PRISCILLA ALVAREZ @ CNN EXPOSES BIDEN’S SECRET, DUE-PROCESS-FREE, DEPORTATIONS OF VENEZUELANS TO COLOMBIA! ☠️🤮 — Venezuela’s Repressive Left-Wing Dictatorship — So Horrible It’s Not Even Recognized By The US — Has Sent Millions Of Refugees Fleeing — That Hasn’t Stopped Biden From Arbitrarily Rejecting Them!

Priscilla’s latest:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/politics/border-venezuela-colombia/index.html

US begins quietly flying Venezuelan migrants to Colombia under controversial border policy

By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

Updated 12:27 PM ET, Mon January 31, 2022

(CNN)The Biden administration, unable to return an increasing number of Venezuelans arrested at the US-Mexico border to their home country, is now sending those migrants to Colombia if they previously resided there, according to two Homeland Security officials.

White House officials have grown increasingly concerned about the large numbers of single adults continuing to cross the US southern border, particularly from countries that Mexico won’t accept under a controversial Trump-era policy, two sources familiar with discussions said.

The flights of Venezuelans to Colombia, which have not been previously reported, marks another effort by the administration to try to stem the flow of migrants, pushing those who arrive further away from the US-Mexico border including those seeking asylum.

In December, US Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 13,000 single adults from Venezuela on the US southern border, compared with 96 in December 2020, according to agency data.

A humanitarian crisis and political instability have taken hold of Venezuela in recent years. Around 6 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations, usually fleeing to other parts of Latin America which have also struggled during the pandemic.

There’s been bipartisan acknowledgment of the deteriorating situation in Venezuela. Last year, Sens. Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Bob Menendez, a Democrat, introduced a Senate resolution expressing alarm over the situation in the country.

Colombia also granted temporary legal status to Venezuelans who had fled there, allowing them to legally work in the country. But for those who opted to journey to the US-Mexico border to seek protections in the US, expulsion to Colombia now puts them thousands of miles away from the possibility of claiming asylum in the US.

The handling of the US-Mexico border has dogged the Biden administration since the early days of Joe Biden’s presidency as a growing number of migrants journey to the United States, fleeing deteriorating conditions in the western hemisphere. Republicans have recently seized on the releases of migrants — some of whom can’t be expelled because of their nationality — citing it as another example of what they describe as the administration’s poor management of the border.

Under a public health authority, known as Title 42, authorities can swiftly remove migrants encountered at the US southern border, effectively barring those seeking asylum from doing so and marking an unprecedented departure from previous protocol. The authority was invoked at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, despite suspicions among officials that it was politically motivated.

The White House has repeatedly referred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the future of the policy, saying the agency deems it necessary given the Delta and Omicron variants.

Last Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security returned two Venezuelan nationals to Colombia, where they had previously resided, the department told CNN, adding that flights to Colombia are expected to take place “on a regular basis.”

“As part of the United States COVID-19 mitigation efforts, DHS continues to enforce CDC’s Title 42 public health authority with all individuals encountered at the Southwest border. However, DHS’s ability to expel individuals may be limited for several reasons, including Mexico’s ability and capacity to receive individuals of certain nationalities,” DHS said in a statement, adding that the department has removed migrants to third countries in the region where they had lived or had status.

DHS has also acknowledged the precarious situation in Venezuela by granting a form of humanitarian relief for Venezuelans already in the United States.

Still, the Biden administration has continued to rely on the public health authority and recently defended it in court — a move that received criticism from immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers. The latest decision to expel migrants from Venezuela — a country in crisis — to Colombia reveals a further dependence on the public health authority amid a growing number of Venezuelans arriving at the US-Mexico border.

In December, US Customs and Border Protection encountered 24,819 Venezuelans at the US southern border including single adults, families and minors, up from the previous month and continuing an increasing trend. As a point of comparison, in December 2020, CBP encountered only around 200 Venezuelan migrants, according to agency data.

While tens of thousands of migrants have been turned away at the US-Mexico border, some, like South Americans, aren’t accepted by Mexico and therefore those nationals largely can’t be expelled. Under the public health authority, DHS has removed migrants to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Brazil.

Some migrants from Venezuela crossed the border in Yuma, Arizona — often flying to an airport in Mexico and then crossing at a gap along the Colorado River, cutting the journey down to just days. It’s the most viable option for many Venezuelans and Brazilians, for example, who can’t obtain a visa that allows them to work in the US — or can’t afford the years-long wait for the legal immigration process. Mexico recently put new visa restrictions in place for Venezuelans traveling to Mexico.

The US has previously taken measures to try to lower the number of migrants at the US-Mexico border. Last year, the administration started flying migrants apprehended at the southern border and subject to the Trump-era border policy linked to the pandemic to the interior of Mexico.

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

Let’s see. Colombia, a country of approximately 50 million, has taken in about 1.7 million Venezuelans. https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2021/10/31/supporting-colombian-host-communities-and-venezuelan-migrants-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

The US, a far larger and more prosperous country with approximately 7x the population of Colombia, has taken fewer than 350,000. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/09/us-temporary-protection-venezuelans

Forced migration is real, no matter what fictions and myths Administrations of both parties use to deny it.

Pretending otherwise, and that lawless deportations and “deterrence” will materially change the forces that drive it, is both immoral and ultimately futile.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-03-22

☠️🤮 “TEFLON MERRICK” — GROTESQUE DUE PROCESS MELTDOWN @ GARLAND’S EOIR CONTINUES UNABATED, WHILE AG AVOIDS ACCOUNTABILITY — 3RD CIR. CASTIGATES GARLAND’S BIASED & INCOMPETENT “STAR CHAMBERS” — “It is more akin to the argument of an advocate than the impartial analysis of a quasi-judicial agency.”

Alfred E. Neumann — As asylum applicants, other migrants, and their lawyers, receive grievous mistreatment by the “judges of his EOIR Star Chambers,” “Teflon Merrick” Garland has avoided accountability for the ongoing, systemic degrading of humanity and American justice carried out in his name!” Why?
PHOTO: Wikipedia Commons

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca3-slams-ij-bia-nsimba-v-atty-gen#

CA3 Slams IJ, BIA: Nsimba v. Atty. Gen.

Nsimba v. Atty. Gen.

“Bob Lupini Nsimba petitions for review of a December 8, 2020 decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals affirming the Immigration Judge’s denial of his application for asylum. In affirming that decision, the BIA misapplied and misinterpreted controlling precedent and imposed requirements on those seeking relief that would require petitioners to first endure torture or arrest. Accordingly, for the reasons that follow, we will grant the petition for review, vacate the ruling of the BIA and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

[You MUST read the entire opinion; the panel really goes to town on the IJ and the BIA. Hats off to Valentine Brown!]

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

Not news for anyone who (unlike Garland) has even passing familiarity with the daily mockery of justice being carried out by Garland’s “wholly-owned bogus ‘court’ system.” These AREN’T aberrations or isolated incidents! They are “business as usual” in Garland’s totally dysfunctional and out of control Immigration “Courts.”

These aren’t “courts;” they are “adjuncts of DHS enforcement, masquerading as courts,” redesigned as such by Sessions and Barr with Stephen Miller’s influence and enabled to continue their disgraceful degradation of American justice by Garland!

DRC cases, if credible and documented, should be “slam dunk grants of asylum.” They could be put on the “30 minute docket.” Instead, EOIR has been allowed and encouraged to engage in this type of obscene, dilatory nonsense, with obvious racial overtones.

