SENATORS DEMAND IG INVESTIGATE BIAS, CORRUPTION, GROSS MISMANAGEMENT @ EOIR!

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

Laura Lynch @ AILA reports:

FYI – On Friday, August 21st, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the GAO requesting an investigation into the politicization of the immigration courts and EOIR’s mismanagement of the immigration courts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Direct: 202.507.7627 I Email: llynch@aila.org

American Immigration Lawyers Association

Main: 202.507.7600 I Fax: 202.783.7853 I www.aila.org

1331 G Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005

From: Davidson, Richard (Whitehouse) <Richard_Davidson@whitehouse.senate.gov>
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2020 3:24 PM
To: Davidson, Richard (Whitehouse) <Richard_Davidson@whitehouse.senate.gov>
Subject: Senators Call for GAO Investigation of Trump Politicization of Immigration Courts as COVID-19 Crisis Rages

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 21, 2020
Contact: Rich Davidson

(202) 228-6291 (press office)

Senators Call for GAO Investigation of Trump Politicization of Immigration Courts as COVID-19 Crisis Rages

Trump attacks on immigration system raise serious concerns about safety during pandemic

More than 1,000 people in immigration detention have tested positive for COVID-19, and five have died

Washington, DC – Today, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) led a Senate request to the top congressional watchdog to investigate the practices of the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) under President Trump, including its management of immigration courts during the current COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the senators raise concerns first voiced to the Justice Department in February about mismanagement of the EOIR under Attorney General William Barr, as well as the Trump administration’s regulatory and procedural changes at the Justice Department that have curtailed the independence of immigration courts. The administration’s mismanagement of and meddling with the immigration courts – done in the name of “efficiency” – are particularly troubling during the COVID-19 pandemic, when an overburdened system can lead to unsafe practices that place individuals at grave risk and jeopardize due process, the senators write to the GAO.

“While the Trump administration has justified its incursions into the independence of immigration courts as efficiency measures, legal service providers have explained that EOIR’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how the agency can use seemingly neutral measures to tip the scales of justice against noncitizens,” the senators write. “In order to defend themselves in immigration court, noncitizens must file motions and other papers in person at physical court locations; obtain counsel; meet with their attorneys; present testimony from family members, employers, and/or expert witnesses; and provide medical records, tax records, and other supporting documents. Yet COVID-19 makes these actions potentially dangerous.”

Joining Whitehouse, Durbin, and Hirono in the request to the GAO are Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kamala Harris (D-CA).

The senators continue in their letter to GAO, “Immigration courts are now reopening around the country, including in areas that are seeing increases in the number of COVID-19 cases. Because EOIR does not have consistent policies for when attorneys, let alone translators or witnesses, may appear telephonically or by video, participants often must appear in person or not at all. Immigration courts have continued to issue in absentia orders of removal for noncitizens who do not appear, even when the likely cause is COVID-19. Nor has EOIR uniformly extended deadlines or continued cases, despite the difficulty noncitizens face in finding and consulting with counsel, obtaining and filing necessary documents and evidence, or securing the appearance of witnesses. These difficulties are particularly acute for detained clients, who have limited access to phone calls and attorney visits. As a result, noncitizens cannot obtain counsel or litigate their cases, and attorneys cannot effectively represent their clients.”

The Trump administration’s management of the immigration system has come under close scrutiny during the COVID-19 crisis. Reports suggest immigrants face a range of unsafe conditions and practices as a result of Trump administration management decisions, including the detention of children using unaccountable private contractors. More than 1,000 people in immigration detention have tested positive for COVID-19, and five people have died.

Full text of the senators’ request is below. A PDF copy is available here.

August 21, 2020

The Honorable Gene Dodaro

Comptroller General of the United States

United States Government Accountability Office

441 G Street, NW

Washington, DC 20548

Dear Mr. Dodaro:

We are writing to request that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyze and audit the Executive Office of Immigration Review’s (EOIR) practices with respect to the hiring, training, and evaluation of immigration judges and staffing of immigration courts, as well as their management of these courts during the current COVID-19 pandemic. GAO’s insight will help Congress determine if additional legislation is necessary to address these issues, as well as inform appropriations decisions.

In February, we wrote to Attorney General William Barr to express our concern that the Trump administration is undermining the independence of immigration courts. As outlined in that letter, attached, we are concerned about the mismanagement of EOIR and troubled by regulatory and procedural changes within the Department of Justice (DOJ) that have curtailed the independence of immigration courts. Although more than six months have passed, we have not received a response from DOJ or EOIR. Instead, in that time, EOIR has continued to use its administrative powers to put its thumb on the scale of justice. Most recently, EOIR attempted to buy out all nine career Board of Immigration Appeals judges who had been hired in prior administrations.[1] When the judges refused, they were reassigned to new roles.[2]

While the Trump administration has justified its incursions into the independence of immigration courts as efficiency measures,[3] legal service providers have explained that EOIR’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how the agency can use seemingly neutral measures to tip the scales of justice against noncitizens. In order to defend themselves in immigration court, noncitizens must file motions and other papers in person at physical court locations; obtain counsel; meet with their attorneys; present testimony from family members, employers, and/or expert witnesses; and provide medical records, tax records, and other supporting documents. Yet COVID-19 makes these actions potentially dangerous. While EOIR initially postponed all hearings for non-detained individuals, proceedings for detained noncitizens continued to move forward unabated.[4] Immigration courts are now reopening around the country,[5] including in areas that are seeing increases in the number of COVID-19 cases. Because EOIR does not have consistent policies for when attorneys, let alone translators or witnesses, may appear telephonically or by video,[6] participants often must appear in person or not at all.[7] Immigration courts have continued to issue in absentia orders of removal for noncitizens who do not appear, even when the likely cause is COVID-19.[8] Nor has EOIR uniformly extended deadlines or continued cases, despite the difficulty noncitizens face in finding and consulting with counsel, obtaining and filing necessary documents and evidence, or securing the appearance of witnesses. These difficulties are particularly acute for detained clients, who have limited access to phone calls and attorney visits.[9] As a result, noncitizens cannot obtain counsel or litigate their cases, and attorneys cannot effectively represent their clients.[10]

EOIR’s facially-neutral policies during the COVID-19 pandemic have raised systemic due process concerns.[11] Immigration judges, staff, and litigators have also expressed concerns about the health risks to them and the litigants who appear in immigration courts.[12] Given GAO’s prior work on immigration courts,[13] it is uniquely suited to conduct an audit and analysis of EOIR. We ask GAO to look into the following questions:

What criteria does EOIR use to hire immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals judges? What criteria does EOIR use to determine the number of deputy chief and other management positions for judges, and what criteria does EOIR use to hire for these positions? To what extent does EOIR assess its immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals judge hiring efforts? What, if any, challenges has EOIR encountered in recruiting and retaining immigration judges and Board of Immigration Appeals judges? How, if at all, has it addressed them?

How does EOIR determine targets for immigration court and Board of Immigration Appeals case completion time frames and caseloads?

To what extent has EOIR assessed its immigration court and Board of Immigration Appeals staffing needs? What have any such assessments shown? How do current immigration court staffing levels compare to staffing needs EOIR has identified?

