he could have done so without a connection to the government.

New Acting Court Administrator at New York – Varick Immigration Court

EOIR: Effective today, Paul Friedman is the Acting Court Administrator for the New York – Varick, Fishkill, and Ulster immigration courts. Paul is currently the Court Administrator for the Elizabeth Immigration Court in New Jersey. He will be splitting his time between the Elizabeth IC and the Varick IC each week.

Appeals court lifts some rulings blocking Trump ‘public charge’ rule for immigrants<https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/05/trump-public-charge-immigrants-legal-076855>

Politico: A divided 9th Circuit panel clears away obstacles to a key administration immigration policy, but courts in other parts of the country [including SDNY] still have it on hold.

ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging Programs that Rush Migrants Through Asylum Screenings Without Access to Attorneys in Border Patrol Facilities<https://www.aclutx.org/en/press-releases/aclu-files-lawsuit-challenging-programs-rush-migrants-through-asylum-screenings>

ACLU: The lawsuit states that the new programs – known as Prompt Asylum Claim Review (“PACR”) and the Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (“HARP”) – require the detention of asylum seekers in dangerous CBP facilities known as “hieleras” (or “iceboxes” for their freezing temperatures) with no meaningful way to obtain or consult with an attorney before their hearings.

Acevedo v. Barr Denied<https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/17-3519/17-3519-2019-12-03.html>

Justia: The Second Circuit denied a petition for review of the BIA’s decision affirming the IJ’s determination that petitioner was removable and ineligible for cancellation of removal. The court held that petitioner’s conviction under New York Penal Law 110.00, 130.45 for attempted oral or anal sexual conduct with a person under the age of fifteen constitutes sexual abuse of a minor, and was therefore an aggravated felony under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The court explained that petitioner’s conviction under the New York statute did not encompass more conduct than the generic definition and could not realistically result in an individual’s conviction for conduct made with a less than knowing mens rea.

11th Circuit Defers to Matter of A-B-<https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/12/04/11th-circuit-tanks-defers-to-matter-of-a-b-refugee-women-of-color-sentenced-to-potential-death-without-due-process-by-judges-elizabeth-l-branch-peter-t-fay-frank-m-hull/>

Courtside: The BIA concluded, based on recent precedent from the Attorney General, Matter of A-B-, 27 I. & N. Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018), that Amezcua-Preciado’s proposed social group of “women in Mexico who are unable to leave their domestic relationships” was not a cognizable particular social group under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”).

Typo/ambiguity in the new I-912 instructions for SIJS<https://www.uscis.gov/i-192>

Page 6 of the new I-912 instructions state: “If you are applying for adjustment of status or filing related forms based on SIJ classification, you are not required to complete Part 2. of Form I-912 or to show proof of income to request a fee waiver.” Part 2 is the biographical information. It is possible this is an error and USCIS meant Part 3, regarding income. If you have any test cases that won’t age out, spread the word on how this plays out.

USCIS Extension of Comment Period on Proposed Rule with Adjustments to Fee Schedule and Other Changes<https://www.aila.org/advo-media/submit-feedback-notices-requests-for-comment/84-fr-67243-12-9-19>

USCIS extension of the comment period on the proposed rule published at 84 FR 62280 on 11/14/19, which would significantly alter the USCIS fee schedule and make other changes, including form changes. Comments are now due 12/30/19. (84 FR 67243, 12/9/19) AILA Doc. No. 19120900

EOIR to Open New Immigration Court in Los Angeles<https://www.aila.org/infonet/eoir-to-open-new-immigration-court-in-los-angeles>

EOIR will open a new immigration court in Los Angeles, on December 9, 2019. The Van Nuys Blvd. immigration court will cover Kern, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties, and parts of Los Angeles County. Notice includes court’s location, contact information, and hours of operation. AILA Doc. No. 19120234

CBP Meets with Privacy Groups to Discuss Biometric Entry-Exit Mandate<https://www.aila.org/infonet/cbp-meets-with-privacy-groups-to-discuss-biometric>