This case is a microcosm of how EOIR and the DOJ have built astounding due process denying backlog! The solution is NOT more Immigration Judges! It’s better Immigration Judges.

Congrats to NDPA Star Valentine Brown!

Obviously Garland has neither standards nor any shame!

Dishonest, biased, and incompetent decisions like this should long ago have resulted in the removal from the BIA and reassignment of the BIA “judge(s)” involved.

When are the Circuits going to catch on that this entire charade is a grotesque denial of due process, pull the plug, and hold Garland accountable for this unconstitutional (not to mention unethical) degradation of American justice?

BIA judges and EOIR judges AREN’T Article IIIs, and they DON’T have life tenure in their particular jobs.

When are Dems in both Houses going to start demanding accountability and competence from Garland? How long are the Article IIIs going to allow this mind-boggling misfeasance that materially affects millions of lives in America, and squanders an unconscionable amount of legal resources, to continue before finally “pulling the plug” on Garland’s “quasi-judicial farce?”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-23-21

☠️NEW KIND REPORT SHOWS CRISIS OF PERSECUTION OF WOMEN & CHILDREN IN NORTHERN TRIANGLE EXACERBATED BY PANDEMIC — More Evidence Of Legal, Factual, & Moral Bankruptcy Of Administration’s Bogus “Deterrence Policies” As Well As Grotesque Failure Of U.S. Courts At All Levels To Uniformly Require Granting Of Asylum To Qualified Refugee Women & Children!

*Cover photo by photojournalist Guillermo Martinez shows a boy in El Salvador wearing a protective mask from his home during a COVID-19 lockdown. Photo credit: Guillermo Martinez/APHOTOGRAFIA/ Getty Images

New Report: Dual Crises

Gender-Based Violence and Inequality Facing Children and Women During the COVID-19 Pandemic in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras

Gender-based violence has long been one of the main drivers of migration from Central America to the United States. Widespread violence, including sexual abuse, human trafficking, and violence in the home and family, combined with a lack of access to protection and justice forces children and women to flee in search of safety. Drawing on existing research and interviews with children’s and women’s rights experts, this report lays out how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated already pervasive forms of violence against children and women in Central America, as well as the deeply entrenched gender inequality that leaves children and women even more vulnerable to violence.

Here’s a link to the full report: http://us.engagingnetworks.app/page/email/click/10097/1093096?email=C9P0Zhj6QQc0L7Si0LDouAN%2BRR2ul1GhmZAK81VjEpg=&campid=z6owwwxd2r6ZkArzVWMSmA==

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

Successful implementation of the U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America must start by acknowledging that gender-based violence is a primary driver of migration and includes most violence against children.

Obviously, mindless, failed enforcement and deterrence-only policies that tell women and children to “suffer and die in place” rather than flee and seek asylum are absurdly out of touch with the realities of both human migration and the real situation in the Northern Triangle. This report shows that increased flight from the Northern Triangle probably has more to do with the aggravating effects of the pandemic on the already untenable situation of many women and children in the Northern Triangle than it does on any policy pronouncements, real or imagined, on the part of the Biden Administration.

An honest policy that recognizes the reality that gender-based persecution is a major driver of forced migration in the Northern Triangle would go a long way toward addressing the largely self-created situation at our Southern Border.

As many of us keep saying, to no visible avail, asylum isn’t a “policy option” for politicos and wonks to “discuss and debate.” It’s a legal and moral requirement, domestically and internationally, that we are currently defaulting upon!

Wonder why “democracy is on the ropes” throughout the world right now? Perhaps, we need look no further than our own horrible example!

A robust overseas refugee program in the region and a uniform, consistent, timely policy of granting asylum to qualified applicants applying at ports of entry at our borders would be a vast improvement.

Sure, it would undoubtedly result in the legal immigration of more refugees and asylum seekers. That’s actually what refugee and asylum laws are all about — an important and robust component of our legal immigration system.

Although our needs are not actually part of the “legal test for asylum,” the fact is, we need more legal immigrants of all types in America right now.

It should be a win-win for the refugees and for America. So why not make it happen, rather than continuing failed policy approaches that serve nobody’s interest except nativist zealots trying to inflame xenophobia for political gain?

An additional point: On February 2, 2021, to great ballyhoo, President Biden issued Executive Order 14010. A key provision of that order required that:

(ii) within 270 days of the date of this order, promulgate joint regulations, consistent with applicable law, addressing the circumstances in which a person should be considered a member of a “particular social group,” as that term is used in 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(42)(A), as derived from the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol.

270 days have long passed. In fact, its been more than 300 days since that order. Yet, these regulations are nowhere in sight. Perhaps, that’s a good thing.

This doesn’t come as much of a surprise to “us old timers” who have “hands on” experience with the unsuitability of the DOJ regulation drafting process for this assignment. Indeed, this assignment is actually several decades “overdue,” having originally been handed out by the late former Attorney General Janet Reno prior to her departure from office in January 2020!

The problem remains lack of expertise. With the possible exception of Lucas Guttentag, I know of nobody at today’s DOJ who actually has the necessary experience, expertise, perspective, and historical knowledge to draft a proper regulation on the topic. Past drafts and proposals have been disastrous, actually seeking to diminish, rather than increase and regularize, protections for vulnerable women and others facing persecution on account of gender-based particular social groups.

Indeed, one proposal was even used by OIL as an avenue in attempting to “water down” the all-important, life saving “regulatory presumption of future persecution arising out of past persecution!” Talk about perversions of justice at Justice! Why? Because OIL had suffered a series of embarrassing, ego-deflating setbacks from Article III Courts calling out the frequent failure of the BIA and IJs to properly apply the basics of the presumption. Sound familiar?

At DOJ, the “normal solution to lack of expertise and competence” is to simply eliminate expertise and competence as requirements! In many ways, “good enough for government work” has replaced “who prosecutes on behalf of Lady Justice” as the DOJ’s motto!

It’s also yet another reason why the DOJ is a horribly inappropriate “home” for the U.S. Immigration Courts!

😎Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-16-21

☹️OFTEN INDIFFERENT OR OVERTLY HOSTILE TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL & HUMAN RIGHTS OF MIGRANTS & WOMEN, SUPREMES’ MAJORITY MIGHT GREEN-LIGHT “OPEN SEASON ON HUMANITY” FOR CBP AGENTS!☠️

Lydia Wheeler writes for Bloomberg Law’s Opening Argument:

https://openingargument.substack.com/p/kings-and-queens-of-border-puzzle

‘Kings and Queens’ of Border Puzzle Courts Divided on Liability

Lydia Wheeler

Welcome back to Opening Argument, a column where I dig into complicated legal fights, unpack issues dividing appeals courts, and discuss disputes ripe for Supreme Court review. On tap today: a look at when border patrol agents can be sued for violating someone’s constitutional rights.

Border patrol agents allegedly took Anas Elhady’s coat and shoes, and held him in a near-freezing cell without a blanket after he legally crossed the border back into the U.S. from Canada. Robert Boule was allegedly shoved to the ground by a border patrol agent who came onto his property without a warrant to check the immigration status of a guest at the inn Boule owns in Washington.

Can they each sue the agents for damages? The answer right now depends on which court is hearing their case.

The Supreme Court is expected to provide more clarity in a case it’s hearing later this term. Depending on how the justices rule, it could further insulate border patrol agents from liability.