How does EOIR assess immigration and Board of Immigration Appeals judge performance?

To what extent has EOIR assessed immigration judge and Board of Immigration Appeals judge training needs? What have any such assessments shown?

How has EOIR’s use of video teleconferencing changed since GAO last reported on it in 2017? What, if any, data is EOIR collecting on hearings using video teleconferencing and the effects of that technology on hearing outcomes?

How do EOIR’s practices compare to other administrative courts?

How, if at all, is EOIR addressing the backlog of cases that were postponed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

How, if at all, has EOIR’s response to COVID-19 affected noncitizens’ ability to locate and meet with counsel, obtain and present evidence in their cases, and appear in court? To what extent have the challenges of COVID-19 impacted the number of in absentia orders issued by immigration courts?

Please keep our offices apprised of your review. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

###

[1] Tanvi Misra, DOJ ‘reassigned’ career members of Board of Immigration Appeals, CQ Roll Call, June 9, 2020, available at https://www.rollcall.com/2020/06/09/doj-reassigned-career-members-of-board-of-immigration-appeals/.

[2] Id.

[3] Jeff Sessions, Attorney General, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Remarks to the Executive Office for Immigration Review Legal Training Program (Jun. 11, 2018), available at https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-sessions-delivers-remarks-executive-office-immigration-review-legal.

[4] Executive Office for Immigration Review, EOIR Operational Status During Coronavirus Pandemic, https://www.justice.gov/eoir/eoir-operational-status-during-coronavirus-pandemic (last updated Aug. 19, 2020); American Immigration Lawyers Association, “AILA Tracks EOIR’s Historical Operational Status During Coronavirus Pandemic,” https://www.aila.org/eoir-operational-status (last visited Aug. 19, 2020).

[5] American Immigration Lawyers Association, supra note 4.

[6] Id.

[7] Emergency Mot. for a Temporary Restraining Order, Nat’l Imm. Project of the Nat’l Lawyers Guild v. Exec. Office of Imm. Review, No. 1:20-cv-00852-CJN, at 12-18 (D.D.C. Apr. 8, 2020), available at https://www.aila.org/advo-media/press-releases/2020/temporary-restraining-order-requested-to-stop.

[8] Id. at 15-16.

[9] Monique O. Madan, Despite national shortage, immigration lawyers required to bring their own medical gear, Miami Herald, Mar. 22, 2020, https://miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/artcile241414486.html.

[10] Id. 12-15, 25-26.

[11] Betsy Woodruff Swan, Union: DOJ deportation appeals workers fear overcrowding, Politico, Apr. 23, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/doj-union-immigration-deportation-coronavirus-202075 (“That is the feeling the [EOIR] employees have, that [EOIR’s COVID response is] definitely connected to this administration and their desperation to be able to boast about how great they’re doing on their deportation numbers.”).

[12] Nat’l Assoc. of Immigration Judges, Am. Assoc. of Immigration Lawyers, & Am. Fed. Of Gov’t Employees Local 511, Position on the Health and Safety of Immigration Courts During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Mar. 15, 2020, available at https://naij-usa.org/images/uploads/newsroom/2020.03.15.00.pdf.

[13] See, e.g., Gov’t Accountability Office, Immigration Courts: Actions Needed to Reduce Case Backlog and Address Long-Standing Management and Operational Challenges (June 2017).

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Basically, confirms what AILA, NAIJ, our Round Table, NGOs, and much of the media have been saying for a long time now! Obviously, the Dems lack the power in the Senate to take effective action to eliminate EOIR and replace it with an independent Article I Court, at present. Hopefully, that will be remedied in November.

In the meantime, what’s the excuse of the Article IIIs for continuing to allow this mockery of our Constitution and parody of justice to continue to daily inflict abuse on their fellow humans?

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-25-20

🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏻🤡🎪🤮KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: How Do You “Dumb Down” An Already Dysfunctional Organization? — Just Ask EOIR! — Latest Ludicrous Regs Proposals Show Why America Would Be Better Off Without Clown Courts Putting On Expanded “Freak Show” Under The Big Top!

Read the “advance copy of proposed regulations” scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on August 26, 2020 here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-18676.pdf

WARNING: Any resemblance to a court of law or part of the justice system contained in the document at the link is purely coincidental.

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The short-term solution is actually simple: The Article IIIs need to strike this system down as a patently ridiculous denial of 5th Amendment Due Process. All immigration proceedings should be conducted de novo before U.S. Magistrate Judges, with review by District Judges and Circuit Courts, until Congress acts to establish an Immigration Court System that complies with our Constitution!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-23-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤡🤮ANOTHER EOIR SCAM: MORE LAYERS OF MISMANAGEMENT FOR FAILED SYSTEM — More Managers Are No Substitute For Competent Court Management!

Regional Deputy Chief Immigration Judge

08/10/2020 10:00 AM EDT

Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)
Office of the Chief Immigration Judge
Falls Church, Virginia
Announcement #: SES-10606886-20-AS
Application Deadline: September 8, 2020

Typical work assignments will include:

·         Directing oversight of activities of formal, quasi-judicial hearings and proceedings conducted by Immigration Judges within a designated region.

·         Providing executive leadership for court matters involving deportation, exclusion, removal, rescission, bond and related decisions and actions of Immigration Judges and Court personnel.

·         Managing the analysis and evaluation of judicial decisions to determine impact on immigration judges, court policies and procedures and/or the immigration judge program.

·         Providing technical direction of court staff through Assistant Chief Immigration Judges, Immigration Judges and Court administrators through the region.

Number of Positions:
6 vacancies in multiple locations: San Francisco, CA, Chicago, IL, New York, NY, Miami, FL, Las Vegas, NV, Houston, TX

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It never hurts to restate the obvious when dealing with the never-ending, always worsening mess at EOIR.

A system that competently selects well-qualified professional judges needs very little “management” at all, since judges are independent decision makers. Qualified judges basically are “self-managing.”

What they do need is competent professional administrators who secure the necessary resources, technology, equipment, and training for those judges to function efficiently and professionally while steering clear of any interference in substantive judicial decision making. Administrators responsible to the judges and public they serve, rather than vice versa as EOIR is now constructed. Indeed, “customer service” at today’s EOIR isn’t just “off the charts” — it never was on the regime’s chart to begin with!

A trial court also needs a competent, functional appellate division that shows leadership in promoting due process, fundamental fairness, and best practices throughout the system through clear, cogent, and intellectually honest precedents.

Right now EOIR has almost nothing it needs and everything it doesn’t. Not surprisingly, this incredibly FUBAR system is a total dysfunctional mess where injustice reigns supreme and “management” squanders taxpayer funds while constantly turning complete disorder into mind-boggling morale killing unrelenting disasters.