On 12/3/19, CBP met with privacy groups to discuss its implementation of the congressional biometric entry-exit mandate and the protection of traveler privacy during the biometric facial comparison process at ports of entry. CBP has implemented this technology at more than 20 U.S. ports of entry. AILA Doc. No. 19120432

DOS Final Rule Clarifying Passport Regulations Regarding Applicants with Seriously Delinquent Tax Debt<https://www.aila.org/infonet/dos-84-fr-67184-12-9-19>

DOS final rule making a clarification to the regulations on passports regarding situations in which a passport applicant is certified by the Secretary of the Treasury as having a seriously delinquent tax debt. The rule is effective 12/9/19. (84 FR 67184, 12/9/19) AILA Doc. No. 19120932

USCIS 60-Day Notice and Request for Comments on Additional Proposed Revisions to Form I-290B<https://www.aila.org/advo-media/submit-feedback-notices-requests-for-comment/uscis-84-fr-66924-12-6-19>

USCIS 60-day notice and request for comments on proposed revisions to Form I-290B, Notice of Appeal or Motion. USCIS originally published this notice at 84 FR 39359 and decided to propose additional changes in this new 60-day notice. Comments are due 2/4/20. (84 FR 66924, 12/6/19) AILA Doc. No. 19120934

ICE Opening New Detention Facility in West Texas<https://www.aila.org/infonet/ice-opening-new-detention-facility-in-west-texas>

ICE announced that it is opening the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, the week of December 9, 2019. The facility, which will be managed by Management and Training Corporation (MTC), will house about 1,000 ICE detainees as they await outcomes of their immigration proceedings or removal.

AILA Doc. No. 19120430

ICE Provides Guidance on the Phase-Out of the Interactive Scheduling System<https://www.aila.org/infonet/ice-provides-guidance-on-the-phase-out>

Obtained via FOIA, ICE provided the guidance to ICE staff regarding the phase-out of the Interactive Scheduling System and replacement by the DHS Portal to schedule Notices to Appear. The Portal replaced CASE-ISS as of August 2019. Special thanks to Aaron Hall. AILA Doc. No. 19120330

Update to Form I-192, Application for Advance Permission to Enter as a Nonimmigrant. New Edition Dated Dec. 2, 2019.<https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMDAsInVyaSI6ImJwMjpjbGljayIsImJ1bGxldGluX2lkIjoiMjAxOTEyMDMuMTM4MDU4MTEiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy51c2Npcy5nb3YvaS0xOTI_dXRtX3NvdXJjZT1yc3MtZmVlZCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249Rm9ybXMlMjBVcGRhdGVzIn0.igkmXB-R6v9goSblHb89LrAWdtcG83febe5H96Erz2U/br/72220790478-l>

Update to Form I-192, Application for Advance Permission to Enter as a Nonimmigrant. New Edition Dated Dec. 2, 2019.

Update to Form I-290B, Notice of Appeal or Motion. New Edition Dated Dec. 2, 2019.<https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMDIsInVyaSI6ImJwMjpjbGljayIsImJ1bGxldGluX2lkIjoiMjAxOTEyMDMuMTM4MDU4MTEiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy51c2Npcy5nb3YvaS0yOTBiP3V0bV9zb3VyY2U9cnNzLWZlZWQmdXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPUZvcm1zJTIwVXBkYXRlcyJ9.BnD9VWQtxoxzTff9s58El_ZL4l5JOIv4hyGLDNNvDJE/br/72220790478-l>

Update to Form I-290B, Notice of Appeal or Motion. New Edition Dated Dec. 2, 2019.

Update to Form I-191, Application for Relief Under Former Section 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). New Edition Dated Dec. 2, 2019.<https://lnks.gd/l/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJidWxsZXRpbl9saW5rX2lkIjoxMDMsInVyaSI6ImJwMjpjbGljayIsImJ1bGxldGluX2lkIjoiMjAxOTEyMDMuMTM4MDU4MTEiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy51c2Npcy5nb3YvaS0xOTE_dXRtX3NvdXJjZT1yc3MtZmVlZCZ1dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249Rm9ybXMlMjBVcGRhdGVzIn0.9detMlYAc9qo9rwvtKBwQvFvEDlzTVJbDR2Bych15f0/br/72220790478-l>

Update to Form I-191, Application for Relief Under Former Section 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). New Edition Dated Dec. 2, 2019.