If there’s no way to hold individual agents accountable for their conduct at the border, “then custom agents are kings and queens unto themselves,” said Elhady’s attorney Gadeir Abbas, a senior litigation attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

A 1971 Supreme Court decision gave people the right to hold federal officials liable when their constitutional rights are violated, but courts have been trying to figure out if or when that applies to immigration officials. So far, they’re coming to different conclusions.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said Elhady, who claimed his detainment violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process, didn’t have a right to sue the agents involved. The Ninth Circuit said Boule did.

. . . .

But the Supreme Court specifically refused to consider whether Bivens should be overruled when it agreed to hear the agent’s appeal in the Boule case. The justices will instead decide if you can bring a suit under Bivens for a First Amendment retaliation claim and whether you can sue federal officers engaged in immigration-related functions for allegedly violating your Fourth Amendment rights. Oral arguments in the case haven’t yet been scheduled.

“I could imagine a Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Alito saying something like ‘Yes Bivens still is the law, but we find that in this case involving enforcement of the immigration laws, Bivens claims really don’t fit and don’t belong, and limit Bivens one step further and say immigration cases are different,” said Kevin Johnson, the dean of University of California Davis School of Law.

If the court does that, Johnson, who’s written extensively on immigration law and civil rights, said it would embolden border patrol agents to feel like they can act with a great deal of discretion that will never be questioned.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lydia Wheeler in Washington at lwheeler@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Childers at achilders@bloomberglaw.com; Jo-el J. Meyer at jmeyer@bloombergindustry.com

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

Read Lydia’s full report at the link.

Hard to argue with the analysis of Dean Kevin Johnson, the “most often cited” immigration scholar in America according to a recent survey.

Kevin R. Johnson
Dean
U.C. Davis Law, “Most Cited Immigration Practical Scholar”

The rampant abuses of legal and human rights by the CBP, systemic racial bias, and almost total lack of accountability have been well-documented by civil rights advocates. See, e.g., https://www.southernborder.org/border_lens_abuse_of_power_and_its_consequences

Here’s a telling excerpt from the foregoing report issued by the SPLC in 2020:

The number of deaths resulting from an interaction with CBP officers are indicators of the horrific culture of abuse, corruption, and disregard for human life that plagues the nation’s largest federal law enforcement agency. Unfortunately, these killings are not the only examples of abuse of power and corruption within CBP.

Numerous studies — both internal and external — have shown that CBP is plagued with a culture of impunity, corruption, and abuse. Its systemic problems also run deep. The discovery of a secret Facebook group full of racist, misogynist and xenophobic posts by Border Patrol agents brought to light more evidence of the agency’s culture of abuse. In it, agents routinely made sexist jokes, made fun of migrant deaths, and shared other hateful content. A year later, little action was taken by CBP, again pointing to the lack of transparency and accountability for the agency. Countless other reports have linked CBP to cases of officer misconduct, corruption and a general lack of accountability for criminal conduct and abusive actions.

Doesn’t sound to me like an ideal candidate for freedom from individual constitutional tort liability! Indeed, the reasons for applying Bivens to immigration agents appear quite compelling. Hard to think of a law enforcement agency more in need of “strict scrutiny.”

But, with the current Court majority, who knows? Kevin’s “highly educated guess” is as good or better than anyone else’s. After all, the Supreme’s majority had little difficulty enabling constitutional and human rights abuses carried out by the Trump regime on asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants — in other words, “Dred Scottification” of the “other!”

Valerie Bauman
Investigative Reporter
Bloomberg
PHOTO: Twitter

Many thanks to Val Bauman over at Bloomberg for bringing this article to my attention. I’ve missed Val’s lively and incisive reporting on the “immigration beat” for her previous employer. Come on back to immigration, Val! We miss you!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-14-21

⚖️🗽CHAMPIONS OF JUSTICE, MAKING A DIFFERENCE: 🛡⚔️ Round Table’s Fight For Better Policies, Best Practices, Earns Acclaim!

Hon. Jeffrey S. Chase
Jeffrey S. Chase Blog
Coordinator & Chief Spokesperson, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

From “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

Our statement yesterday on MPP was referenced and quoted by CNN at the end of this article by Priscilla Alvarez and Geneva Sands on the MPP restart:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/06/politics/biden-remain-in-mexico/index.html

CNN Digital Expansion 2019, Priscilla Alvarez
Politics Reporter, CNN

CNN Digital Expansion 2019, Geneva Sands

This morning, Democracy Now referenced our letter in a segment covering the issue, saying:

A group of former immigration judges released a statement condemning the return of the program as the “antithesis of fairness.”

Here is the link:

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/12/7/biden_trump_era_remain_in_mexico

Furthermore, in oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday in Patel v. Garland, our amicus brief received a brief mention:

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: — questions, how
10 could an appellate court — and this question
11 cuts both ways, so — but how can an appellate
12 court look at a cold record and determine a
13 factual error when it relates to credibility,
14 for example, or something like that? Just give
15 me some examples where this will matter, I
16 guess.
17 MR. FLEMING: Well, there — as the
18 amici, the American Immigration Lawyers
19 Association and the EOIR judges, point out, it
20 — it’s not uncommon.Best, Jeff

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

And, here’s more coverage from Human Rights First:

Courtesy Paul Ratje — AFP via Getty Images

A man sits in a migrant camp near Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

The new version of MPP expands its focus to asylum seekers from across the hemisphere, stranding even more people seeking safety in dangerous conditions at the border.

Kennji Kizuka, Associate Director for Research and Analysis, Refugee Protection, appeared on Democracy Now! and detailed the many human rights violations faced by asylum seekers processed under the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

“It’s extraordinarily concerning that the Biden administration is not only restarting this policy but expanding it,” said Kizuka.

Human Rights First also announced the resumption of our research documenting the human rights abuses suffered by people turned away to wait in danger under MPP.

Human Rights First’s Associate Attorney, Refugee Protection Julia Neusner and Advocacy Strategist for Refugee Protection Ana Ortega Villegas are on the ground in Ciudad Juárez to monitor the first days of MPP’s reinstatement. Please follow their live updates and other reports through Human Rights First’s twitter account.

Our team’s view of the Mexican government’s

staging area in Cuidad Juárez for Remain in Mexico 2.0

Our position is gaining widespread support from those who understand the issue. The Roundtable of Former Immigration Judges condemned

MPP as the “antithesis of fairness,” concluding that there has been “no greater affront to due process, fairness and transparency,” and called for administration to “permanently end the program.”

The union for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officers tasked with MPP screenings call it “irredeemably flawed.” They said that restarting MPP “makes our members complicit in violations of U.S. federal law and binding international treaty obligations of non-refoulement that they have sworn to uphold.”

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

So proud to be a part of this group and so grateful for the leadership of colleagues like Judges Jeffrey Chase, Ilyce Shugall, Lory Rosenberg, Carol King, Joan Churchill, Denise Slavin, Sue Roy, John Gossart, Charles Honeyman, Charlie Pazar, Sarah Burr, Cecelia Espenoza, Bruce Einhorn, Tue Phan-Quang, Bob Weisel, Paul Grussendorf, Jennie Giambastini, and many, many, many others!

As an “appreciative fellow NDPA member” told me yesterday, “it’s a true team effort!“ This type of teamwork for the public good was once encouraged at EOIR and even incorporated into the “leadership vision,” but now, sadly, it has “fallen by the wayside” in what has basically become a “haste makes waste race to the bottom.”