Due Process Forever! Today’s FUBAR EOIR, Never!🤮

PWS

08-10-20

🤡☠️🤮CLOWN COURTS’ DEADLY REOPENING SCHEME ISN’T A “PLAN AT ALL” —It’s A Recipe For Dysfunction, Disaster, & Potential Death By “Malicious Incompetence” — Are There No “Grown Ups” Left in Congress or The Article IIIs With The Guts To End This Stain Our Nation?

https://immigrationimpact.com/2020/08/04/coronavirus-immigration-court/

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on Immigration Impact:

COVID-19 Wreaks Havoc on Immigration Courts With No Clear Plan to Stop Spread

Posted by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick | Aug 4, 2020 | Due Process & the Courts, Immigration Courts

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States, immigration courts around the country remain in turmoil.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”) initially postponed all non-detained hearings when lockdowns began in March. However, EOIR refused to close all courts. Hearings for detained immigrants and unaccompanied children continued, despite the risks. Now, nearly five months later, EOIR still has no public plan to limit the spread of COVID-19 as it slowly begins to reopen courts around the country.

Immigration Courts Reopen Across the U.S.

Beginning in mid-June, EOIR began reopening some immigration courts, starting with the Honolulu immigration court.

Since then, courts have reopened for hearings in Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Hartford, New Orleans, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Newark, Baltimore, Detroit, and Arlington. However, following the rise in COVID-19 cases in Texas, the Dallas immigration court was open for less than a week before shutting again. It remains closed.

After the court reopened in Newark, immigration lawyers filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the court reopening. They explained that the court has not provided enough safety protocols. According to the lawsuit, they believe at least two deaths, including an immigration lawyer and a clerk for ICE in Newark, can already be traced to court hearings that occurred before the initial shutdown.

At a town hall, the National Association of Immigration Judges discussed the reopening. The union stated that EOIR doesn’t determine which courts reopen. Those decisions come from the local U.S. Attorney, who are political appointees working for the Department of Justice.

No Concrete Plan for Stopping COVID-19 Spread in Courts

Making matters worse, EOIR has still not explained what the criteria are for opening courts. The only safety guidelines the agency has published are simply those generally applicable to the public, such as asking people to socially distance, wear masks, and not appear in court if they have tested positive for COVID-19.

These limited guidelines do not provide anywhere near enough information to ensure safety for people appearing in court.

For example, EOIR fails to explain how translation services will work, which is but one of many unresolved questions about safety. In many courts, interpreters sit directly next to the person for whom they are interpreting so they can hear every word. But social distancing would be impossible in that scenario.

If EOIR wanted to replace all in-person interpretation with telephonic interpretation, that may not be a viable solution. Some people’s cases could be hurt by lower quality interpretation over what are often noisy phone lines.

Courts that have reopened have mostly been hearing only “individual” merits hearings, the equivalent of a trial in the immigration court system. Master calendar hearings, at which dozens of people wait in a courtroom together to review their immigration charges, are not currently happening in most reopened courts.

The agency has indicated that some master calendar hearings with reduced numbers of participants will move forward. But even with a limited caseload, practitioners report chaos and confusion as court hearings begin again.

Lawyers report having cases advanced or postponed with little notice and almost no input. This can be particularly hard for individuals without attorneys. They may be unable to keep track of rapid changes at the courts.

This chaos underscores the need for a public safety plan. EOIR must ensure the public that it can run the courts safely.

Without that plan, the agency’s actions so far reinforce the White House’s goal of keeping the deportation machine running without taking public health into consideration. Before any further courts reopen, EOIR must make its plans clear, or else public health and the right to a fair day in court will continue to suffer.

FILED UNDER: covid-19, EOIR

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

Wow! Talk about a democracy in meltdown!

Some of those caught up by these “crimes against humanity” won’t survive to tell their stories. So, it’s important that those of us who recognize this unending tragedy both document it and insure that history will not let those responsible escape accountability, be they Supreme Court Justices, political leaders, or lower level bureaucrats repeating the hollow “just doing my job” mantra as they enable or carry out these grotesque acts.

For those who watched “Immigration Nation,” how many times did you hear variations of the latter excuse from Federal bureaucrats as they heaped unnecessary, and in many cases illegal and immoral, carnage on their fellow human beings? How many times did you hear folks who are supposed to understand the system falsely use the “get in line” or “do it the right way” lies?

The ugly stain of the Trump regime’s illegal conduct, cowardice, cruelty, dishonesty, and inhumanity, and that of those who aided and abetted it, will not be wiped away!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-06-20

🛡⚔️⚖️🗽 ROUND TABLE ASSISTS FIGHT AGAINST “AMERICA’S STAR CHAMBERS” — Here’s Our Amicus Brief In Las Americas v. Trump! — With Thanks To Our Pro Bono Friends STOLL STOLL BERNE LOKTING & SHLACHTER P.C. in Portland, OR!

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

Excerpt:

The immigration court system lacks independence. An agency within the Department of Justice, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) houses the immigration court system, which consists of trial-level immigration courts and a single appellate tribunal known as the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). Immigration judges, including appellate immigration judges, are viewed by EOIR “management” not as judges, but as Department of Justice attorneys who serve at the pleasure and direction of the Nation’s prosecutor-in-chief, the Attorney General.

As former immigration judges, we offer the Court our experience and urge that corrective action is necessary to ensure that immigration judges are permitted to function as impartial adjudicators, as required under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The INA and its implementing regulations set forth procedures for the “timely, impartial, and consistent” resolution of immigration proceedings. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1103, 1230; 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(1) (charging the Board with appellate review authority to “resolve the questions before it in a manner that is timely, impartial, and consistent with the [INA] and regulations”) (emphasis added); 8 C.F.R. § 1003.10(b) (similarly requiring “immigration judges . . . to resolve the questions before them in a timely and impartial manner”) (emphasis added).

Although housed inside an enforcement agency and led by the Nation’s chief prosecutor, immigration judges must act neutrally to protect and adjudicate the important rights at stake in immigration cases and check executive overreach in the enforcement of federal immigration law. Applying a detached and learned interpretation of those laws, judges must correct overzealous bureaucrats and policy makers when they overstep the bounds of reasonable interpretation and the requirements of due process.

Here’s the full brief:

Las Americas Amicus (full case)

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As I often say, it’s an honor to be a part of this group with so many of my wonderful colleagues. It’s also an honor to be able to assist so many wonderful “divisions and brigades” of the New Due Process Army, like the SPLC and Immigration Law Lab.

Here’s another thought I often express: What if all of this talent, creativity, teamwork, expertise, and energy were devoted to fixing our broken Immigration Court System rather than constantly fighting to end gross abuses that should not be happening? There is a “systemic cost” to “maliciously incompetent” administration and the White Nationalist agenda promoted by the Trump kakistocracy!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

08-04-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: NJ AILA Sues EOIR’s Malicious Incompetents To Stop Deadly ☠️☠️☠️🤮 In-Person Hearings

Laura Lynch

Laura Lynch
Senior Policy Counsel
AILA

Hon. Susan G. Roy
Law Office of Susan G. Roy, LLC
Princeton Junction, NJ
Member, Round Table of Former Immigration Judges

Laura Lynch @ AILA writes:

I wanted to flag this lawsuit that was filed a few hours ago by AILA’s New Jersey Chapter seeking to stop in-person court appearances at the Newark Immigration Court. The attached complaint reveals the following:

“The Newark Immigration Court is no stranger to the devastating effects of COVID-19. The coronavirus spread through the court before it closed in March, and COVID-19 illnesses tragically caused the deaths of both a longtime private immigration attorney and a staffer at the immigration prosecutor’s office, as well as causing the serious illness of both a senior immigration prosecutor and a court translator. More recently, the head of Federal Protective Services at 970 Broad Street in Newark—the building where the Newark Immigration Court is housed—died from COVID-19.”