RESOURCES

* Asylos<https://www.asylos.eu/>: Free country conditions database and individualized research.

* Practice Advisory: Strategies and Considerations in the Wake of Pereira v. Sessions<https://cliniclegal.org/resources/practice-advisory-strategies-and-considerations-wake-pereira-v-sessions>

* Practice Alert: Updates to the BIA Practice Manual<https://www.aila.org/infonet/practice-alert-updates-to-the-bia-practice-manual>

* USCIS Issues Policy Alert Regarding Fees for Submission of Benefits Requests<https://www.aila.org/infonet/uscis-issues-policy-alert-regarding-fees>

* GAO: Arrests, Detentions, and Removals, and Issues Related to Selected Populations<https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-36>

* New NY DMV Guidance<https://dmv.ny.gov/driver-license/driver-licenses-and-green-light-law> and license and permit guide<http://nysdmv.standard-license-and-permit-document-guide.sgizmo.com/s3/?_ga=2.197959914.472787525.1575669305-120439318.1520888742>

* DHS report on CBP detention of children and families<https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/fccp_final_report_1.pdf>

* FAQ: Federal Court’s Preliminary Injunction Restores Asylum Eligibility for Asylum Seekers Turned Back at Ports of Entry Before July 16, 2019<https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/other_litigation_documents/challenging_custom_and_border_protections_unlawful_practice_of_turning_away_asylum_seekers_faq.pdf>

* Human Rights Fiasco: The Trump Administration’s Dangerous Asylum Returns Continue<https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/HumanRightsFiascoDec2019.pdf>

* Practice Pointer: CBP Transfer Notices for U Visa Petitions<https://asistahelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Practice-Pointer_-Transfer-Notices-to-CBP.pdf>

* Forced Return to Danger: Civil Society Concerns with the Agreements Signed between the United States and Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador <https://www.lawg.org/wp-content/uploads/Forced-Return-to-Danger-STC-Civil-Society-Memo-12.4.19.pdf>

* Making Way for Corruption in Guatemala and Honduras<https://www.lawg.org/wp-content/uploads/LAWGEF-Guatemala-Honduras-memo-December-2019.pdf>

EVENTS

* 12/10/19 Immigration Justice Campaign for a Free Webinar on Recent Attacks on Asylum<https://www.aila.org/about/announcements/join-ijc-for-free-webinar-recent-attacks-asylum>

* 12/10/19 USCIS Invites Stakeholders to Teleconference on SIJ Classification Updates <https://www.aila.org/infonet/uscis-invites-stakeholders-teleconference-on-sij>

* 12/10/19 Working With Transgender, Gender Non-conforming, and Non-binary Immigrants: A Guide for Legal Practitioners!<https://avp.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fb8da3e27ad6713b5d8945fc2&id=70a5b33685&e=15233cf2a6>

* 12/12/19 Family-Based Immigration<https://mailchi.mp/e0c658697ffb/save-the-dates-new-immigration-law-fundamentals-series?e=09f6a8c81a>

* 12/12/19 Annual AILA New York Chapter Symposium<https://agora.aila.org/Conference/Detail/1637>

* 12/13/19 Walk-through of our latest Practice Advisory: Adjustment Applications of TPS Holders<https://secure.everyaction.com/Ehcp3tCeXkSu6MU8WxWOTw2?emci=458c6463-4518-ea11-828b-2818784d6d68&emdi=eb297b03-6318-ea11-828b-2818784d6d68&ceid=6058633&contactdata=fMDCB%2fqMqZ3aN7qEu%2bEEOZ%2f2u0bt1aESH09dm5dECnvlpUiBkFdYswuRXlQCtzzyIpgKxImxdeQKGFsR9FmfW5bEKkiDV4xpC%2brHKTjalyc7w16jw%2bSgJg5GHlK0kroKZ05AP0aHGbsGnYQCk2EX70whLDCxYaRq%2f0jgrAKy3hBelwcS%2fB5nvMSmoeNxg%2f83NHhP5SSrMwjY6MHa0O9UbSCevL%2frb%2fQ2w9N1BEtsFNwULTT1RpAXYa1Axo%2fAcXRktUZ3InKJH5jCw7olAZDtDVKQemN6U%2fzkwURRNhwT4S32Y5xzNEB9X0qfvoiUKvxe>