Fortunately, the Round Table and other members of the NDPA still share a “vision of what American justice should look like” and are willing to speak up for what’s legal and right rather than just “expedient!”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-09-21

POPE FRANCIS SPEAKS OUT FOR MIGRANTS! — “Let us stop ignoring reality, stop constantly shifting responsibility, stop passing off the issue of migration to others, as if it mattered to no one and was only a pointless burden to be shouldered by somebody else!”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pope-comforts-lesbos-migrants-urges-refugee-aid_n_61accddbe4b044a1cc2482b3

AP reports on HuffPost:

LESBOS, Greece (AP) — Pope Francis returned Sunday to the Greek island of Lesbos to offer comfort to migrants at a refugee camp and blast what he said was the indifference and self-interest shown by Europe “that condemns to death those on the fringes.”

“Please, let us stop this shipwreck of civilization!” Francis said at the Mavrovouni camp, a cluster of white U.N. containers on the edge of the sea lined by barbed wire fencing and draped with laundry hanging from lines.

Arriving at the camp, a maskless Francis took his time walking along the barricades, patting children and babies on the head and posing for selfies. He gave a “thumbs up” after he was serenaded by African women singing a song of welcome.

. . . .

“The arrival of the pope here makes us feel blessed because we hope the pope will take us with him because here we suffer,” Kiaku said as she waited in a tent for the pope to arrive.

But no papal transfers were announced this time around, though during the first leg of Francis’ trip in Cyprus, the Vatican announced that 12 migrants who had crossed over from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north would be relocated to Italy in the coming weeks. Cypriot officials said a total of 50 would eventually be sent.

Francis’ five-day trip to Cyprus and Greece has been dominated by the migrant issue and Francis’ call for European countries to stop building walls, stoking fears and shutting out “those in greater need who knock at our door.”

“I ask every man and woman, all of us, to overcome the paralysis of fear, the indifference that kills, the cynical disregard that nonchalantly condemns to death those on the fringes!” he said. “Let us stop ignoring reality, stop constantly shifting responsibility, stop passing off the issue of migration to others, as if it mattered to no one and was only a pointless burden to be shouldered by somebody else!”

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

Read the complete report at the link.

Xenophobia, cruelty, racism, and nativist nationalism won’t stop human migration. But, it will cause more unnecessary pain, suffering, death, and wasted lives.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

12-05-21

⚖️MAYORKAS ISSUES NEW PD GUIDELINES, EMPHASIZING SECURITY, SAFETY, PROFESSIONALISM, COMMON SENSE, FOCUSED USE OF RESOURCES!

S.pdfept. 30, 21 Enforcement Guidelines

Secretary Mayorkas Announces New Immigration Enforcement Priorities | Homeland Security

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

The emphasis on “border security” would make more sense if the Administration had restored the legal process for applying for asylum at ports of entry. Without such a process, how are individuals’ supposed to exercise their legal rights under domestic and international law to seek protection in the U.S.?

Expect these guidelines to be quickly challenged in Federal Courts by nativist GOP AGs. We’ll see how they fare!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-30-21

☠️⚰️🏴‍☠️HAITI IS NOT “SAFE,” & THE PERVASIVE GANG VIOLENCE APPEARS TO BE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED! — “They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs. . . . It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption!” — So, Why Are Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, & Garland Illegally Returning Refugees There Without Hearing Their Asylum Claims? 👎🏽🤮

Catherine Porter
Toronto Bureau Chief
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times website

Natalie Kitroeff
Foreign Correspondent
NY Times
PHOTO: NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/world/americas/haiti-gangs-kidnapping.html?referringSource=articleShare

By Catherine Porter and Natalie Kitroeff

They raped women, burned homes and killed dozens of people, including children, chopping up their bodies with machetes and throwing their remains to pigs.The gruesome massacre three years ago, considered the worst in Haiti in decades, was more than the work of rival gangs fighting over territory. It was organized by senior Haitian officials, who provided weapons and vehicles to gang members to punish people in a poor area protesting government corruption, the U.S. Treasury Department announced last year.

Since then, Haiti’s gang members have grown so strong that they rule swaths of the country. The most notorious of them, a former police officer named Jimmy Cherizier, known as Barbecue, fashions himself as a political leader, holding news conferences, leading marches and, this week, even parading around as a replacement for the prime minister in the violent capital.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of this gruesome, yet telling, report at the link.

Over 21 years on the Immigration Bench as both a trial and appellate judge, I adjudicated thousands of asylum claims. The circumstances described on this article undoubtedly would give rise to many potentially valid asylum and withholding claims, based on actual or implied political opinion and/or family or gender-based “particular social groups” and Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) grants based on torture with government acquiescence or actual connivance!

So, how do Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland, who to my knowledge have never represented an asylum applicant or adjudicated an individual asylum case among them, “get away” with simply suspending the rule of law, under false pretenses, for those entitled to seek asylum?

Stephen Miller must be on “Cloud Nine” as Biden & Co. carry out his White Nationalist plans to eradicate asylum, particularly when it protects women and people of color! This is even as Miller and his neo-Nazi cohorts (a/k/a “America First Legal”) are gearing up to sue the Biden Administration to block every measure that might aid immigrants, particularly those of color.

He’s delighted with Biden’s abuse of asylum seekers of color! Attribution: Stephen Miller Monster by Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

By contrast with Miller’s delight, human rights NGOs have “had it” with the Biden Administration’s grotesque anti-asylum agenda! See, e.g.,https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/10/18/2058777/–We-refuse-to-be-complicit-Advocates-leave-Biden-admin-meeting-in-protest-of-Remain-in-Mexico-plan?detail=emaildkre

Haiti Corpses — NGOs don’t share the Biden Administration’s vision of what a “safe” Haiti looks like. Neither do kidnapped American missionaries!
PHOTO: Marcelo Casal, Jr., Creative Commons License

Angering and alienating your potential allies and supporters to aid the far-right program of your enemies who are determined to do whatever it takes to undermine, discredit, and destroy your Presidency! Obviously, I’m no political expert. But, sure sounds like an incredibly stupid, “designed to fail” strategy to me!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

1-23-21

⚖️☹️ (NO) SURPRISE! — “GARLAND’S GIMMICKS” FAIL TO STEM GROWTH OF EOIR BACKLOG, NOW APPROACHING ASTOUNDING 1.5 MILLION! 🆘— “Bogus Dedicated Dockets,” Gross Abuse Of Title 42 To Deny Fair Hearings, Due Process Denying “Production Quotas,” “Trumped-Up Judiciary” Can’t Overcome Lack Of Dynamic Progressive Practical Leaders & Judges, As 98% Of New Filings Non-Criminal & Intake Outpaces Completions By 2.5 to 1! — Many Of Us Predicted This, & Offered Obvious Solutions — Why Are Garland, Mayorkas, & Other Biden Immigration Honchos “Asleep @ The Switch?” 😴 — Latest TRAC Report Damning For Garland’s Beyond Dysfunctional Courts!

EYORE — “Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

https://trac.syr.edu/whatsnew/email.211014.html

Number of New Deportation Cases Far Outpaces Completed Cases in FY 2021

(14 Oct 2021) According to TRAC’s updated Quick Facts tools, the number of new deportation cases filed with the Courts in FY 2021–over 315,000–is more than double the number of completed cases over the same period which, according to Immigration Court records, currently sits at less that 145,000. When incoming cases exceed the capacity of the Courts to adjudicate those cases, the Immigration Court backlog continues to grow. At the end of September 2021, the end of FY 2021, the total number of pending cases reached nearly 1.5 million total cases, larger than the population of San Diego, the eighth largest city in the United States.

The Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) a research organization at Syracuse University created ‘Quick Facts’ tools to provide a user-friendly way to see the most updated data available on immigrant detention and the Immigration Courts. The tools include easy-to-understand data in context and provide quotable descriptions.

Highlights from data updated today on immigrants facing deportation in court include the following:

Immigration Courts recorded receiving 315,491 new cases so far in FY 2021 as of September 2021. This compares with 144,654 cases that the court completed during this period.

According to court records, only 2.0% of FY 2021 new cases sought deportation orders based on any alleged criminal activity of the immigrant, apart from possible illegal entry.

At the end of September 2021, 1,457,615 active cases were pending before the Immigration Court.

Los Angeles County, CA, has the most residents with pending Immigration Court deportation cases (as of the end of September 2021).

So far this fiscal year (through September 2021), immigration judges have issued removal and voluntary departure orders in 29.7% of completed cases, totaling 43,031 deportation orders.

So far in FY 2021 (through September 2021), immigrants from Mexico top list of nationalities with largest number ordered deported.

Only 20.6% of immigrants, including unaccompanied children, had an attorney to assist them in Immigration Court cases when a removal order was issued.

Immigration judges have held 22,712 bond hearings so far in FY 2021 (through September 2021). Of these 6,997 were granted bond.

For more information, see TRAC’s Quick Facts tools here or click here to learn more about TRAC’s entire suite of immigration tools.

If you want to be sure to receive a notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1

Follow us on Twitter at:

https://twitter.com/tracreports

or like us on Facebook:

https://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC’s ongoing efforts, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl

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

Being able to say “toldya so” to the crowd in the Biden Administration is of little consolation to those of us in the Round Table of Former Immigraton Judges ⚔️🛡and the NDPA who have had to witness the unfolding (yet preventable) human disasters caused by the Biden Administration’s inept, tone-deaf, frankly spineless approach to EOIR and the rest of the dysfunctional USG immigration bureaucracy!

An operationally independent EOIR under dynamic progressive leadership and a BIA of judges who are practical experts in asylum and immigration could have cut the backlog by eliminating non- priority cases (most of what is in the EOIR backlog) and showing that fair, legal, timely, and generous administration of asylum laws can work and produce efficient, yet humane, correct, and consistent results!

Instead, the disgraceful mess at EOIR promotes human suffering and dysfunction, waste, and abuse in government. Backlog building “Aimless Docket Reshuffling,” (“ADR”), continuing to move cases around to meet administrative objectives unrelated to the needs of the parties and the input of the sitting Immigration Judges, continues to plague Garland’s failed courts.

Indeed, if Garland’s EOIR were a country, it would be considered a “failed state!”

A reformed EOIR also could have exposed and perhaps corrected some of the continuing systemic abuses at DHS (see, e.g., “Baby Jails,” “Family Gulags,” and absurdly inconsistent and irrational bond procedures)!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-19-21

WHY BIDEN’S CRUEL, ILLEGAL, IGNORANT BORDER NON-POLICY OF DETERRENCE WILL CONTINUE TO BE A “KILLER ☠️FAILURE” 🤮 — Telling Folks “Doomed In Place” ⚰️ What They Already Know, That The Potential Life-Saving Trip Is “Dangerous” ⚠️ & That White America Would Rather See Them Die, 💀 Out Of Sight & Out Of Mind, Is As Insulting As It Is Stupid & Ineffective!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/filmmaker-darien-gap-black-migrant/2021/10/02/b0bbb85a-230b-11ec-8200-5e3fd4c49f5e_story.html

Theresa Vargas reports for WashPost:

. . . .

“I believe when I go to do this work, I need to integrate myself into the lives of the people I’m covering,” he says. “I don’t want them to see me as above them. We’re on the same level; we’re human.”

That context is needed to understand why Dennison entered the Darién Gap several weeks ago and why, unlike other photographers and videographers, he didn’t take any security guards with him.

That decision would end up giving him a different experience from that of others who have gone there to document the harrowing passage. They have left that jungle and come home with photos that show the horrific struggles of others. He almost didn’t leave the jungle, and he came home with only a fraction of the photos he took and with his own horrific story.

“What he’s been through is horrible and really disturbing,” says Erika Pinheiro, a lawyer who is the litigation and policy director of Al Otro Lado, an advocacy and legal aid organization that serves migrants, refugees and deportees on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The organization has been working with Dennison to create a film that captures the experiences of U.S.-bound Black migrants.

“The only way to understand it is to see it, and that’s what he’s providing,” Pinheiro says. “It’s really important that people understand what’s happening, and that it’s not over in Del Rio.”

The Biden administration recently cleared out a border camp in Del Rio, Tex., where an estimated 15,000 migrants, most of them Haitian nationals seeking asylum, had gathered. The clearing out of the camp came after viral images and video footage showed Border Patrol agents on horseback grabbing migrants and charging at them. In one video, a young girl in a mint-green dress scrambles to get out of the way of a horse heading toward her.

President Biden decried the agents’ actions, and the Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation into the incident.

But what happened in Del Rio captures only part of what many Haitians experience to get to the United States. Many pass through the Darién Gap, some with children in tow and infants strapped to their backs or chests. Officials in Panama have said that a record 70,000 people traveled the 66 miles through the terrain this year.

Before going, Dennison did extensive research on what to expect: spiders with bites that can cause death within six hours, criminals who routinely rob travelers, and polluted water that if not filtered can sicken you. But nothing, he says, could have prepared him for what he experienced.

“When you’re in the jungle, you’re no longer a filmmaker,” he says. “You’re no longer a humanitarian. It becomes about survival.”

. . . .

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

Read the full story at the link.

Sad as truth is, it’s not rocket science:

Desperate people do (and will continue to do) desperate things;
For forced migrants, the dangers of staying will always exceed those of leaving;
“Die in place” isn’t a “policy;”
“Deterrence only” can’t work in the long run;
While institutionalized racism has a long history in U.S. immigration policy, it’s never been a good policy for America, nor will it ever be!

Honestly, where does the Biden Administration get these folks who don’t “get the obvious,” lie about it, and then expect good results?

Right now, after nearly eight months, the Biden Administration still appears to be in no better position to process the next border influx than they were on January 20, despite numerous warnings and eight months of graphic practical and humanitarian failures. Racially charged rhetoric and more cruel, wasteful, dishonest enforcement and removals won’t do it!

We need reopened legal border ports of entry staffed with more and better Asylum Officers overseen by a pragmatic progressive corps of expert Immigration Judges and a BIA composed of progressive asylum experts with the guts to knock heads and get our broken border legal system back to functionality. To state the obvious, that would promote consistency, transparency, and take some of the pressure off of the Article III Courts!

Because neither Mayorkas nor Garland is committed to taking the bold actions necessary to change the dynamics at the border, America, the Biden Administration, and vulnerable legal asylum seekers appear headed for another four years of avoidable failure with all of its unhappy human and political consequences!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-03-21

🏴‍☠️MAYORKAS DOUBLES DOWN ON USE OF TRUMP’S BOGUS TITLE 42 RATIONALE TO DEPORT HAITIANS — ABSURDLY & DISINGENUOUSLY CLAIMS HAITI IS “SAFE” FOR RETURNS!

Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/26/haiti-deportations-covid-biden-homeland-secretary-mayorkas?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to send thousands of Haitians to a home country they fled because of natural disasters and political turmoil.

White House criticizes border agents who rounded up migrants on horseback

Mayorkas told NBC’s Meet the Press the removals were justified because of the coronavirus pandemic, a point disputed by advocates and public health experts.

“The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention, or CDC] has a Title 42 authority that we exercise to protect the migrants themselves, to protect the local communities, our personnel and the American public,” Mayorkas said.

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“The pandemic is not behind us. Title 42 is a public health policy, not an immigration policy.”

Since Donald Trump’s administration implemented Title 42 in March 2020, advocates and dozens of public health experts have called for its end.

Under Title 42, people who attempt to cross the border are returned to Mexico or deported to their home countries without an opportunity to test asylum claims.

In January, Joe Biden stopped the rule from applying to children. Despite that, at least 22 babies and children were deported to Haiti in February.

More than 30 public health experts wrote to Mayorkas and the head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, earlier this month, saying Title 42 was “scientifically baseless and politically motivated”.

This coalition has repeatedly said the policy violates the right to seek asylum and ignores how basic public health measures can reduce the spread of Covid-19.

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“Title 42 runs counter to the government’s own commitment to address Covid-19 globally,” the coalition said. “The absence of effective Covid-19 mitigation services at the border and the expulsion of people to situations in which they may be exposed to Covid-19 and unable to practice prevention are contrary to the US government commitment to address Covid-19 globally.”

On Sunday, Mayorkas told CNN about 4,000 Haitians who arrived in the past two weeks have been expelled, 13,000 others had been allowed to enter the US to pursue their immigration cases in court and 8,000 had voluntarily chosen to return to Mexico.

NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd questioned Mayorkas about why thousands were being sent to Haiti even though they had traveled to the US from South America.

“These are Haitian nationals,” Mayorkas said. “Some of them don’t have documents from the countries from which they just left. So they are subject to removal.”

. . . .

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

Of course, Haiti clearly is not a safe place to return migrants:

‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/26/they-treated-us-like-animals-haitians-angry-and-in-despair-at-being-deported-from-us?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US

Haitian deportees arriving from Texas say they were ‘rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals’

Joe Parkin Daniels in Port-au-Prince

Published:

05:00 Sunday, 26 September 2021

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About this content

When Evens Delva waded across the Rio Grande with his wife and two daughters, he had dreams of starting a new life in Florida. But less than a week later, he and his family stepped on to the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, the sweltering and chaotic capital of Haiti, with nothing except traumatic memories and a feeling of bubbling anger.

Delva, along with nearly 2,000 other Haitians, was deported from southern Texas this week to Haiti, despite having lived in Chile for the past six years and having few remaining connections to his home country. His younger daughter, who is four, does not hold Haitian citizenship, having been born in Chile, and speaks more Spanish than Haitian Creole.

“I don’t know what we’ll do, we don’t have anywhere to stay or anyone to call,” the 40-year-old said, moments after getting off the plane in the blistering midday Caribbean heat. “All I know is that this is the last place I want to be.”

Evens Delva and his wife at Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti on Friday after being deported from Texas. Photograph: Joe Parkin Daniels/The Guardian

It is not hard to understand why. Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, is mired in overlapping crises. Gasoline shortages and blackouts are a daily reality, while warring gangs routinely kidnap for ransom and wage battle on the streets.

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The grim situation only worsened when the president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in his home on 7 July, triggering a political power struggle and further instability and street violence. On 14 August, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the country’s poor southern peninsula, killing more than 2,200 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless.

US envoy to Haiti resigns over ‘inhumane’ decision to deport migrants

The Biden administration’s decision to deport thousands of Haitians under such circumstances drew opprobrium around the world, and prompted the US envoy to Haiti to resign in protest. Haiti is “a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life”, he wrote in his resignation letter. “Surging migration to our borders will only grow as we add to Haiti’s unacceptable misery.”

Last week, the world was shocked by images of police officers on horseback charging at desperate Haitian migrants near a camp of 12,000, set up under the Del Río-Ciudad Acuña International Bridge. Delva was on his way to buy food and water for his family when the cavalry charge sent him and dozens of his compatriots running in a frenzy.

“We were rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals,” he said, having spent the six-hour flight from San Antonio with his hands and legs tied.

“They treated us like animals,” added Maria, his wife.. “We’ll never forget how that felt.”

. . . .

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

David Shipler does a great job of exposing the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of Mayorkas and other Biden Administration immigration officials.

America’s Callous Border

By David K. Shipler

Several years ago, a gray-haired passport control official at Heathrow Airport in London, noting “writer” under “occupation” on my landing card, asked me what I wrote. I was finishing a book on civil liberties, I told him, with a chapter on immigration. That caught his interest. He leaned forward, glanced around, lowered his voice and said, “I loathe borders.”

Funny line of work you’re in, I said. We shared a chuckle, he stamped my passport, and I crossed the border that he loathed.

We have nation states, and so we have borders. Dictatorships need them to keep people in, lest their countries be drained of the talented and the aspiring. Democracies need them to keep people out—often those with talent and aspiration who are fleeing to safety and opportunity. So far, the United States is lucky enough to be the latter. So far.

When desperate fathers and mothers are drawn with admiring naïveté to the beacon of America, when they carry their children through months of torment by mountain jungles and predatory gangs, when their courage and towering fortitude set them apart from the masses, shouldn’t they be embraced when they reach the final border of a nation of fellow immigrants that touts its compassion and humanity?

Cut through the crazy tangle of immigration laws, regulations, and inconsistent enforcement to the essential ethic, and the answer is an obvious yes. But the obvious is not obvious in the White House or in the Department of Homeland Security or in the ranks of the beleaguered Border Patrol, whose horsemen scramble, as if herding cattle, to intercept frantic Haitians wading from the Rio Grande onto the banks of freedom and promise.

Instead, a new torment is found: Haitians with enough grit to leave their country a decade or so ago and build lives on the margins in Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere are taken from their first steps onto U.S. soil and summarily—summarily, without due process—deported. And where to? To Haiti, a failed state where many have long since lost family or work or even places of shelter. To Haiti, which has collapsed into such violence and disarray that the State Department warns Americans on its website: “Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and COVID-19.”

What is wrong with the air in the White House? Is there not enough oxygen? What accounts for the impaired thinking that seems to transcend administrations, from Republican to Democratic. Where is the regard for human dignity? Why is it so often absent in the calculations that create policy?

Donald Trump wore callousness on his sleeve and was proud of it. His base hooted its applause at his vilification of Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers. By contrast, Joe Biden wears a badge of empathy. His mantra is compassion. “Horrible” and “outrageous” were the words he found to describe the photographed attacks on Haitians from horseback. He halted the use of horses and vowed that agents responsible “will pay.” He also said, “It’s simply not who we are.”

But it is who we are. The images have been compared to old photos of white overseers on horseback commanding enslaved Blacks in the fields. The Border Patrol in cowboy hats have been compared to Texas Rangers “who were celebrated for their excellent ‘tracking skills’ that were put to use to hunt and capture enslaved people,” said historian Monica Martinez of the University of Texas.