“Yet, despite the risks posed by the spread of COVID-19, and the actual serious illness and death it has already caused to people involved with the Newark Immigration Court, that court was recently reopened for immigration hearings regarding cases for persons who are not held in detention (the so-called “non-detained docket”). Moreover, even though immigration law and regulations provide for immigration hearings to take place by videoconference—and the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which operates the nation’s immigration courts, has touted its use of such videoconference hearings—the Newark Immigration Court does not provide the option for attorneys or others to appear by videoconference for cases on the non-detained docket.”

The Associated Press wrote a short article about this lawsuit.

Unfortunately, the complaint hasn’t been posted on AILA’s website yet. I’ve been sharing the document using this google link:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TTXt0c7dzflF9Kpvvpe–aeHbQvHbYoV/view.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks, Laura

Laura A. Lynch, Esq.

Senior Policy Counsel

Here’s a link to a courthouse news story also: https://www.courthousenews.com/immigration-lawyers-seek-to-halt-in-person-hearings-amid-covid-fears/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

They provide a link to the filing as well:

https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NJ.petition.220cv9748.pdf

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It just keeps getting worse and worse. The malicious incompetents at DOJ/EOIR keep endangering lives in an out of their so-called “courts” while those supposedly responsible for “justice in America” let it happen. This is a “Third World Dictatorship-Style Meltdown” happening right here in our country.

How many will have to die or have their lives ruined before this dangerous and dysfunctional embarrassment to humanity is finally put out of its misery (not to mention the misery it brings to others).

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

PWS

08-01-20

🏴‍☠️👎🤮KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: Labor Authority Lambastes Billy The Bigot’s Lame Assault On Immigration Judges’ Union !

https://www.naij-usa.org/images/uploads/newsroom/2020.07.31.00.pdf

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As my long term, friend, Round Table colleague, and member of the “EOIR Founder’s Club,” Judge John Gossart said:

Great news…I was at the hearing which was shameful and disingenuous and a waste of taxpayer money. Well done NAIJ.

That about sums it up!

As the decision pointed out, even as the DOJ/EOIR kakistocracy reduces Immigration Judges basically to “deportation clerks,” stripping them of even minimal authority to control their dockets, and largely circumscribing their exercises of discretion, they make the outrageously fraudulent claim that these “deportation clerk judges” are “managers” to squelch their First Amendment rights to speak out and reveal the ongoing fraud, waste, and abuse at EOIR.

There was a time when public officials might have hesitated to engage in such dishonest conduct in full public view for fear of being held accountable. However, thanks to a feckless Congress and indolent Supremes’ majority, those days are gone.

The Trump kakistocracy now feels free to violate the Constitution, ignore statutes, make disingenuous arguments to courts and other tribunals, lie, and loot the Treasury without fear of consequences other than an occasional “slap on the wrist” when, as in this case, someone actually dares to “just say no” to their degradation of American democracy.

One could easily wonder why a FLRA Regional Director has more courage, integrity, legal knowledge, and a better understanding of what’s really going on in our Immigration “Courts” than a majority of Justices on the Supremes and many Article III Judges who simply “pretend to look away” as these outrageous abuses of our justice system are “normalized” in Billy Barr’s corrupt and unconstitutional “courts.”

One can only hope that legal historians will expose truth and “rip apart” the legacies of those Justices, judges, legislators, and other public officials who allowed these “crimes against humanity” to be carried out with impunity on their watch!

Due Process Forever.

PWS

08-01-20

RICHARD A. CLARKE @ WASHPOST: High Time To End The DHS Farce 🤡🤹‍♀️🎪☠️🤮: “Trump has done far more damage to the DHS, however, than leaving it leaderless. He has branded it as the department that cages children, swoops innocent citizens off U.S. streets, sends warriors dressed for the apocalypse to deal with protests, hunts down hard-working people doing “essential jobs” to forcibly deport them, and harasses foreign students at leading universities.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dismantle-the-department-of-homeland-security/2020/07/30/24ef8ba0-d279-11ea-8c55-61e7fa5e82ab_story.html

Richard A. Clarke served on the National Security Council for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

President Trump has, often intentionally, damaged essential federal departments and agencies, driving from their ranks thousands of career civil servants who are global experts and national treasures. The country is seeing the results play out at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but such damage has happened across the federal bureaucracy.

No national institution has been more damaged than the Department of Homeland Security. The youngest of the federal departments, the DHS is among the largest by employee count, ranking just below the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs. It was created in 2003 by smashing together 17 agencies from five departments in an ill-conceived response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Its divisions and agencies are now largely leaderless, because the White House refuses to nominate senior managers to replace those who have left. Quick, who is the secretary of homeland security?

You get my point.

Trump has done far more damage to the DHS, however, than leaving it leaderless. He has branded it as the department that cages children, swoops innocent citizens off U.S. streets, sends warriors dressed for the apocalypse to deal with protests, hunts down hard-working people doing “essential jobs” to forcibly deport them, and harasses foreign students at leading universities. The DHS has become synonymous with unsympathetic government overreach, malevolence and dysfunction.

For the patriotic, underpaid Americans working hard in the agencies of the DHS, what Trump has done to their reputations is a tragedy. The department, however, was doomed from the start. When such an agency was proposed before the Sept. 11 attacks, I was working in the White House, where I coordinated many “homeland” issues for almost a decade under President Bill Clinton and, later, President George W. Bush. Blocking the creation of the DHS was one of the few things on which Vice President Dick Cheney and I agreed. We thought that such a department would be too large, too diverse in function and too difficult to integrate into a well-functioning institution.

Congressional leaders, however, wanted to “do something” after 9/11, and it became impossible for the Bush administration to maintain its opposition to the idea of a homeland security agency. Instead, the Bush administration embraced it and quickly merged a raft of agencies ripped from their home departments. The new department never really came together.

For more than a decade, reports from the Government Accountability Office, think tanks and congressional committees have documented the failures of the DHS to coalesce into an effective entity. Its image steadily declined and was not helped by the popular television series “Homeland,” which despite its name depicted a dark world of CIA intrigue, portraying missions and functions that the DHS never actually had.. Contrary to popular belief, Homeland Security has never been the government’s lead counterterrorism entity. The FBI, part of the Justice Department, leads counterterrorism efforts within the United States.

The next administration would be well advised not to try to make the existing DHS structure work, for it will end up as another presidential administration that has failed in that task. Instead, the department should be reimagined — perhaps as part of a Reinventing Government effort, the first of which was led by then-Vice President Al Gore — with more manageable and mission-consistent entities. It should also shed its Orwellian name.

Federal departments and agencies develop personalities and images from their mission, and they attract people who identify with those personas. These identities are almost immutable, but new organizational designs and branding can reinvigorate and redirect agencies. Breaking up the DHS could have positive results.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of the article at the link.