* 12/16/19 Census 101: Energizing and Mobilizing NYC Nonprofits to Get Out The Count<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rryroN2pG2kYUew8H3e8zCTyLRsqnyrB1o9RQ1e8L6s/edit>

* 12/17/19 Adjustment of Status and Consular Processing<https://mailchi.mp/e0c658697ffb/save-the-dates-new-immigration-law-fundamentals-series?e=09f6a8c81a>

* 12/17/19 Incredibly Credible: Preparing Your Client to Testify<https://agora.aila.org/Conference/Detail/1632>

* 12/17/19 Keeping Our Communities Safe: The Impact of ICE Arrests at NYS Courts<https://www.eventbrite.com/e/keeping-our-communities-safe-the-impact-of-ice-arrests-at-nys-courts-registration-80735649501>

* 12/20/19 Census 101: Energizing and Mobilizing NYC Nonprofits to Get Out The Count<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rryroN2pG2kYUew8H3e8zCTyLRsqnyrB1o9RQ1e8L6s/edit>

* 2/6/20 Basic Immigration Law 2020: Business, Family, Naturalization and Related Areas<https://www.pli.edu/programs/basic-immigration-law?t=live>

* 2/7/20 Asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Crime Victim, and Other Forms of Immigration Relief 2020<https://www.pli.edu/programs/asylum-juvenile-immigration-relief?t=live>

* 2/28/20 5th Annual New York Asylum and Immigration Law Conference

* 7/23/20 Defending Immigration Removal Proceedings 2020<https://www.pli.edu/programs/defending-immigration-removal?t=live>

ImmProf

Sunday, December 8, 2019

* Music Break: Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Stunning Video: “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)”<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/music-break-watch-lin-manuel-mirandas-stunning-new-video-for-immigrants-we-get-the-job-done.html>

* Ninth Circuit Stays Injunction of Trump Public Charge Rule<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/ninth-circuit-stays-injunction-of-trump-public-charge-rule.html>

* Trump is trying to make it too expensive for poor American immigrants to stay<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/trump-is-trying-to-make-it-too-expensive-for-poor-american-immigrants-to-stay.html>

Saturday, December 7, 2019

* Immigrants’ access to legal assistance further diminished by EOIR memo<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/the-justice-department-recently-issueda-policy-memo-that-would-limit-immigrants-ability-to-rely-on-friends-of-the-court-for-l.html>

* Immigration Article of the Day: Aspiring Americans Thrown Out in the Cold: The Discriminatory Use of False Testimony Allegations to Deny Naturalization by Nermeen Arastu<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/immigrtaion-article-of-the-day-aspiring-americans-thrown-out-in-the-cold-the-discriminatory-use-of-f.html>

Friday, December 6, 2019

* Your Playlist: Luba Dvorak<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/your-playlist-luba-dvorak.html>

* Workplace Immigration Inquiries Quadruple Under Trump<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/workplace-immigration-inquiries-quadruple-under-trump.html>

* Inside the Cell Where a Sick 16-Year-Old Boy Died in Border Patrol Care<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/inside-the-cell-where-a-sick-16-year-old-boy-died-in-border-patrol-care.html>

* From the Bookshelves: The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri (2019)<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/from-the-bookshelves-the-ungrateful-refugee-what-immigrants-never-tell-you-by-dina-nayeri-2019.html>

Thursday, December 5, 2019

* Russian Finds Inventive Way to Swindle Migrants<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/russian-finds-inventive-way-to-swindle-migrants-.html>