These are compelling analogies with painful resonance. They are also flawed as parallels, for the Black migrants at the border are not slaves. They are clamoring to be here, crossing illegally, seeing the border as a threshold. They were not brought here in chains against their will. Some are being removed in chains against their will.

Nevertheless, in a sense they are enslaved by their blackness. If white Canadians tried this up north, does anybody truly believe that they would be treated as the Black Haitians are? Animating America’s conscience should not require reaching back to the sin of slavery. The present ought to be enough.

Our borders always put our split personality on display: We are cruel and welcoming, hateful and helpful, defined by doors closed at times to entire ethnic groups and then opened to invigorate the nation with willing hands and vital contributions.

In fact, if the country is not sufficiently moved by simple morality, then it might consider self-interest. The U.S. population growth rate has been falling steadily since 2008, dropping to a mere 0.58 percent from 2020 to 2021. Many regions lack skilled workers, as homeowners and small business owners and even hospitals can testify from trying to hire carpenters, plumbers, electricians, welders, mechanics, and nurses. We should have winced when one Haitian deportee was quoted as describing himself as a welder and carpenter.

Using abuse to manipulate determined people did not work under Trump—a lesson that Biden and his advisers might have learned. Trump’s administration separated children from their parents at the border, his aides reasoning that families heading north would get the message and—what?–abandon their fortitude and survival instincts, turn around, and head back to life-threatening misery?

So, too Biden officials are reportedly figuring that tossing Haitian expatriates into Haiti’s maelstrom will dissuade others from coming. In other words, don’t be humane, and folks will give up. But they won’t give up. They will still roll the dice, because there’s always a chance, especially since some are being allowed to stay, at least for a while, pending proper examination of their asylum claims as the law requires. When your ship has sunk, you don’t stop clinging to a piece of flotsam just because some shipmates have slipped off into the sea.

What the Biden White House needs is somebody in an influential position who has made this journey, who has shepherded family and children through jungles and ganglands to reach this supposedly promised land. That official might bring to the Oval Office a glimmer of understanding and respect for the force of personality and perseverance that drive a person toward our callous border.

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

Something about the DHS Secretary job seem to require checking honesty, common sense, historical perspective, and humanity at the door, not to mention the true “rule of law.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

09-26-21

🇺🇸⚖️🗽👍🏼😎NDPA GOOD GUYS WIN SOME BIGGIES TOO! — 1ST CIRCUIT FINDS EOIR BOND PROCESS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AS DENIAL OF DUE PROCESS! — Hernandez-Lara v. Lyons!

Here’s the (split) decision:

1st on Bond

Here’s a key quote from Circuit Judge Kayatta’s majority opinion:

KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. Ana Ruth Hernandez-Lara (“Hernandez”), a thirty-four-year-old native and citizen of El Salvador, entered the United States in 2013 without being admitted or paroled. An immigration officer arrested Hernandez in September 2018, and the government detained her at the Strafford County Department of Corrections in Dover, New Hampshire (“Strafford County Jail”) pending a determination of her removability. Approximately one month later, Hernandez was denied bond at a hearing before an immigration judge (IJ) in which the burden was placed on Hernandez to prove that she was neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk.

Hernandez subsequently filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, contending that the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment entitled her to a bond hearing at which the government, not Hernandez, must bear the burden of proving danger or flight risk by clear and convincing evidence. The district court agreed and ordered the IJ to conduct a second bond hearing at which the government bore the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that Hernandez was either a danger or a flight risk. That shift in the burden proved pivotal, as the IJ released Hernandez on bond following her second hearing, after ten months of detention. The government now asks us to reverse the judgment

-3-

Case: 19-2019 Document: 00117776979 Page: 4 Date Filed: 08/19/2021 Entry ID: 6441266

of the district court, arguing that the procedures employed at Hernandez’s original bond hearing comported with due process and, consequently, that the district court’s order shifting the burden of proof was error. Although we agree that the government need not prove a detainee’s flight risk by clear and convincing evidence, we otherwise affirm the order of the district court. Our reasoning follows.

. . . .

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

Note that the Garland GOJ continued to defend EOIR’s unconstitutional procedures. So, don’t be shocked if they ask the Supremes to intervene. And the current Supremes have too often been happy to ignore the Due Process Clause when it comes to the rights of migrants of color.

But, it’s some progress toward eventually dismantling the “New American Gulag” — the one that Biden is still running (despite campaign promises to the contrary) and that righty Federal Judges and nativist GOP AGs in the Fifth Circuit are committed to expanding!

For the NDPA, the war to save humanity never ends!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-20-21

🏴‍☠️🤮TEXAS STYLE RACISM: TRUMPY USD JUDGE TIPTON IN BID TO TAKE OVER ICE, REINSTATE “GONZO” WHITE NATIONALIST ENFORCEMENT DIRECTED AT COMMUNITIES OF COLOR — Righty Judge’s Latest Politicized Assault On Constitution Targets Pregnant Women, People Of Color, Among Others!

ForbesTalk reports!

https://forbestalk.com/news/usa/judge-blocks-biden-administration-effort-to-curtail-ice-arrests-and-deportations/

A federal judge delivered another setback to the Biden administration’s immigration agenda on Thursday, blocking a set of rules that limited who deportation agents should detain and deport from the country.

U.S. District Court Judge Drew Tipton prohibited federal officials from enforcing two directives that instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to focus on arresting recent border-crossers, as well as immigrants deemed to threaten public safety or national security.

Under the new so-called “enforcement priorities,” ICE agents were required to obtain supervisory approval before arresting immigrants living in the U.S. without legal permission who did not fall within the three specified categories.

The memos issued in January and February are part of a broader Biden administration initiative to reshape ICE operations in the interior.

. . . .

*********************
Read the full article at the link. The case, quite aptly, is called Texas v. US!

One would like to think that this would be a “no-brainer” stay and reverse from the 5th or the Supremes. But, given the stocking of the Federal Courts by Trump & McConnell with right-wing extremist judges who have little concern with most individual Constitutional rights and who pride themselves on indifference to racism and unequal justice, I wouldn’t count on it.

However, if this outrageously wrong order stands, I would be interested to see how Tipton and his White Nationalist cabal that includes GOP reactionary AGs in Texas and Louisiana plan to micromanage DHS. Also, I figure that as the grotesque DHS abuses predictably mount, the NDPA will win some major cases from better Federal Judges in other jurisdictions that will force a showdown with Tipton and his motley crew of righty extremists.

Too bad we no longer have a functioning Congress willing to revise the immigration laws in a way that actually incorporates reality and advances our national interests.

Better Federal Judges for a better, fairer America!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽DPF

PWS

08-19-21

🗽COURTSIDE’S INSTANT ANALYSIS: BIDEN’S PROPOSED ASYLUM REGS: Advocates Beware! ⚠️☹️ — Despite A Potentially Workable Framework, Administration’s Inconsistency On Human Rights, Lack Of Realistic Implementation Plan Led By Progressive Asylum Experts, Absence Of EOIR Judges Qualified To Fairly & Efficiently Decide Asylum Cases, & A BIA Completely Unsuited To Establishing Favorable Asylum Precedents & Holding “Asylum Deniers Club” Accountable Likely To Derail System In Practice & Lead To Further Chaos & Injustice 🏴‍☠️ — You Don’t Entrust “The Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight” With A New Program That Requires “Expert Marksmanship” To Succeed! — “Casey” Remains Perplexed By The Biden Administration, Particularly Garland!