You read it Courtside long ago: No mission, no leadership, no values, no discipline, no decency. DHS as currently constituted is a dysfunctional mess that America won’t miss.

Break it up, reassign the truly necessary functions, reduce the funding, and use the money saved by eliminating detention, grotesque mismanagement and maladministration, stupid walls, undisciplined and counterproductive, “civil” enforcement, and other demonstrably destructive functions for something more constructive. Yes, if you strip out the neo-Nazi wannabes, racists, and incompetents, there is some real talent there. Some of that talent passed through my courtroom in Arlington. Some of it is in the Asylum Office and at USCIS. There is some in the anti-smuggling and fraud detection programs. But, it’s totally wasted in the current corrupt dysfunctional configuration. Indeed, the totally toxic reputation of DHS under Trump actually hinders the useful functions.

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

PWS

07-31-20

⚖️🗽😎👍🏼👨🏾‍🎓🏆MASTER CALENDAR REFORM: WHAT THE POST-KAKISTOCRACY IMMIGRATION COURT COULD LOOK LIKE — “The Asylumist” Jason Dzubow Shows Exactly Why An Independent Article I Immigration Court With More “Private Sector Experts” (Like Jason & Many Others) As Judges & Judicial Administrators Would Promote “Due Process With Efficiency” & Creative Judicial Administration That Would Be Good For Everyone Involved (Including DHS)!

https://www.asylumist.com/2020/07/29/re-thinking-the-master-calendar-hearing-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/

New post on The Asylumist

The Master Calendar Hearing–where dozens of people are squeezed into a room and forced to wait for hours in order to talk to a Judge for two minutes–has always been a headache and a waste of time. Now, though, as the coronavirus pandemic continues unabated, attending an MCH seems downright dangerous (lucky for us, we have an associate attorney who covers our MCHs – Don’t forget to wash your hands when (if) you get back!). I’ve written before about alternatives to the MCH, and given the expanding pandemic and the need for social distancing, now seems a good time to re-visit some of these ideas.

Before we get to that, I should mention that MCHs are not the only place where groups of non-citizens are packed together against their will. Far worse are our nation’s ICE detention facilities and private prisons, where conditions were already quite bleak (in the two years before the pandemic, 21 people died in ICE custody). Unfortunately, ICE has not taken effective action to protect detained asylum seekers and other non-citizens from the pandemic (at one facility in Virginia, for example, nearly 75% of detainees tested positive for COVID-19), and the agency seems to have little regard for the health of its detainees (or staff). As a colleague aptly notes, Anne Frank did not die in a gas chamber; she most likely died from typhus, which was epidemic in her detention camp.

Also, it’s worth noting that the National Association of Immigration Judges (the judges’ union) has been working hard for safer conditions in our nation’s Immigration Courts, even if EOIR management has been hostile to some of those efforts. Currently, non-detained MCHs have been suspended, but so far, there is no EOIR-wide policy for what to do instead. Some Immigration Judges and individual courts have made it easier to submit written statements in lieu of MCHs, but the process is still needlessly awkward and time consuming.

MCHs are no more efficient today than they were in olden times.

While we need a short-term fix so that MCHs can go forward during the pandemic, here I want to talk about longer-term solutions. Below are a few ideas for replacing in-person MCHs. While these ideas may not work in all cases, they will help most respondents (and their attorneys) avoid attending MCHs. This would save time and money for people in court, and would also save time and resources for the courts themselves, and for DHS. In addition, reducing the need to appear in person would help prevent the spread of disease. In short, doing away with MCHs is an all around win. So without further ado, here are some ideas to get rid of those pesky Master Calendar Hearings–

e-Master Calendar Hearings: EOIR–the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the office that oversees our nation’s Immigration Courts–has been working towards electronic filing for decades, and in some courts, limited online filing is available. Given that the infrastructure is being put into place for online filing, EOIR should create an online MCH. There already exists a system for written MCHs, but this is a huge pain in the neck. It involves a burdensome amount of paperwork, and judges don’t always respond to the documents we file. This means that we lawyers do double work–we submit everything in writing and we have to attend the MCH. Given how unreliable it is, many attorneys (including yours truly) would rather attend the MCH than try to do it in writing.

An effective and reliable e-MCH would be easy to use and efficient. Most cases fit a clear pattern: Admit the allegations, concede the charge(s), indicate the relief sought and language spoken, designate the country of removal, and obtain a date for the Individual Hearing. For attorneys and accredited representatives who are registered with EOIR, this could all easily be accomplished through an online form, thus saving time for all involved.

Orientation Sessions for Unrepresented Respondents: One difficulty during the typical MCH is attending to unrepresented respondents. People who come to court without a lawyer tend to take more time than people who have attorneys. This is because the attorneys (usually) know what is expected at the MCH and are (hopefully) ready to proceed. For people without lawyers, the Immigration Judge (“IJ”) needs to explain what is going on, often through an interpreter. All this takes time and seems like busy work for the IJ (who often has to repeat the same litany multiple times during each MCH). Why not provide pre-MCHs with court staff instead of judges? There, unrepresented respondents can received a basic orientation about the process and be encouraged to find a lawyer. These sessions could be organized by language. Respondents who indicate that they will return with a lawyer can be given a deadline by which the lawyer can either submit the necessary information online (if e-MCHs have been implemented) or come to court if need be. Respondents who will not use a lawyer can be given a date to return for an in-person MCH with a judge. Even if e-MCHs are not implemented, having an orientation session would save significant time for judges and would make MCHs more efficient.

Empower DHS: In Immigration Court, the “prosecutor” works for the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”). Most DHS attorneys are overwhelmed and overworked. They have little time to review cases in advance or to speak with opposing counsel prior to the MCH or the Individual Hearing. What if there were more DHS attorneys? What if we could pre-try cases, narrow issues, and maybe even hold depositions? If issues could be hashed out ahead of time, we could shorten or eliminate the need for a MCH, and we could make Individual Hearings more efficient.

All this seems pretty basic. The Immigration Courts are overwhelmed. Reducing or eliminating MCHs will free up judges to do substantive work. It will also save time for DHS, respondents, and their attorneys. And of course, given our new normal with the coronavirus, it will help keep everyone safe. Changes to the MCH system are long overdue, and are especially urgent due to the pandemic. Let’s hope that EOIR can finally rise to the occasion.

Jason Dzubow | July 29, 2020 at 9:09 am | Tags: coronavirus, court, EOIR | Categories: Immigration Court | URL: https://wp.me/p8nkzm-21G

Re-Thinking the Master Calendar Hearing in the Time of Coronavirus

by Jason Dzubow

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https://www.asylumist.com/2020/07/29/re-thinking-the-master-calendar-hearing-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/

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Thanks, Jason, for some great ideas!

One could wonder why EOIR hasn’t done this already. Unfortunately, the answer is obvious: It’s a “built to fail system” FUBAR System, run by a maliciously incompetent politicized kakistocracy whose main objective is to screw immigrants and secondary objective is to degrade and demoralize its own employees.