* Immigration Article of the Day: Becoming Unconventional: Constricting the ‘Particular Social Group’ Ground for Asylum by Fatma E. Marouf<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/immigration-article-of-the-day-becoming-unconventional-constricting-the-particular-social-group-grou.html>

* University-Wide Scholarship Program for Displaced Students<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/university-wide-scholarship-program-for-displaced-students.html>

* Joseph A. Vail Asylum Law Workshop<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/joseph-a-vail-asylum-law-workshop.html>

* New Report Based on 3,000 Legal Screenings of Undocumented Immigrants<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/new-report-based-on-3000-legal-screenings-of-undocumented-immigrants.html>

* From the Bookshelves: They Came to Toil: Newspaper Representations of Mexicans and Immigrants in the Great Depression by Melita M. Garza<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/from-the-bookshelves-they-came-to-toil-newspaper-representations-of-mexicans-and-immigrants-in-the-g.html>

* Music Break: Rapper Rich Brian gets vulnerable about his Asian identity, immigration story<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/music-break-rapper-rich-brian-gets-vulnerable-about-his-asian-identity-immigration-story.html>

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

* Looking for Exam Inspiration?<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/looking-for-exam-inspiration-.html>

* GAO Report: Immigration-Related Prosecutions Increased from 2017 to 2018 in Response to U.S. Attorney General’s Direction<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/gao-report-immigration-related-prosecutions-increased-from-2017-to-2018-in-response-to-us-attorney-generals-direction.html>

* Peter Margulies: Court Issues Preliminary Injunction Against President Trump’s Ban on Uninsured Immigrants<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/peter-margulies-court-issues-preliminary-injunction-against-president-trumps-ban-on-uninsured-immigr.html>

* ICE bought state driver’s license records to track undocumented immigrants<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/ice-bought-state-drivers-license-records-to-track-undocumented-immigrants.html>

* “Building a Wall Out of Red Tape” from PRI/The World<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/pris-building-a-wall-out-of-red-tape.html>

* How McKinsey Helped the Trump Administration Detain and Deport Immigrants<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/how-mckinsey-helped-the-trump-administration-detain-and-deport-immigrants.html>

* Immigration Article of the Day: Faithful Execution: Where Administrative Law Meets the Constitution by Evan D. Bernick<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/immigration-article-of-the-day-faithful-execution-where-administrative-law-meets-the-constitution-by.html>

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

* From the Bookshelves: Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA by Michael A. Olivas<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/from-the-bookshelves-perchance-to-dream-a-legal-and-political-history-of-the-dream-act-and-daca-by-m.html>

* Unprecedented: Trump Is First to Use PATRIOT Act to Detain a Man Forever<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/unprecedented-trump-is-first-to-use-patriot-act-to-detain-a-man-forever.html>

* El Sueño Americano | The American Dream: Photographs by Tom Kiefer<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/el-sue%C3%B1o-americano-the-american-dream-photographs-by-tom-kiefer.html>

* SCOTUSblog: Argument preview for Guerrero-Lasprilla v. Barr and Ovalles v. Barr<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/scotusblog-argument-preview-for-guerrero-lasprilla-v-barr-and-ovalles-v-barr.html>

* César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández: Abolish Immigration Prisons<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/c%C3%A9sar-cuauht%C3%A9moc-garc%C3%ADa-hern%C3%A1ndez-abolish-immigration-prisons-.html>

* History of United States Immigration Laws<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/history-of-united-states-immigration-laws.html>

Monday, December 2, 2019

* From the Bookshelves: Border Wars by Julie Hirschfield Davis and Michael D. Shear<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/from-the-bookshelves-border-wars-by-julie-hirschfield-davis-and-michael-d-shear.html>

* Is OPT in peril? Colleges sign amicus brief opposing end of OPT<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/is-opt-in-peril.html>

* A Fact Worth Remembering: Half of Undocumented Immigrants are Visa Overstays<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/12/a-fact-worth-remembering-half-of-undocumented-immigrants-are-visa-overstays.html>

* Immigration in Pop Culture: ICE Raid on “Shameless”<https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/1

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

The item about the BIA’s atrociously wrong CAT interpretation in Matter of O-F-A-S-, the results of the Musalo visit to El Salvador, the continuing “go along to get along” with Trump’s legal abuses in immigration by gutless panels of the 9th & 11th Circuits in City & County of San Francisco and AMEZCUA-PRECIADO, respectively, and the expansion of lawless “Tent Courts” by EOIR ought to outrage every American.