Garland’s Unwillingness To Install Progressive Competence @ EOIR Continues to Drag Down the Ship Of State!
PHOTO: Thomas Hawk
Creative Commons
Amateur Night

Here’s a link to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, courtesy of Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Immigration Community:

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2021-17779.pdf

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

And, here’s my “quick take:”

At first glance, this could potentially be a workable system, with some favorable aspects:

* Restores properly generous credible fear standard;

* Allows AO to grant well-established cases in first instance, even at the credible fear level, without referral to EOIR;

* Retains EOIR review of both credible fear and asylum denials;

* Doesn’t appear to affect pending and affirmative cases;

* Retains access to Circuit review of denials.

But, as with most things, the devil 👹 is in the details. And, personnel, leadership, direction, and accountability are absolute keys to success.

Without:

1) More and better Asylum Officers;

2) Far better training at the AO and EOIR (see, Michele Pistone);

3) Better IJs with proven expertise in asylum law and a demonstrated willingness to grant relief to worthy cases;

4) An entirely new BIA of progressive asylum experts to provide leadership, positive precedents, and accountability for both credible fear reviews and de novo asylum reviews;

5) An agreement with the private bar as to where and on what schedule these cases are to be heard, to achieve universal representation (see, Michele Pistone and VIISTA); and

6) Agreements with NGOs re housing, care, employment assistance to take pressure off particular communities;

this proposal appears to be “headed for failure.”

I can’t glean any of those essential characteristics from this NPR.

In their absence:

1) There are likely to be huge discrepancies in AO decisions;

2) Many current IJs, particularly from border areas, will simply “rubber stamp” both credible fear and asylum merits denials from the AO to keep the EOIR dockets moving and “make quota” (Lucas Guttentag, where are you?);

3) “Rubber stamping” of asylum denials is also endemic at the BIA, as currently comprised;

3) The current BIA will be reluctant to issue positive asylum precedents (not sure they even know how or have the ability to do so) and will likely concentrate on instructing AOs and the IJs on how to deny asylum or credible fear and have it stand up on review;

4) The private bar will be unable to keep up with the pro bono demand, causing many applicants to be unrepresented or underrepresented;

5) Asylum applicants will be concentrated in particular communities, often near the border, who will complain about the burdens being inflicted upon them by the Feds.

In other words, without better, expert, progressive leadership at both DHS and DOJ, and without major changes in personnel and training, this program will rapidly become a disaster, like other “streamlining” efforts that do not deal realistically with the practical aspects of implementation, particularly the qualifications, attitude, “culture,” and training of those making the actual decisions! A continuing lack of progressive leadership and expertise at the “retail level” will likely lead to widespread injustice, inconsistency, and eventually protracted litigation.

I am also concerned that the NPR appears to take the current 1.4 million case EOIR backlog (actually under-stated in the NPR as 1.3 million — Garland has grown it almost as rapidly as Barr-Sessions) as a “given.” But, there are readily available ways to dramatically slash this backlog by perhaps as much as 90% (see, Chen & Moskowitz plan) which would allow both IJs and the BIA to work on these cases “in real time” WITHOUT creating yet more “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” at EOIR (as the NPR, without the changes outlined above, is highly likely to do).

Casey Stengel — “Like the rest of us, Casey has no idea what Judge Garland is doing and what he hopes to achieve in his Star Chambers!”
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

This leads me to reiterate Casey’s cosmic question: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Ironically, there are many “all-star players” out here in the real world who can and would be “winners.” But, for whatever reason, to date, this Administration has unwisely chosen to leave most of them “on the sidelines” rather than giving them bats and gloves and putting them in the game. ⚾️ That’s painfully obvious at DOJ! Not a recipe for a “winning campaign” in my “preseason prediction.”

🇺🇸DPF,

Best,

PWS

08-18-21

🗽OVER 100 CIVIL & HUMAN RIGHTS NGOS PROTEST BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S FAILURE TO RESTORE RULE OF LAW FOR REFUGEES @ BORDER! — Continued Use Of Title 42 To Suspend Asylum Blasted By Experts: “The administration’s recent actions highlighted above are in direct contravention of the goal to repair the broken immigration system you inherited.”

Biden Border Message — “Border Message”
By Steve Sack
Reproduced under license

Here is the letter:

Joint-Letter-to-President-Biden-on-Expulsion-Flights-to-Southern-Mexico-and-Forthcoming-Changes-to-Asylum-Processing_8132021

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

Confirms and amplifies they absurdity and wrongness of US District Judge Kacsmaryk’s recent decision to “restore” the unlawful, cruel, inhumane, and unnecessary MPP (“Let ‘Em Die In Mexico”) https://immigrationcourtside.com/2021/08/14/%e2%98%a0%ef%b8%8f%e2%9a%b0%ef%b8%8falternate-universe-where-human-rights-human-dignity-due-process-dont-matter-trumpist-usdj-shafts-asylum-seekers-of-color-by-reinstating/;
As the human rights situations in Afghanistan, Haiti, and the Northern Triangle continue to unravel, the lack of a coherent, operational, legally sound, properly generous refugee and asylum program will continue to haunt the Administration;
In particular, the disgraceful failure to establish a strong, consistent, humane, and protection-oriented interpretation of gender-based asylum to protect women, who are disproportionately targeted for persecution, torture, and other violence, will cost lives of the most vulnerable and be a lasting stain on our nation. (I just listened to Peter Baker, NBC WH Correspondent, on Meet the Press, characterize Afghanistan under the Taliban as a “nation of spouse beaters!”)

The need to fix our our refugee and asylum systems immediately was obvious on January 20, 2021. Why, after 7 months it still is nowhere close to being accomplished is less obvious!

The turmoil in Afghanistan and Haiti and the ongoing human rights disasters in Latin America, all reasonably predictable, are going to increase the human and political problems flowing from a failure to take human rights seriously and to bring the practical human rights experts necessary to solve these issues constructively into the Government power structure! In the end, human rights are everyone’s rights! We ignore that at our peril!

Ironically, while protecting women from persecution and improving their lives was used as a justification by Administrations of both parties for our continuing military presence in Afghanistan, now, as the “end game” plays out in real time, it appears to have been largely reduced to a “talking point” (or a “news feature”) without any discernible plan for protecting or saving Afghan female refugees. Sadly politicos and officials from both parties seem more interested in using women’s lives as “cover” for two decades of ultimately futile presence there than with actually saving any lives now. Indeed, if we treat Afghan women refugees with the inhumane indifference we have continued to heap on female refugees seeking legal asylum at our Southern Border, their outlook is beyond grim.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-15-21

Priscilla’s latest:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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😎Due Process Forever!

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Lydia Wheeler writes for Bloomberg Law’s Opening Argument:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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From “Sir Jeffrey” Chase:

And, here’s more coverage from Human Rights First:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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AP reports on HuffPost:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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Theresa Vargas reports for WashPost:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Amanda Holpuch reports for The Guardian:

Of course, Haiti clearly is not a safe place to return migrants:

David Shipler does a great job of exposing the hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of Mayorkas and other Biden Administration immigration officials.

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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Here’s the (split) decision:

Here’s a key quote from Circuit Judge Kayatta’s majority opinion:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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ForbesTalk reports!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽DPF

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Here’s a link to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, courtesy of Dan Kowalski over at LexisNexis Immigration Community:

And, here’s my “quick take:”

🇺🇸DPF,

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Here is the letter:

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

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