Creative thinking and working collectively and cooperatively with knowledgeable “stakeholders” — private counsel, pro bono groups, NGOs, immigrants, judges, staff, and ICE attorneys — is actively discouraged if not outright prohibited by current the political kakistocracy. That’s what happens when a racist, xenophobic agenda replaces due process and fundamental fairness as the objective and vision of the system. A kakistocracy actually inhibits and suppresses creative positive change in favor of “political gimmicks” and “haste makes waste” non-solutions to problems. The Trump regime is “Exhibit A!”

That’s why true reform can’t come without:

regime change;
Article I;
return to a sole focus on due process and fundamental fairness through teamwork and innovation;
a merit based Immigration Judiciary at all levels; and
professional court administration accountable to that independent judiciary (not a political kakistocracy).

Thanks for pointing us in the right direction, Jason! I know from my experience that there are lots of other folks out there in private sector with some great ideas on how to make the Immigration Court System functional while advancing due process, fundamental fairness, and human rights.

Another idea for promoting due process with efficiency developed by my friend retired Wisconsin Judge Tom Lister and me is to create a trained corps of Reserve Immigration Judges. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/08/19/an-open-letter-proposal-from-two-uw-law-73-retired-judges-weve-spent-90-collective-years-working-to-improve-the-quality-delivery-of-justice-in-america/

This would be comprised of retired judges from all systems who could work on a volunteer basis to perform certain types of standard judicial tasks to free up Immigration Judges to concentrate on fairly resolving the most difficult legal issues at individual hearings and to work on their opinion writing.

Master calendar hearings, motions calendars, status calls, bond hearings, and certain types of hearings where the issues are primarily factual would be naturals for a Reserve Immigration Judge Corps. It also would allow the Immigraton Court System to be more responsive to workload fluctuations without the problems of “fire drill” overstaffing, understaffing, and “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” that currently plague the system.

Right now, we lack the political will to get the job done. That must start this November with “regime change” at all levels of our political system.

Elected officials who aren’t willing to prioritize and commit to an independent Article I Immigration Court dedicated to due process and fundamental fairness should be voted out of office. Enough of the nonsense, malicious incompetence, and inhumanity. Time for a change! We can’t afford the kakistocracy!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

07-29-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚖️⚰️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: BILLY THE BIGOT BLOWS BIGTIME BS AT CONGRESS: Laura Coates @ CNN With Analysis Of Billy’s Opening Statement Liefest & Stream Of Racist Tropes! — With This Trump Toady As Chief Lawyer, & Feckless Courts & Legislators, The U.S. Legal System Is Functionally Dead ☠️⚰️

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/opinions/william-barr-fallacies-undermine-justice-department-coates/index.html

Laura Coates is a CNN legal analyst. She is a former assistant US attorney for the District of Columbia and trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. She is the host of the daily “Laura Coates Show” on SiriusXM. Follow her @thelauracoates. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN)Attorney General Bill Barr’s written opening statement to the House Judiciary Committee was replete with mischaracterizations, fallacies and unnerving stereotypes that run afoul of the principle of equal justice — and which, taken together, show how he has transformed the Department of Justice that enforces the law to a department that undermines the rule of law.

These are but a few lines that should evoke a visceral reaction to the views of a man who sits at the helm of the most powerful prosecutorial office in the country.

1. “Ever since I made it clear that I was going to do everything I could to get to the bottom of the grave abuses involved in the bogus ‘Russiagate’ scandal, many of the Democrats on this Committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply the President’s factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions.”

No, Attorney General Barr, you are not being accused of being a factotum, colloquially defined as a handyman. You stand accused of being a henchman who acts not only under the President’s instructions but, perhaps more nefariously, exclusively in the President’s interests. And what conveys this impression is not a deceptive narrative crafted by the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, but rather your own conduct.

Case in point: undermining career prosecutors in what appears to clearly be the interests of President Donald Trump. Not once can I recall an attorney general weighing in on a career prosecutor’s sentencing recommendations for a defendant convicted of multiple felonies by a jury. Yet, this appears to be an increasingly frequent endeavor by this Attorney General on behalf of Trump associates, including, most recently former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the President’s long-time friend Roger Stone.

William Barr has a lot to explain about actions on Michael Cohen

The disturbing trend is underscored by the fact that the one convicted felon who has fallen out of the President’s favor, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, felt the knife twisted rather than removed when the Justice Department recently, albeit briefly, sent him back to prison under questionable

And Barr’s misuse of terms continues with the use of the term “Russiagate.” The use of the suffix “gate” insinuates that it is conspiratorial, farcical and worthy of derision. And yet, the Attorney General has confirmed, as recently as today’s colloquy with Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, that Russia did interfere with the past presidential election and will presumably continue to interfere with our upcoming presidential election. Perhaps the nod to conspiracy theorists was inadvertent in light of overwhelming evidence he fails to dispute.

2. “Like his predecessors, President Trump and his National Security Council have appropriately weighed in on law-enforcement decisions that directly implicate national security or foreign policy, because those decisions necessarily involve considerations that transcend typical prosecutorial factors.”

No one doubts the propriety of the President of the United States and members of his National Security Council to get involved in cases that directly implicate the national security of this nation or those matters that directly relate to our foreign policy interests. What is in doubt is whether Barr’s defense of deploying federal agents to US cities is anything more than a pretextual reason to infringe upon the constitutional rights of Americans, namely their First Amendment rights to assemble and to protest their grievances with the government. A bald assertion of a national security interest does not absolve the executive branch from having to provide an appropriate and lawful justification when constitutional rights are implicated. And yet Barr has offered no compelling reason.

3. “I had nothing to prove and had no desire to return to government. … When asked to consider returning, I did so because I revere the Department and believed my independence would allow me to help steer her back to her core mission of applying one standard of justice for everyone and enforcing the law even-handedly, without partisan considerations.”

This is just laughable. He had no desire to return to the government? I have a June 2018 memo that says otherwise. It was entirely unsolicited, offered Barr’s insight on special counsel Robert Mueller’s handling of an investigation into Russia’s interference in our presidential election and read like a solicitation for a job. And lo and behold, he got his wish. Now, Barr has launched an investigation into the origins of what he calls “Russiagate” that seems to track the very outline he presented when he, ahem, had no desire to put skin in the game.

Barr’s suggestion that he was compelled to return to the helm out of a sincere interest to restore the objectivity and credibility of the Department of Justice is belied by his decision-making. His sentencing decisions that seem to show political favor, his failure to justify the use of force against peaceful protestors and his involvement in the removal of Geoffrey Berman, the former Attorney General for the Southern District of New York, comprise just a handful of the many instances where his conduct has undermined — not restored — the credibility of the Justice Department.

. . . .

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

Read the rest of Laura’s seven points at the link.

It’s a familiar pattern. After “stonewalling” Congressional oversight, Administration Kakistocrat finally shows up and arrogantly spews lies, misrepresentations, and false narratives under oath. Dems spend their time lecturing and pontificating, but don’t create the factual record for a subsequent perjury prosecution. (Ask yourself: What if Laura Coates were doing the questioning?)

GOP toadies in Congress “circle the wagons” and double down on the lies showing their complete contempt for truth, human decency, and good governance.

We already knew Barr was a shady character and that the GOP is unfit for any office in any branch. So, this hearing didn’t really accomplish much.