On the flip side, the possibility that the Supremes will finally stiff the Regime’s bogus arguments for limiting or eliminating judicial review of final orders of removal and the new ACLU suit about the Regime’s unlawful schemes to prevent attorney access for asylum seekers provide at least some hope of better days to come for the “Good Guys of the Resistance.”

Thanks, Elizabeth, for keeping the NDPA informed!

PWS

12-10-19

AS ARTICLE III JUDGES SHIRK DUTIES, EMBOLDENED EOIR RAMPS UP ASSEMBLY LINE JUSTICE IN TENT CITIES WHILE PLOTTING TO BAR PUBLIC FROM VIEWING THEIR LATEST ASSAULTS ON DUE PROCESS!

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

More immigration judges to be assigned to cases at tent facilities

By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

Updated 7:13 AM EST, Fri December 06, 2019

(CNN)More immigration judges will begin conducting hearings over video conferencing at tent courts along the US-Mexico border, raising concerns among lawyers about transparency in the immigration process.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration erected facilities in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, to serve as makeshift courts for migrants seeking asylum in the United States who have been returned to Mexico until their court date. The judges in these cases are not at the tent facility but preside by teleconference from other immigration courts several miles away.

As of mid-September, there were 19 judges from three separate immigration courts in Texas hearing cases. But the latest expansion includes the use of immigration judges assigned to a center in Fort Worth, Texas, that is closed to the public, leaving little opportunity for people to observe hearings.

“I’m just very concerned that there will be no public access to these hearings. And hearings will be operating in secret, without any transparency and notice to the public,” said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

US court proceedings are generally open to the public.

Adjudication centers serve as a hub for immigration judges who beam into courtrooms remotely to hear cases. There are two — one in Fort Worth and another in Falls Church, Virginia. Neither is open to the public.

Immigration judges assigned to the Fort Worth Immigration Adjudication Center are expected to begin hearing cases of migrants who fall under the administration’s “Migrant Protection Protocols” program via video teleconference in January 2020, according to the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s immigration courts.

“Public access to hearings is governed by regulation, and EOIR’s process and policies surrounding the openness of hearings have not changed,” said EOIR spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly.

Lynch said some attorneys representing migrants who have been waiting in Mexico for their court date began receiving notices of judges from the Fort Worth center assigned to their cases in late November. The immigration judges’ union has also taken issue with the use of the center.

“MPP is rife with issues but by assigning the adjudication centers to the tent courts takes us to a new low where public access to the court are now eliminated,” said Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “This is not the way we as judges or courts should function.”

The process has already presented lawyers with a host of logistical challenges and some anticipate those will worsen as immigration judges assigned to adjudication centers begin hearing cases.

Currently, advocates and legal observers have been able to monitor proceedings from three immigration courts in Texas: Harlingen, San Antonio and Port Isabel.

US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement to CNN that access to the Laredo and Brownsville hearing facilities, which are located on the agency’s property, “will be assessed on a case-by-case basis when operationally feasible and in accordance with procedures for access to any CBP secure facility.”

Around 60,000 migrants have been subject to the administration’s policy that requires some migrants to wait in Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings. Given that they’re residing in Mexico, immigration lawyers based in the US have limited access to them, particularly in dangerous regions. Only a small share of migrants in the program have secured representation, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks court data and released a report on access to attorneys this summer.

Some in the legal community argue that access to the tent facilities, not just the immigration courts where the judges are located, is important for that reason — to give lawyers the opportunity to connect with migrants who may need legal representation and explain the process. It’s equally important, lawyers argue, that people be allowed to observe the proceedings.