But it does demonstrate the absolute necessity for the majority of us who want to save our nation to get out the vote to remove Trump and the GOP at every level 🧹 in November.

This November, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does! Another four years of Trump’s racist malicious incompetence and the GOP kakistocracy could kill us all (including the truth-impervious Trumpsters and GOP toadies willing to seek the end of our democracy)! Victory for the “good guys” isn’t inevitable — it will take lots of energy and continuing hard work to save our nation!👍🏼🗽🇺🇸

PWS

07-29-20

🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻GOP POLITICO SUMS UP TRUMP’S INCREDIBLY NOXIOUS & DANGEROUS KAKISTOCRACY IN A FEW PARAGRAPHS: “Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically,” Says Steve Schmidt (No Relation)!

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/steve-schmidt-donald-trump/index.html

“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.

“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.

“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”

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

That about sums it up!

Or, you could just say: “A kakistocracy led by a maliciously incompetent racist moron!”

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

PWS

087-27-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY HAS CONSEQUENCES: CLIMATE MIGRATION IS ONE OF THEM! — Trump’s Stupidity & Cruelty On Immigration Climate Science, & Disease Control Promises Horrible Global Human Disaster For Future Generations — Empowering & Enabling A Moron Is Always A Very Bad Idea! — No Idiotic Wall Or “Drill Baby Drill” Insanity Is Going To Prevent This Human Catastrophe We Are Inflicting On Those Who Follow!

🏴‍☠️

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html

THE GREAT CLIMATE MIGRATION

By Abrahm Lustgarten | Photographs by Meridith Kohut

Early in 2019, a year before the world shut its borders completely, Jorge A. knew he had to get out of Guatemala. The land was turning against him. For five years, it almost never rained. Then it did rain, and Jorge rushed his last seeds into the ground. The corn sprouted into healthy green stalks, and there was hope — until, without warning, the river flooded. Jorge waded chest-deep into his fields searching in vain for cobs he could still eat. Soon he made a last desperate bet, signing away the tin-roof hut where he lived with his wife and three children against a $1,500 advance in okra seed. But after the flood, the rain stopped again, and everything died. Jorge knew then that if he didn’t get out of Guatemala, his family might die, too.

This article, the first in a series on global climate migration, is a partnership between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Read more about the data project that underlies the reporting.

Even as hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans fled north toward the United States in recent years, in Jorge’s region — a state called Alta Verapaz, where precipitous mountains covered in coffee plantations and dense, dry forest give way to broader gentle valleys — the residents have largely stayed. Now, though, under a relentless confluence of drought, flood, bankruptcy and starvation, they, too, have begun to leave. Almost everyone here experiences some degree of uncertainty about where their next meal will come from. Half the children are chronically hungry, and many are short for their age, with weak bones and bloated bellies. Their families are all facing the same excruciating decision that confronted Jorge.

The odd weather phenomenon that many blame for the suffering here — the drought and sudden storm pattern known as El Niño — is expected to become more frequent as the planet warms. Many semiarid parts of Guatemala will soon be more like a desert. Rainfall is expected to decrease by 60 percent in some parts of the country, and the amount of water replenishing streams and keeping soil moist will drop by as much as 83 percent. Researchers project that by 2070, yields of some staple crops in the state where Jorge lives will decline by nearly a third.

Scientists have learned to project such changes around the world with surprising precision, but — until recently — little has been known about the human consequences of those changes. As their land fails them, hundreds of millions of people from Central America to Sudan to the Mekong Delta will be forced to choose between flight or death. The result will almost certainly be the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen.

In March, Jorge and his 7-year-old son each packed a pair of pants, three T-shirts, underwear and a toothbrush into a single thin black nylon sack with a drawstring. Jorge’s father had pawned his last four goats for $2,000 to help pay for their transit, another loan the family would have to repay at 100 percent interest. The coyote called at 10 p.m. — they would go that night. They had no idea then where they would wind up, or what they would do when they got there.

From decision to departure, it was three days. And then they were gone.

. . . .

Our modeling and the consensus of academics point to the same bottom line: If societies respond aggressively to climate change and migration and increase their resilience to it, food production will be shored up, poverty reduced and international migration slowed — factors that could help the world remain more stable and more peaceful. If leaders take fewer actions against climate change, or more punitive ones against migrants, food insecurity will deepen, as will poverty. Populations will surge, and cross-border movement will be restricted, leading to greater suffering. Whatever actions governments take next — and when they do it — makes a difference.

The window for action is closing. The world can now expect that with every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people will be pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. For a long time, the climate alarm has been sounded in terms of its economic toll, but now it can increasingly be counted in people harmed. The worst danger, Hinde warned on our walk, is believing that something so frail and ephemeral as a wall can ever be an effective shield against the tide of history. “If we don’t develop a different attitude,” he said, “we’re going to be like people in the lifeboat, beating on those that are trying to climb in.”

Abrahm Lustgarten is a senior environmental reporter at ProPublica. His 2015 series examining the causes of water scarcity in the American West, “Killing the Colorado,” was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Meridith Kohut is an award-winning photojournalist based in Caracas, Venezuela, who has documented global health and humanitarian crises in Latin America for The New York Times for more than a decade. Her recent assignments include photographing migration and childbirth in Venezuela, antigovernment protests in Haiti and the killing of women in Guatemala.

Reporting and translation were contributed by Pedro Pablo Solares in Guatemala and El Salvador, and Louisa Reynolds and Juan de Dios García Davish in Mexico.

Data for opening globe graphic from “Future of the Human Climate Niche,” by Chi Xu, Timothy A. Kohler, Timothy M. Lenton, Jens-Christian Svenning and Marten Scheffer, from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Graphic by Bryan Christie Design/Joe Lertola.

Maps in Central America graphics sequence show total population shift under the SSP5 / RCP 8.5 and SSP3 / RCP 8.5 scenarios used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and it is calculated on a 15-kilometer grid. A cube-root scale was used to compress the largest peaks.

Projections based on research by The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Model graphics and additional data analysis by Matthew Conlen.

Additional design and development by Jacky Myint and Shannon Lin.

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

Read the full article, with pictures and neat graphics, at the link!

“Safe Third Countries” indeed! It’s total fraud-enhanced immorality by the Trump regime, with our failed and failing “governing institutions” and the rest of the world fecklessly watching us be driven by the irrational hate and stupidity filled agenda of a madman and his toadies!

No wall will be high enough, no “American Gulag” cruel enough, no rhetoric racist enough, no laws hateful enough, no Supreme Court dehumanizing enough, no immorality and stupidity gross enough to stop mass human migration driven by climate change. “Desperate people do desperate things!”

This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!

PWS

07-26-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻ERROR SUPPLY: EOIR’s Anti-Asylum Bias, Failure To Apply Precedents, Earns Yet Another Rebuke From 3d Cir. — Blanco v. AG

Dan Kowalski reports for LexisNexis Immigration Community:

Immigration Law

Daniel M. Kowalski

25 Jul 2020

persecution

cat

Honduras

asylum

CA3 on Persecution: Blanco v. Atty. Gen.

Blanco v. Atty. Gen.