“Without the public being able to see what’s been going on in these hearings, the public has no assurance that people are being given proper due process and proper shot at fighting their asylum case,” said Erin Thorn Vela, a staff attorney in the racial and economic justice program at the Texas Civil Rights Project.

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Wow! Secret Courts sentencing folks to torture or death without lawyers, adequate notice, time to prepare, or any consistent application of reasonable rules. Sounds like the “Star Chamber.” Is that why we fought the American Revolution? To create our own version of the worst abuses of the Crown? Apparently.

As American justice and the rule of law go down the tubes, the Supremes and the Circuits have become “disinterested observers,” at best.

Thanks to Laura Lynch at AILA for forwarding this latest example of judicial irresponsibility.

Constantly Confront Complicit Courts 4 Change!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-06-19

COMPLICIT 9TH CIRCUIT JUDGES CONTINUE TO CODDLE TRUMP — This Time Legal Immigrants Are The Victims Of Trump’s Judicially-Enabled White Nationalist Agenda — Judges Jay Bybee & Sandra Ikuta Tank, While Judge John Owens Files a Feeble Dissent!

https://apple.news/AJHrFUWorRIyFv_yLCkI5Aw

Priscilla Alvarez reports for CNN:

Trump nabs win on rule that could reshape legal immigration, but hold remains in place

Updated 12:17 PM EST December 6, 2019
Washington

A federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on a rule that makes it more difficult for immigrants who rely on government assistance to obtain legal status to take effect.

But the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals doesn’t have an immediate practical effect because the policy is still on hold due to nationwide rulings in two separate federal courts.

In August, the administration unveiled its regulation broadening the definition of “public charge,” a provision that dates back at least to the Immigration Act of 1882. The rule introduced by the Trump administration affects people who receive most forms of Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers. It was immediately met with pushback from advocates and several states who argued that the changes would penalize immigrants who rely on temporary assistance from the government and impose costs on the states.

While the majority of the three-judge panel recognized many of these arguments, they also found that the administration would likely succeed in its argument that it has the legal authority to define what makes someone a public charge.

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay on rulings that have blocked the so-called “public charge” rule from taking effect. The panel has jurisdiction over nine western states. Legal challenges in other parts of the country continue to halt the rule from being implemented.

The ruling was a rare victory for the President, who has repeatedly railed against the Ninth Circuit.

“We find that the history of the use of ‘public charge’ in federal immigration law demonstrates that ‘public charge’ does not have a fixed, unambiguous meaning,” wrote Judge Jay Bybee. “Rather, the phrase is subject to multiple interpretations, it in fact has been interpreted differently, and the Executive Branch has been afforded the discretion to interpret it.”

Judge John Owens dissented in part because of the “lack of irreparable harm to the government at this early stage.”

The White House lauded the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in a statement Friday, but noted the obstacles the rule still faces before it can be implemented.

“Unfortunately, as a practical matter, the ruling has accomplished nothing to vindicate the rule of law due to the destructive practice of individual district judges taking over national policy issues by issuing nationwide injunctions,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. “Such subversions of the rule of law must come to an end.”

The 73-page majority ruling recounted the history of the rule and noted that Congress didn’t define the regulation, thereby leaving it “subject to multiple interpretations.”

Bybee, however, also recognized the difficulty of the issues at hand, writing separately that “we as a nation are engaged in titanic struggles over the future of immigration in the United States.” He also appeared to take aim at administration officials, including the President, who have accused courts of making decisions based on policy preferences, as well as Congress for lack of legislative action.

“My first point is that even as we are embroiled in these controversies, no one should mistake our judgments for our policy preferences” he wrote, adding: “In the immigration context, whatever dialogue we have been having with the administration over its policies, we are a poor conversant.”

Judges Bybee and Sandra Ikuta were appointed by George W. Bush while Owens was appointed by Barack Obama.

© 2019 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Judge Jay Bybee’s majority opinion reads like something written by White Nationalist Stephen Miller: Judges should never, ever, think of the clear and logical consequences of their actions, nor should they worry themselves about an Administration with a clearly invidious racially motivated agenda of dismembering the Constitution.

And, gosh, the world might come to an end if the Executive were actually forced to act in a reasonable manner, consistent with the facts: This regulation would do far more harm than good and has, even without implementation, already been responsible for the spread of disease and immigrants not getting available health services, sometimes for U.S. citizen family members, because of the fear and confusion that Trump has intentionally sown in ethnic communities. Just because we make the services legally available, doesn’t mean we will allow you to use them if you are an immigrant. This is the kind of nonsense that Bybee promotes in his decision.

Bybee also seems totally indifferent to the simple fact that every time Article III Judges “tank” on their legal and Constitutional responsibilities, actual innocent human beings suffer, and even die, at the hands of Trump, Miller, and the rest of their bullying and cowardly White Nationalist “wrecking crew.” Inaction, particularly in the face of tyranny, can have just as grave consequences as action.

Bybee’s brain-dead colleague Judge Sandra Ikuta joined his blathering subservience to Trump’s White Nationalist mission.

Bybee even wrote separately to absolve himself of any moral responsibility for his complicity and to finger the “real culprit” here, a feckless Congress. The latter point is correct. But, according to Bybee, in the face of a Congress that has abdicated its Constitutional responsibilities, life-tenured Article III Judges also get to ignore theirs. The last thing that should be expected of the life-tenured is any “heaving lifting” or courage in the face of tyranny! Nope, they are there to “go along to get along.”

After all, while most of us have no difficulty recognizing the undisguised ethnic and racial basis for the Trump regime’s anti-immigrant agenda, and while many U.S. District Judges, and even some Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers, are able to figure it out, such level of awareness is completely beyond Court of Appeals Judges. Nor, can they be expected to discern that a regulatory proposal adopted over the objections of most of the 266,077 commenters is likely to be based on something other than reasonable, responsible, fact-based policy making: Like, perhaps racial and ethnic biases or arbitrariness that violate our Constitution. Not to mention that the policy also makes little sense from a socio-economic standpoint.

This is an Administration whose proclivity to present “pretextual reasons” to cover their tracks for improper and illegal motives has been recognized all the way up to the Supreme Court in the “Census Case.” And, while ideally policy-making should be informed by “Executive Expertise,” that clearly isn’t the case with immigration under the Trump Regime. Trump’s utter disdain, disrespect, and disregard for Executive Branch civil servants with expertise and a fact-based approach to policy making is well-established.

But, of course, all of this is too deep for Article III Judges like Bybee and Ituka to be expected to grasp. Better to just turn the other way, put on blinders, ignore the Constitution and the rule of law, and let the abuse of immigrants continue unabated. Leave the “tough stuff” to others.

But, just whom might those “others” be who will eventually put an end to this anti-Constitutional, and ultimately anti-American, rampage of Executive overreach? An interesting question when you consider that those courageous lawyers and U.S. District Judges trying to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law in the face of Trump’s onslaught have too often been “dissed,” ignored, and undercut by Bybee and his complicit colleagues.

Did our “Founding Fathers” really intend to empower a despotic Executive to act freely against individuals without without any realistic restraints? If the Trump Administration is what they aspired to, then why didn’t just stick with good old K. George III? If, on the other hand, the Trump Administration is, in fact, “Our Founders’ Worst Nightmare,” as most informed (e.g., other than GOP toadies, Fox News, and other extremest media) observers have concluded, why are the Article III Appellate Courts too gutless to say so and stand up for our rights?

Got to wonder who is going to stand up for the rights of Judges like Bybee and Ituka, and even Owens, when Trump, Miller, and the rest of the regime come for them?

The case is City and County of San Francisco v. USCIS, and you can read it at the link in Priscilla’s article.

Sadly, Due Process and Fundamental Fairness don’t seem to have any “friends in high places” these days. Ultimately, that’s going to be a problem for our nation even if the Bybees and Itukas of the world are too blind and self-interested in preserving their ivory tower sinecures to recognize it and act accordingly!

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

12-06-19

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