“Ricardo Javier Blanco, a citizen of Honduras, is a member of Honduras’s Liberty and Refoundation (“LIBRE”) Party, an anti-corruption political party that opposes the current Honduran president. After participating in six political marches, he was abducted by the Honduran police and beaten, on and off, for twelve hours. He was let go but received death threats over the next several months until he fled to the United States. He applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”). The Immigration Judge (“IJ”) denied all relief, and the Board of Immigration Appeals (“BIA”) affirmed. Blanco now petitions for review of the agency’s decision, arguing that the BIA and IJ erred in denying his asylum and withholding of removal claims on the basis that his treatment did not rise to the level of persecution. He also argues that it was improper to require him to corroborate his testimony to prove his CAT claim. Because the agency misapplied our precedent when determining whether Blanco had established past persecution, and because it did not follow the three-part inquiry we established in Abdulai v. Ashcroft, 239 F.3d 542, 554 (3d Cir. 2001), before requiring Blanco to corroborate his CAT claim testimony, we will grant the petition, vacate the BIA’s decision, and remand for further proceedings.”

[Hats off to patent lawyers Gary H. Levin and Aaron B. Rabinowitz!]

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

This should have been a “no brainer” asylum grant!

Instead, after two levels of disturbingly unprofessional administrative decision-making, now driven by racism and overt anti-immigrant bias, and one layer of “real court” review, the case is basically back to square one. No wonder this “Deadly Clown Court” ☠️🤡 is running a 1.4 million backlog, and counting!

Think we have the wrong folks on the “Immigration Bench?” You bet! Two smart patent lawyers from Baker Hostetler run legal circles around an IJ, the BIA, and OIL!

Interestingly, a significant number of students in my Georgetown Law Summer Semester Immigration Law & Policy (“ILP”) Class have been patent examiners and/or patent attorneys! They have all been amazing, both in class dialogue and on the final exam. I suspect it has something to do with analytical skills, meticulous research, and attention to detail — always biggies in asylum litigation!

That’s why we must end a “built to fail” system that preys on unrepresented or underrepresented asylum seekers in illegal, intentionally inhumane and coercive, detention settings, where adequate preparation and documentation are impossible and where judges, too often lacking in asylum expertise, humanity, and/or the time to carefully research and deliberate, are pressured to engage in “assembly line denials.”

And, thanks to the racial dehumanization embraced by the Supremes’ majority many refugees, disproportionately those with brown or black skins, are completely denied fair access to the asylum hearing system. They are simply treated by our highest Court like human garbage — sent back to torture or potential death in unsafe foreign countries without any due process at all. So, the systemic failure is not by any means limited to the “Immigration Star Chambers.”

A simple rule of judging that appears “over the heads” of the current Supremes majority: If it wouldn’t be due process for you or your family in a death penalty case, than it’s not due process for any “person.” Not “rocket science.” Just “Con Law 101” with doses of common sense and simple humanity thrown in. So why is it beyond the capabilities of our most powerful judges?

If there is any good news coming out of this mess, it’s that more talented litigators like Gary Levin and Aaron Rabinowitz from firms like Baker Hostetler are becoming involved in immigration and human rights litigation. They often run circles around Billy the Bigot’s ethically-challenged group of captive DOJ lawyers, who can no longer operate independently and ethically, even if they want to.

So, in a better future, after regime change, there are going to be lots of really great sources for better judges out there at all levels of the Federal Judiciary from the eventually independent Immigration Courts, to the U.S. District Courts and Magistrate Judges, to the Courts of Appeals, all the way to the Supremes.

At the latter, we need new and better Justices: Justices who understand immigration and human rights laws and the overriding human interests at stake, who will “lose” the White institutional racial bias and perverted right-wing ideologies that infect our current Court, and who are dedicated to making the vision of folks like Dr. King and Congressman John Lewis for “equal justice under law” and an end to dehumanization of persons of color a reality under our Constitution and within our system of justice!

There is no excuse for the current Supreme Court-enabled travesty unfolding in a biased, broken, and dysfunctional immigration system every day!

Due Process Forever!

This November, vote like our nation’s future existence depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

07-26-20

☠️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY CLOSE-UP: When He Isn’t Busy Appointing Hate Groupers To Immigration “Judgeships,” The Lies Just Keep Flowing From Billy The Biogot’s Mouth — Laura Coates Reports On His Latest Whoppers For CNN!

Laura Coates says AG Bill Barr has some explaining to do

CNN Tonight

CNN’s Laura Coates argues that Attorney General Bill Barr has some explaining to do about a number of issues surrounding him and how he runs the US Department of Justice.

Source: CNN

Watch Laura’s report here:https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/07/25/laura-coates-case-attorney-general-bill-barr-has-explaining-to-do-ctn-vpx.cnn

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

Lies to Federal Courts, cover-ups, brutality, First Amendment violations, pretexts, misrepresentations, racism, it all just in a few days’s work for Billy.

The worst Attorney General in modern U.S. history, toady to the worst President in U.S. history, just keeps getting worse!

PWS

07-25-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️🤡FRIDAY SPECIAL: COMBINED KAKISTICROCY KORNER ☠️ & CLOWN COURT 🤡 REPORT — EOIR GOES TOTAL FUBAR! — Local Chief Federal Prosecutors To Decide If, How, & When So-Called Immigration “Courts” (More Accurately, “Star Chambers”) Will Reopen!

Star Chamber Justice — “Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

Subject: Re: [fedcourtlitigation] immigration court reopening in the hands of us attorney offices?

It was confirmed by EOIR Director McHenry today during the EOIR forum during the AILA conference.

Sabrina [Damast]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 2:31 PM Jorjani, Raha; Public Defender wrote:

It was announced yesterday at an IJ townhall that the decision of whether, when, and how to reopen Immigration Courts across the nation was in the hands of local U.S. Attorney offices. Has anyone seen any official support for this suggestion? I can’t seem to find a memo or other policy directive about it.

RAHA JORJANI| Supervising Immigration Defense Attorney, [Alameda County Public Defenders]

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

The solution seems pretty obvious. With a coronavirus stimulus package coming up, the Dems should insist on:

Defunding of EOIR;
Transfer of all EOIR responsibilities and remaining funding for this fiscal year and any future fiscal years until an Article I or Article III Immigration Court is established to U.S. Magistrate Judges and the Administrative Office for U.S. Courts;
Absolute prohibition on any contact with the transferred functions by any employee of the Executive Branch except 1) a Government Attorney appearing in a particular matter; and 2) attendance at a meeting including representative members of the public to discuss fair and efficient Immigration Court administration.

Problem would be solved, for now. Moreover, this would provide the necessary “incentives” for the Article III Courts to establish a fair and efficient due process framework for Immigration Court proceedings that could be a model for the eventual Article I or Article III legislation. Put an immediate end to “malicious incompetence” by the DOJ and the Trump regime!

Due Process Forever! America’s Star Chambers,☠️⚰️ Never!

PWS

07-24-20

Due Process Forever!

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WARNING: Any resemblance to a court of law or part of the justice system contained in the document at the link is purely coincidental.

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PWS

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But it does demonstrate the absolute necessity for the majority of us who want to save our nation to get out the vote to remove Trump and the GOP at every level 🧹 in November.

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This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!

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